What is it that changed me and where did it actually happen? I could say the Twelve Steps and that would be correct. I could also say at meetings and that too would be correct. But there was one Step after the First one, which definitely changed my life and I know it’s true of so many others.
Back, when I came in, the meetings I went to were Step meetings for the most part. Someone with time in the program would head up these meetings. We knew ahead of time, because there was a schedule, what the Step for each meeting was going to be. The leader would come in and talk about how this Step affected him and his life and then he would open it up to talking about the subject Step for that meeting. And it was by attending meetings like this that I began to learn about the Steps.
Of course there was always the BB and the 12&12. And like everyone else I learned to read and study these volumes. And that’s where I hit that point where my life definitely began to change. And, of course, it was for me the Second Step. I had already begun to grow in hope that something would change within in me, because that awful stuff I had dragged in with me was beginning to eat me up. I had read the Doctor’s Opinion, Bill’s Story, and There Is A Solution. And this last one about the alcoholic who had gone to Dr. Jung. That’s when the solution was presented. When Jung told the man that if he wanted to get sober he was going to have to have a spiritual experience. And that almost took my breath away. Imagine.
But when I looked at what the Steps said, there was that phrase a Spiritual Awakening. Then in that Second Step it talked about a Higher Power being able to restore us to sanity. And then there was the presentation of a spiritual way of life or an alcoholic death. And that’s where I was presented with the concept of lack of power in my life and the need for an independent Power greater than myself. And I began to change my mind and came to believe in a Higher Power. That’s when I began to open up to what this program was about and began to listen at meetings to what people had to say.
And that’s what today’s meeting was all about. The importance of meetings. That subject always gets my attention. Meetings are very important to me because it is there that I began to hear and learn what I desperately needed to know and learn. Not that I didn’t have a sponsor, who was a great influence on my life. And of course I had those books I could go home and study. But here it was that I was given the opportunity to do a number of things and learn so much.
One of those things meetings offered me and still does is a safe harbor from things which were eating my heart and my mind out. I would be weighed down by emotional burdens of all sorts and would drag them into the room with me. I would sit there and try to listen to what was going on. People sharing their experience, strength, and hope. And I would begin to feel the weight being taken off my shoulders. My heart and mind would begin to lighten up. By the end of these meetings I would find that I had been relieved of whatever it was at the time.
But the steady thing I have learned through the years in attending meetings regularly is something I found so essential to my sobriety. I really can’t stay sober by myself. I need the people in these rooms to support and remind me of what it is that is essential to my sobriety on any given day. The things I need to hear. Being reminded of things I have forgotten. Being pulled back down into reality of what this disease is all about and how much an effect it has on someone like me. I have a quick forgetter in this alcoholic mind of mine and I need to come back and be reminded.
Today I was reminded of what happens to people who drift away from meetings for all sorts of “reasons”. Complacency, self satisfaction was one. Irritations and forms of temporary insanity is another. But the consequences are grave. Fortuantely for those talking they were back in the rooms and sober now. I’ve known of many over the years, who never made it back and aren’t around anymore. Not a place I want to go.
Plus the fact that I need the strength and hope of others to reinforce this alcoholic brain of mine. I need the example of people like myself to show me how I need to change and live this way of life. And that’s why I go to meetings on a regular basis. I am so grateful I have for the opportunity to do this. Grateful to my Higher Power and the people in these meetings for the help that they offer me everyday.