I once had a professor in college, who never talked about the course he was supposed to be teaching. Instead he told stories about the characters in history. Yet everyone in the class studied and passed the course. What he did was that he inspired the men in the room to learn. I’ve never forgotten him.
That’s what happened to me, when I came to this program. I met men and women, who inspired me to unlearn what I thought I knew and to learn what I didn’t know. They didn’t try to teach me. Instead they showed me the way. Just like that professor. What they did, my sponsor and those old timers, was to guide me through the darkness of my arrogance and ignorance into the sunlight of the spirit.
For instance, I really had no idea what it was to live a life. I was blinded by my alcohol and craving for it. I stumbled through life, having no idea where I was going. People in my life then told me that I was hopeless. I had no goals. I didn’t know I needed a goal.
Then I came in here and what was one of the things an old timer said, which opened my head and my eyes? He said that AA did not add years to his life, but it did add life to his years. Imagine. And this was a simple, elderly man. I remember sitting with him one day and complaining about something. He looked at me and then pointed to a drunk sitting in the other room. He just said, “Go talk to him.” I did and after a while came to understand I had nothing to complain about.
I had a lot of examples like that to go back and remember. I learned that the problems I often have are not really problems at all. They’re privileges I never would have had, if I had not gotten sober. One old timer referred to them as luxuries.
Mostly I learned by example. People shared their experiences. That was another eye opener. Imagine talking openly about yourself. That was new. And from them I began to learn not to complicate things. To at least try to keep things simple. All my life, especially drinking, I would complicate everything. My sponsor once told me that I was capable of screwing up a one car funeral. And he was right.
I remember how the Third Step became a huge problem for me. Complicated beyond belief. I remember having the feeling of having a metaphysical hernia. In truth it was very simple I found out. Hearing a woman one night ask her sponsor what God’s will for her was and her sponsor simply saying, “Do the other nine Steps”. Suddenly the curtain went up and my struggle was over.
When I look back and see what I was like, I think it’s a miracle I’m still here. I’ve often wondered why those old timers I knew back then didn’t throw me out the second story window. I must have driven them crazy.
The idea of inspiration is still with me. I’m often inspired by what I hear and what I have read in the AA literature. The truth is that I’m still learning. And what I’m learning is how to stay sober and live a sober life.
I have a lot for which I am grateful. For instance I am grateful that I am an alcoholic. Only by having this disease could this program have opened up for me. It introduced me to a way of life I could never have imagined before I came here. It offered me an opportunity to come to know a God of my understanding. It introduced me to people, who are just like me. A family in reality. In a real sense I’ve come home.
I was lost out there in a sea of alcohol and the sober people in AA fished me out of that ocean and saved my life and my sanity. And then they inspired me to get sober and stay sober.