Today we were talking to someone coming back. The Fifth Tradition. The task outlined for alcoholics like ourselves. The group carrying the AA message to the alcoholic who suffers. And from the look on their face I would say the word suffers was appropriate.
I always try to figure out what it is that prevents someone from surrendering to being powerless over alcohol. I know I’ve heard some say they had reservations as to actually being an alcoholic. I know they have told us how difficult it was for them to have to admit that.
I know that I always go back and have to think, if alcohol was doing what it did to me and the same was happening to them, why would they have these questions in their minds. I know that over a long time out there I was desperately trying to stop drinking and instead it just kept getting worse. I was suffering all right. And when I was given hope I had no hesitation in surrendering one hundred percent, as I later learned.
I know from my own experience and listening to others that I and they never ever want to drink again. I hear that from the words of others, who have come in and never gone back out again. But, how can we get others to reach that point? From the evidence it doesn’t seem possible. It always reminds me of the words in the Serenity Prayer, to accept the things we cannot change.
All this serves as a reminder to me of the insanity we hear about in this disease. I mean, here are people, who come in suffering from the alcohol they’re drinking, and yet can walk out the door and go pick up a drink again. And part of that is their inability to hear what those of us in here have gone through and surrendered to our being powerless over alcohol. The inability of persons who are powerless…the evidence right there in front of us…and the belief that we’re still in charge. In control.
I often think of that when I read the Second Step about a Power greater than ourselves being able to restore us to sanity. Even after surrendering before I walked through the doors, I know I had to reach the Ninth Step to realize that I had stopped fighting everyone and everything, including alcohol. The restoration to sanity.
I know that I went back and read the fifth chapter, How It Works, this morning, to remind myself what the book said about us being imperfect in working these Steps. It tells us that we are not saints. However our wills, our commitment to surrender and work these Steps, is what makes us begin to change and do what’s necessary to help us to face the fact that I never want to drink alcohol ever again a day at a time.
One of the major things which helped me to change was what those old timers in here threw into my face early on. I was told to shut up and listen. That I knew how to drink, but I didn’t know how to stay sober. I needed to take the cotton out of my ears and stick it in my mouth and to listen with an open mind and an open heart to what works in here.
I mentioned that to a fairly new person next to me and how grateful I was that those old timers back then knew how to not hesitate, but to tell people like me what I needed to hear. He laughed and said that people today didn’t want to hear stuff like that. I know I did. I needed to hear that.
Anyway I know that I was beginning to feel compassion toward this person and others like them. Wanting to be able to carry the message of what it is that works in here to help people like me to stay sober a day at a time. But I also knew that it would take not just surrender, but ego deflation in depth, the beginning of humility to become open to recognize just how powerless we really are and the need of not just the help of others, but the spiritual help we need to become open to.
Anyway, just stopping for a moment to remind myself what it is I need to do a day at a time. To practice these principles in all of our affairs and to not drink alcohol. Just for today. Makes me grateful.