While this is still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d better write it down now. I was meditating on the 1st Step this morning, after reading the 12&12. What it said in there reminded me of a talk my sponsor and I had early on.
The words that Bill wrote about the rewards of our surrender to our being powerless, that it was the bedrock on which happy and purposeful lives was built, was encouraging to a drunk like myself. However my sponsor went further, when he talked to me about reservations. Did I have any? What if?
What if my mother died? What if I developed a fatal illness? What if I lost a job and my income? What if, what if, what if? We went down that list he put to me. Was there any “reason” I had in the back of my mind, which would tempt me to take that next first drink?
I thought about this a week ago, when a person told me that if their spouse, who was in the hospital, died they would definitely drink again. I talked to them about it, but nothing I said changed their thinking.
Once an alcoholic, always and alcoholic. The story in More About Alcoholism came back to my mind. The man, who was able to stop drinking for twenty-five years, who drank again and found out he couldn’t stop and died as a result was the example. The result of reservations. What if?
Anyway, I not only read the 1st Step again, but needed to think about the consequences of that next drink. Then I thought about what it was that drove me into AA. That awful blackness within me. The pain of the despair and hopeless frame of mind that was driving me toward suicide. And then the hope, which was given to me, that there was a place where men and women met and stayed sober together. Just that thought was enough to tell me that there are no “what ifs”. I pray not.