Today, while talking to a few people, who have been out drinking again, I and others were reminded of one of the most valuable and rewarding benefits of this program. Pain. I never want to forget what it was that got me here and kept me here.
Funny thing is, when I think about it, in my mind I am so grateful for that pain. I really owe my Higher Power a great deal of thanks for how that pain changed my life. In fact I often am reminded, when pain comes along in this program, gets my attention, and helps me to make the changes I need. Again gratitude for what I had spent most of my life trying to avoid.
Quite a few of us went directly to this thought and expressed hope that those telling their drinking stories were in pain. It was pain, which brought about the desire to surrender and accept this program and made me aware of what was wrong with me. It was pain that opened the door to the BB and the Twelve Steps. It was pain which opened my mind, my heart, and my ears.
I can’t help but go back and think about what my sponsor and those old timers said to me, as I sat and thought about one of these people, who obviously is well educated. He reminded me of myself. I had been educated in theology, philosophy, and psychology. Guess what? I was told that I didn’t know that I didn’t know. I only thought I did. Who me? Yes, I was told. I was educated beyond my intelligence. I was told to leave what I had learned outside the doors of the meeting room and bring an empty mind into the room and listen and learn.
Pain won that battle with myself. I remember being told to shut up. I didn’t know how to stay sober and I needed to take the cotton out of my ears and stick it in my mouth and to begin to learn what these people in here would share with me. It was pain that gave me the beginning of humility, which I desperately lacked.
Even today, when something is out of place in my life, I can depend on pain to get my attention. As always it is never immediately welcome. But time has taught me a lot about the spiritual life in this program. I had to learn to back off and get directions and the help I needed.
I was sitting here thinking about the past and my total ignorance. There I as in the seminary, studying to be a priest, and doubt began to invade my thoughts. Did I go and ask for help? No way. I made up my mind on my own, stepped out the door and into a barroom for the next twenty years. Then I came into this program and still had my mind closed and avoided all kinds of directions I desperately needed.
That’s when I was given the gift of pain in that barroom on a Sat. in Jan. of ’72. Despair and darkness within had me on the way out the door to kill myself, when a bartender reached over and grabbed my wrist and asked if he could help me. That was the beginning of the end of my drinking. I didn’t know that, but it made me ask my Higher Power, without knowing it for the help I needed and everything began to change and save my life.
As I sat there and listened to these people and others I know, like others, I wanted them to receive the gift of pain. The literature covers this aspect for us, but we have to get an open mind, and the directions to understand this. That’s what pain does for us.