I was just thinking back to my early days in AA. I can remember how wonderful I felt, finally freed from the curse I lived under with alcohol. I thought about how enthusiastic I felt and how I wished all my drinking friends needed the help I had discovered. I was working in the District of Columbia downtown and I would find myself meeting drinking acquaintences on the street and talking to them about it and passing a card with the twelve steps to them. It wasn’t long before I would spot someone and they’d spot me and cross the street to avoid me. No one wanted to talk to me anymore. I had not yet learned what AA was about and that it was a program of attraction and not promotion. I had not yet learned that you can’t give what you haven’t got. But I was filled with this rush of happiness I now know is termed “the pink cloud”.
What I was thinking about was what has happened over the last three decades plus since then. The pink cloud ended at some point and I know I hit the bricks of reality and the trudging began. I was to begin a long, long period of ups and downs. There were the withdrawls I had to go through. The optimism one day and the depression the next. Periods of sheer craziness followed by the light of sanity. Anger and resentment and then the discovery of what the steps could do to help me up the ladder away from such madness. From hope to faith and the desire to help others in the light of reason. Growing from a period of taking and learning to one of having something to give. Letting go of the past and foregoing projection by living one day at a time.
It’s been a long journey from day one until this moment. What I have discovered is that my EQ (enthusiasm quotient) is still in place. A little more reasonable, but it’s still there. Through the guidance of my sponsor and some old timers, I have learned to be more selective in my work with others. I have developed somehow that thing the BB talks about. Be sure your man means business. I’m not into arguments and tolerating them. I know now that you can lead a man to water but I can’t make him drink. He may drink all right, but it may not be the water of life.
I was wondering why this state of mind still exists. I know it’s not me. Not every meeting would encourage me to come back. Some I have witnessed have degenerated into areas that would not have been tolerated at one time.
The message that I was introduced to seems to have been lost at times. And I have learned that it’s up to me and others like me to bring it back into focus. As my sponsor used to say, shame on me, if I forget to do so.
Fear of what others might think of me causes me to hesitate at times, but enthusiasm, the love of this program makes me go forward.
And that’s it. I love this program for all that it has done for me and so many others, who have traveled this road with me. The gift of a Higher Power, the God of my understanding is present in my life and so many of those I see around me. The evidence in the lives of those, who have been freed from alcohol and are now leading lives of filled with peace and happiness. The inner peace and serenity and the contradictory excitement that wells up from within. The emptiness and loneliness inside me stuffed to the brim from something else other than me.
That’s what I was thinking about this morning.