What a great meeting tonight. The group read the First Step from the 12&12 and then each talked about what we had just read. Sharing our experience, strength, and hope with each other.
It was interesting to me and all the people sitting there how much identification was going on. That first moment, when we realized just how hopeless and helpless we all were, when we came to AA. How much we needed each other and the people in the group we first attended. The overwhelming power of alcohol driving us here. We just couldn’t stop drinking. And then coming into the program and finding the answer to this disease.
Not only did we talk about how much our bottoms helped us through these doors, but the realization of just how near death and total insanity we all were. And, no matter how resistant we might have been at the beginning in accepting all that needed to be done to insure our sobriety, the fact was that we finally became willing to make whatever changes necessary to stay here.
I especially loved hearing the part of that Step, where others discussed the unmanageability in their lives. Like the surrender to alcoholism and my unmanageable life, I had no problem with that. That was what I was. An alcoholic with an unmanageable life. Said and done. But it was interesting to hear how many were convinced that their lives were still under control. And then coming to realize, as time went on, how their lives were falling apart.
At the end of the meeting it was pretty apparent that everyone there had totally accepted their alcoholism and their having unmanageable lives. Not only that, but coming to realize that this was really not about themselves alone. It was about “us”. The “we” of this program. The first word in that Step. We all came to believe that we need each other. Not just tonight, but always. We keep each other sober. That definitely hit home during the reading and the rest of the meeting. Good to hear that again. I need to hear it again and again.
Anyway, when I got home after the meeting, my thoughts were all about what I experienced at the meeting tonight. I think everyone in there expressed how much they owe their very lives to this program. To our getting sober and staying sober. It was just another reminder of how important that First Step is to each and every alcoholic, who is still sober. I know it is to me.