Beginnings of Serenity

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online January 1980Vol. 36 No. 8
AA provided the tools to use soberly, one day at a time
AFTER A few months in AA, I am asking myself, "Why do I go? What's in it for me?" I didn't really have a problem--I hadn't ended up on skid row or in jail or in a clinic. As I near five years of sobriety, I still need AA, but I no longer ask why.

I think the beginnings of serenity came with the shattering, emotional awareness that I was in a room full of understanding people. My story is my own, but the feelings I had can be shared.

Tonight, for instance, someone's reference to rye and water made me remember that I never drank rye and used to con myself into believing I was okay because I stuck to a specific brand, drank only on social occasions or under severe stress, and never went to a bar by myself. Of course, I was drinking at home alone, thought I was functioning as a wife and mother, and so I couldn't have a problem.

Never mind my sister's needling me about the amount I was consuming--I just considered her not with it. Never mind that a member of AA broke his anonymity with me because he knew about me what it took me another two years to know. Never mind that my behavior while drinking was far from what it would have been sober. Never mind that my divorce was a consequence of my drinking.

Why did I feel drawn to AA? I went to my first meeting with my defenses up. I had not had a drink in ten months, and I had done it on my own. From my very first meeting, the spirituality so hard to verbalize about AA transcended my thoughts and my motives. Just when I would think nothing was being said that could help me, the power of AA sharing--if not the words themselves--would overwhelm me.

For me, with a very strong spiritual background that I had turned away from in college, coming into my first AA meeting was like coming home after fifteen years.

What keeps me going to AA? The warmth, the understanding, the sharing, the acceptance of me as me, the reminders of what drinking did to all of us. Am I better than someone who can be just a social drinker or who has never a drink at all? No way--but I am a better me, and AA meetings give me the reassurance that this better me is worth it even on the days when problems appear to be totally overpowering and unsolvable.

At least, I can now face the problems and can often solve them easily and calmly with the tools that AA provides, as long as I am willing to use them soberly and one day at a time.

Anonymous
Malvern, Pennsylvania