Went to two meetings today and what was said at one meeting struck me and reminded me of the earlier meeting also. We were reading a story out of the BB and everyone at the table said pretty much the same thing about it. They not only identified with it, the alcoholic drinking, the problems that resulted, and finally finding AA and getting hope, and stopping drinking, and meeting others whom they identified with.
It’s at moments like these that I find my mind and heart opening and receiving the message I need to hear. I was reminded of what happened to me. To all of this.
The story took place mainly in Wash. DC, where I got sober. I knew exactly the place the man in the story was talking about. I had been to his group often. There I met an old timer, who told me that AA did not add years to his life, but it did add life to his years. To, which I can say today, how true.
But almost everyone emphasized the word “hope”, which they all found in here. That’s always what I go back to, when I tell or think about my story. It was there the last day I drank. Hope was a light that went off inside of me and exposed how black it was within me. Hope that diminished the despair I was in. And then five days later at my first meeting that hope was reinforced. Never forgot that, because it was to become a guiding light in this new way of life and led to faith.
The gratitude expressed at the meeting for finding the program and sobriety was clear. The same thing I have myself. What a reinforcement. Everyone expressing the freedom from bondage of alcohol and the new happiness we have all experienced in these rooms. It was wonderful to say the least to hear all of this.
Most of all the spiritual experiences, voiced in their expression of faith in a Higher Power, whom they credit for getting sober and staying sober. That and the program.
Just made me pause, when I got home to sit down and think about all of this. My primary purpose. Or first things first, as they say. Nothing’s worth a drink today.