Sat next to a man “coming back”. My take was that he was never ever here to start with. He fit the description of a sick and suffering alcoholic. I wondered as the people around the room addressed his problem. It reminded me of the Doctor’s Opinion, when he said that “frothy emotional appeals” rarely worked. This man needed a stick of dynamite to get his attention. My take on the poor guy was that his ears were drunk and he couldn’t hear.
A couple of us followed him outside and tried to talk to him…or at least listen to him. It was obvious that he was operating without an ounce of sanity. He told us that he wasn’t going to be able to go to any more meetings, as he worked twelve hours a day.
But that wasn’t what I was listening to or observing. I was listening to my newest pigeon. Here was a man, who had recently come back and had been struggling himself to get sober and stay that way. For almost a month now he has been going to meetings and talking to me for about an hour or more a day. He was doing what I did, when I first came in. He was trying his best to convince this man to go to any lengths to get sober. What a treat that was to see this man trying to win the argument with himself.
What it all reminded me of was the story I read in the BB last night, before I fell asleep. In it the man said that his problem wasn’t really alcohol but sobriety. And, the reason sobriety was a problem was that he didn’t know how to live sober. He had to be taught how to do that.
How true that is. Everytime I would stop drinking, sobriety drove me back to the drink. I couldn’t stand it. Thank God for those old timers and my sponsor, who taught me how to live this way of life.
You could see the truth of this in the face of the man coming back. Here he was, literally at death’s door. His liver is swollen. His legs and feet are swollen. He can hardly walk or stand. The circulation is almost cut off. Yet he is terrorized by the thought of having to face sobriety. He has to find a reason not to get sober and needs to justify why he needs to drink again, even if it kills him. Insanity is the only word that fits his state of mind.
My friend talked to this man a long time after I left. He called me to tell me what happened. He was trying to convince him that he needed to enter a hospital program and then some more care following that, as well as to follow the program of AA.
One of the old timers at the meeting said that the state this man was in could become our state, if, as he said, we get zippy whippy, because things are going so well for us. He said we could end up restless, irritable, and discontented with ourselves and our sobriety. I could add that sobriety could become a problem for us again and that alcohol could once again be our solution.
I owe a debt to the man coming back. What a reminder. I could look in face and eyes, as I sat there. I knew that I was looking at me. I owe a debt to my pigeon, because I saw me in him. I am also grateful for the story I read last night. I’m also grateful for the twelfth step. Not just the part about working with others, but also the first part; the spiritual awakening. Because, whether I could feel it or not, I could see and experience that awakening. I knew that was what was really taking place. And the result was that I knew the truth of nothing will insure our own sobriety as working with others. It’s all around us, if we will open our eyes.