Many years ago my old sponsor said that the meeting was only an hour long. He talked about the seriousness of this disease and how deadly it was for the alcoholic. He said that for just one hour it was the business of those attending to stay with the subject of recovery for the alcoholic. That, if we wanted to laugh and joke around and talk on things other than alcohol we could do so either before or after the hour was up.
He also said that there was nothing funny about alcohol for the alcoholic. That was for people, who never had a problem with this disease. And, he pointed out that this was a disease. That the alcoholic had to believe that he was, as the BB said, as physically abnormal as he was mentally.
We’re born with this disease, which manifests itself, when we pick up a drink of alcohol. Eventually at some point along the line we will experience what normal drinkers never do. A super physical effect, and then we’re off and running, never able to stop drinking until it kills us, or we find this program.
It’s in the Fifth Tradition, especially if we read the long form, which really is the shortest in all of the Traditions. It says that the Group ought to be a spiritual entity, whose primary purpose is to carry the AA message to the alcoholic, who still suffers. Serious business, if we really mean to help the person, who comes here for help. And it also applies to those of us, who have developed problems, which can blind us to what this program is all about. Staying sober.
I often times think, when groups suffer the loss of control and get into laughing, joking, and fooling around, that it can be a dangerous thing for someone to begin to think that they’re okay and slip into complacency. That’s when we can find ourselves drifting away from the meetings. No problems. Right? And then find ourselves back on the bottle.
Then I also think about the warning in the BB, that there may come a time in the life of an alcoholic, when he will have no mental defense against that first drink. Like I said this is cause for me to take the meetings seriously. After all it’s just an hour out of the rest of the day.