One of the things which makes me happy is that I’m sober. I hear that from so many people in this program. Almost extreme happiness to be free from alcohol. It always makes me think that I can’t understand how all those millions of alcoholics in this country for whatever reason don’t want this program.
This program is not a mystery. The press and the public know all about it. In fact I have seen dramas where one of the individuals is an alcoholic in the program. Not just once but many times. I can remember fairly far back, when I would go to hospitals in Wash. D.C. and run into a whole wing of alcoholics in there for detox and rehabilitation. And then afterward there would be weeks and maybe months before anyone in there ever showed up for a meeting.
In fact I remember a high ranking official, a physician, was found on the floor of a garage in one of the government buildings. He was so drunk that the garage attendants couldn’t revive him and they had him rushed to a hospital nearby. His family and the government officials where he worked came down on these attendants and they promoted him to a higher position. Not long after that he got drunk, collapsed and died. Some in his agency were angry that no one in there or his family cared enough to get him into some kind of recovery.
Why am I going through all of this? Because I was reminded today of the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. In it Frost reaches the end and says that there were two roads in the woods and he took the one less traveled and it made all the difference. That’s what strikes me, when I think of all those alcoholics out there, who have not gone the way we have in here. Bill talks about the path we’ve taken and states that if we practice this program we’ll still be on this path. The one not frequently traveled. I look at the millions out there and myself in here and think that I took this path and it made all of the difference in my life. It saved me. How much it could do it for others.
And that’s what always strikes me when we talk to a new person or one coming back. How much pain are they in? I know that’s what drove me here and so many others I have known. Pain. Suffering. The cause of our surrender. Totally. The willingness to ask for help. A bottom, as we call that pain in here. I know I was desperate enough to ask my Higher Power for help. I had surrendered completely to my being powerless over alcohol. And I got the help I needed. And more for that matter.
But, once again, I am reminded that as interested as I might be, I have no power, no control over anyone. It’s really up to each individual. And I know how powerful alcohol can be over us. I know it held me in bondage for a lot of years. I couldn’t get loose no matter what I tried. I had to get so far down in such despair that I was willing to take my own life. And that’s when hope got me to reach out and get the help I needed.
Anyway I was really grateful to go back and read that poem tonight. It’s really what I needed to remind me of what it was that changed me. Taking that less used road. AA. I know I can’t fix or change anyone unless they hurt enough and are looking for the help we have received in here.
Once again thinking about this day in my sobriety. Just the thought makes me happy. It’s so wonderful to have this program in my life. It gave me life. A life I almost lost due to alcohol. My Higher Power and the people in these rooms helped me to recover and have that new freedom and new happiness as the result of being relieved from bondage of alcohol. Grateful and hopeful I can pass this along to someone who needs it.