After the meeting today, I was talking to someone, who had some recent troubles. This person said, that though they had years in sobriety, they felt like they had just come in and had no time at all. I agreed. I’ve been in the same place and felt the same way many times.
We talked about the emotional binge that Bill wrote about in the 10th Step in the 12&12. All that was missing was the booze. But everything else was in play, rage, resentment, and a whole lot obsessing.
And even after reaching out and making amends, there was the emotional hangover. Just like after an actual binge. Not a comfortable feeling at all. No wonder, when we’ve been through these, we feel like a new person just beginning to get sober.
But then we talked about regular attendance at meetings and the healing effects these meetings produce within in us. I remember one old timer a long time ago, saying that to him meetings were meditations. And meditations have a calming effect on me.
That made me think about a conversation with a minister in the program after my talk with that other person. He used the word “contact’ with others. That was what the meeting did for him. He said it was these contacts with others, which put him in a good place in his life.
I suggested that maybe what we were in contact with at these meetings was our higher power. If meetings are meditations, as my old friend suggested, and our purpose in meditations is a conscious contact, then maybe that’s what a lot of us our doing at meetings. Not just sharing our experience, strength, and hope, but maybe in doing so we are at those moments fulfilling the goal of the 11th Step.
Far fetched? Maybe. But it is a sometime consoling thought. After all it is a spiritual program and meetings are, I believe, part of the maintenance of our spiritual conditions. The basis of our sobriety.
Anyway, I was just contemplating on these subjects; emotional binges and the healing process of meetings. Just thinking about what helps keep me sober.