Beginner's Meeting: Hope Blossoms

Today I was ready. Today was going to be the day. When opportunity struck, I was going to raise my hand and speak. I sat and I waited, listening to everyone else share their good and bad times. And, just as I thought the moment was going to come, I froze.
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All I was able to do was sit there, smile, and listen to the next speaker, and ended up again waiting for the perfect opportunity to raise my hand. But no matter what I did, I just couldn't say a word. I have been coming to the same meeting for quite some time now, so I'm no longer surrounded by strangers. I've seen their faces and I've heard their stories, time and time again.
Believe me, I have plenty to say. I have tons of stuff going through my mind that I'm just dying to get out. But saying those things out loud is something I just can't bring myself to do. An annoying voice in the back of my head continuously says that my story is not worth sharing; that it has been told before. Why would someone want to sit through another repetition? I have no life worth talking about, nothing of interest has happened to me. I was never arrested, I never got pulled over, I didn't go to rehab or become homeless. So how can I say that my life has become unmanageable and that I cannot drink?
Simple: Once I start drinking, I cannot stop. I knew this from the time I took my first sip. The taste was overwhelmingly gross. I gagged at every sip. But for some strange reason, it felt great going down. I would often convince myself that the next taste would be better and, for a drink that made me feel so good, I would just have to get used to it. It was a simple price to pay. I enjoyed the feeling at fourteen years of age, and as I grew older, I began to love the feeling so much that I actually started to plan my life, my days, and my moments around the opportunity for me to get that feeling again.
At first, it was once in a while, then once a week, then twice a week, then just about every other day, with a day in between (swearing to myself that this is it; I've had enough; I'm not going to drink anymore).
But then a three-day weekend would come up, or a holiday, or a "just because life sucks" event, and that would send me right back to the store for another long night.
Then the week came when my partner and I hit our bottoms. We both had events take place in our lives that forced us to look at ourselves and see how destructive we had become. There was no escaping it -- we were alcoholics, and it was time to stop.
During our time trying to get sober, he was attending AA meetings and I was forced to stay at home and take care of the household, kids, and sobriety on my own. When I did attend the meetings, on special occasions, I felt I was on the outside looking in. I did not do the ninety-day meeting plan, I did not get a sponsor, and I couldn't pick a home group -- because I did not know where I belonged. I felt that since I did not raise my hand and introduce myself the first time I came into the rooms, I missed out and now had lost my speaking privileges. My partner, however, jumped headfirst into the program. I was only able to get my feet wet.
I felt lost, abandoned, and alone. Although I was trying to be supportive of his work in the program, at the same time I resented it. I resented him, because I wanted to go and be a part of it, and inside I felt I could not. It's not easy when both parents are in the program at the same time. I guess the worst of it is the feeling of having to put my program on hold. I had to deal with my alcoholism on my own.
This put me in familiar territory, because being alone was something I did well. You see, when I drank, I was never one to go to the bars and hang out, never one to mingle in parties. I drank alone. I have always preferred to drink alone. It allowed me to be myself, in my head. The crazy thing about it was that I often would wallow in self-pity because I was alone. I had no friends to hang out with, no one to talk to. I would fi nd myself sitting by the door drinking, listening to the commotion going on at the bar across the street, and wishing and wanting so desperately to be a part of it, a part of them. But I was too afraid to venture out, too afraid to be a part of them. I felt I didn't belong and I had no right to become a part of them.
And I hated my partner for it, because here I was drinking alone, and he was out there with the guys at the bar having a jolly good time. I constantly felt abandoned and rejected. For he would rather drink with them than with me.
So, of course, to pay him back I would drink some more. I would think, I will hurt him by drinking some more for leaving me here alone. That will show him. Boy, was I an idiot. I would end up drunk out of my mind, sitting by the window and burning cigarette holes in the sofa when I blacked out. I would be so drunk that there were many times the cigarette just tumbled out of my hand, often behind the sofa, and I would frantically have to pull the sofa back and get the smoldering cigarette before it burned a hole in the carpet. Sometimes I would wake up wet because I'd passed out and spilled beer all over myself. Then there was my long walk to the bathroom, where I would throw up, then make my way back to the living room. I would fall flat on my face, getting rug burns, then sit back on the couch and say to myself, I'll have another. So, while I was puking and passing out, he was out cold in bed. I really showed him.
When we started to get sober, I had this insane thought. Things were going to change; things were going to get better. He was finally going to hang out with me and be with me and life was going to be just great. Boy, was I wrong.
For the first two years, he was working the program and I had no idea what that entailed. But you can only imagine that while I was begging him to running off to a meeting. When I was desperate for some conversation, I was brushed aside for another member. I would be crying by myself at the window for feeling so alone. He was dashing out the door. This was not easy, not easy at all. I couldn't believe that my life was going to be this way. This feeling of loneliness keeps following me, I thought. I was tired of crying and I was tired of being alone. The thought of picking up a drink crossed my mind many times.
Often, I would say to myself, Oh, to hell with it all. Nobody cares whether you're sober or not, so why should you? I wanted to hide myself in a bottle -- that was the only way I knew how to deal with things. Drinking was the only thing that gave me a voice to speak up and say, out loud, what was on my mind and what I truly felt inside. So, when I put the drink down, in one sweep I lost my courage, my voice, and myself.
The funny thing is that I never truly had these things. My courage was an illusion because if I had any courage, why was I hiding behind a bottle? Why did it take a bottle of wine and a case of beer to loosen my tongue?
The truth is, I hated myself. There were many times I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I was ugly inside and out. I often walked with my head down. I was scared all the time and ashamed. I can still hear my father telling me that I'm useless and that I'm no good, can remember when I was twelve and he would beat me up and down the block, flinging me around like a rag doll, calling me a bitch or a whore -- loud enough for everyone to hear. I drank to forget about those times. I did not want to remember when he used to beat me with a wiffleball bat. I sure did not want to remember when he played the sweet, loving dad so he could touch me.
So, when I put down the drink, I felt life on an intimate level was over, because in order for any man to come close and touch me, I had to be drunk, drunk enough to the point of passing out and where my mind would reach a point of forgetfulness. I would stay away from everyone because I honestly felt I was unworthy to be near anyone. Why would they want to know me? I'm nobody. I'm nothing.
Things didn't start to change for me until I was reaching my second year in sobriety. An AA friend realized that I was handling my sobriety on my own without any sponsorship. She took me under her wing, started to work the Steps with me, and guided me through the literature. Slowly, I started to understand the Twelve Steps and began to believe that I could overcome this. That if I worked the Steps, my life and my train of thought would improve and things would get better. It took a lot of work; my self-esteem was down the toilet. I felt completely worthless.
I did not understand why she took an interest in me, why she even cared, but I'm grateful that she did.
Every day, I can feel a change come over me; I am more supportive of my partner's work in the program and we are seeing one another in a new and brighter light. When I enter a room, I'm no longer looking for a corner to hide in. I'm actually looking at the many faces and saying hello.
I don't know what the future holds. All I know is that I don't want what I used to have. I no longer take comfort in isolation. I now have friends in my life, and that grows stronger every day. I have hope, where I had no hope at all. And every day, I see myself evolving slowly into a person I have always wanted to be. I have learned a lot from yesterday, am grateful for today, and look forward to tomorrow.
Yesenia V., Long Beach, New York
What kind of help did you receive when you first came to AA? How do you and your group help newcomers today? Post on the Grapevine Forum at i-Say.
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A Businessman's Recovery
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July 1946

Closet Skeletons

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online January 1950 Vol. 6 No. 8
THIS is one of those pieces where you have to leave out the names. The central character is a businessman--a middle-aged guy--who had trouble with his mother-in-law for years because he had a habit of having a glass of beer on the way home from work.

The mother-in-law lived with this guy and his wife and if he wanted a bottle of beer at home, he had to sneak it into the icebox and then wait until the old gal retired for the night.

Every time she caught a whiff of brew on his breath, the mother-in-law would read the riot act.

Well, the other day, the old lady passed on to her reward and was duly buried. After the funeral our hero and his wife were inspecting the mother-in-law's room. In the closet, among other things, they found 157 empty whisky bottles.

Cartoon

December 1946

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

Music...Soft Lights...Romance

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online August 1947

Count-the-house Charlie

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online February 1970 Vol. 26 No. 9
He found his place in AA and served faithfully in his own way
HIS NAME makes him sound like a character Damon Runyon might have created, one of the Guys and Dolls gallery.

He was a fixture of the Plummer Park meeting, a Sunday-night get-together where the motion-picture folk used to assemble. The first Sunday night I got there, back in 1955, I arrived late and was fascinated by the opening speaker, who was already airborne. Trying to find a scat unobtrusively, I listened as he soared to dizzy heights of eloquence, leaving vapor trails of beauty and spiritual splendor behind him in his humility. Suddenly, he pounded the lectern and shouted, "Now this is an honest program, so I might as well come clean. Yes, I did join the program four years ago, but six months later I had a slip. I was subjected to a severe emotional shock. The woman I was living with went back to her husband."

I knew these were my people. I knew I belonged.

In this congress of kooks, Count-the-House Charlie had found his niche as self-appointed head usher. Everyone loved him. We might not have understood him, but we certainly realized that he was doing his thing. He wore dazzling checkered vests, and it was not long before I learned how he had' come by his Runyonesque moniker.

If you happened to be the speaker of the evening, there would inevitably come a time when Count-the-House Charlie would sidle up to you officiously and whisper, "Two hundred and fifty-two." Then he'd smile and walk away.

On a weeknight, you might be attending a less prestigious gathering, and our walking computer would steal up and murmur, "Thirty-two." Maybe a week later, you would be at a somewhat larger group, and Charlie's voice would be more jubilant as he made his earth-shaking announcement sotto voce: "One hundred and forty-seven!"

We all loved the numbers game as Charlie played it.

When I went back to Plummer Park to celebrate my twelfth AA birthday, I didn't see my charming friend as I surveyed the crowd, and I decided I'd inquire when the meeting was over. In the confusion, I forgot, drove thirty-five miles back home, and didn't get the information until Thursday morning.

I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang and a voice said, "Walter, this is Ray."

"What goes, Ray?" I asked him.

"Did you know that your friend Count-the-House Charlie has been sick a few months? He wants to see you."

Within minutes, I was racing over the freeways to the Motion Picture Home in San Fernando Valley to visit the ailing Charlie.

I looked down on the bed to see a terminal case of cancer, a victim who, in a day or two, would be facing the God he loved so much and served so well. The eyes were still big, still gay, still gallant. In wonder, I asked him, "Charlie. . .how long have you been on the program?"

Excitedly and with justifiable pride, he showed me the graphic answer on the table at his bedside, a handsomely crafted plaque only recently given him by one of those groups he served so unselfishly:

AWARDED TO COUNT-THE-HOUSE CHARLIE for 20 years of faithful steady service to ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS 1948-1968

Three days later he was dead, at the age of eighty-one. Almost a hundred of us gathered to do him honor at Forest Lawn. When I looked at the quiet, calm face in the casket, I thought to myself, "This guy was a saint."

Not until he was sixty-one years old did he understand clearly what God wanted him to do--but from that day twenty years before until the end, these words accurately described his life: "What a man should say, he said! What a man should do, he did! What a man should be, he was!"

Not once did I ever hear Charlie make a talk, but he will continue to educate me as long as I live.

W. O'K.,
Palos Verdes,, California

Christmas. . .In the Place for Drunks

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online August 1954 Vol. 11 No. 3
Christmas. . .In the Place for Drunks
Selected for reprinting from December 1949 Grapevine by Al S., editor Dec. 1948-Dec. 1951

ON Christmas morning the man woke up in the Place for Drunks and his wrists were tied down by the bed. His soul turned over with a retch and shrank away from any certain knowledge of time and place that waited beyond his closed eyes.

Overhead he knew without looking {for the man had been here before) was a spreading stain in the plaster. Lath would be showing through like broken bones--and a single bit of mortar dangling by a hair. He had filled his eyes for two days with that sight only, last visit. That was in springtime. It was winter, now. Sleety rain had turned to snow last night. The window glass would be frozen in saloon mirror designs behind the iron bars.

In a few minutes doors would begin banging in the hall, announcing the new day. Water taps would squeal and sing; toilets flush one after another. Then the trays would come--cereal bowls clinking rims with coffee mugs in witless joviality. Ah God! He was back in his old room in the Place for Drunks and it was Christmas Day. His clothes were gone, he knew; his wrist watch, his ring, his pocket book, papers, keys, glasses. The man locked these little images in his mind to shut out the picture of bigger things.

Memory began to work behind closed eyes.

"For God's sake don't come home drunk on Christmas. Don't do it!" Year after year the same bitter refrain from the mother of his children. As always, the man would mutter an angry promise and push out of the house.

But this year everything was going to be different. His faith had been pinned on two little initials; two words. Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah--AA. Bitterness welled up and choked the man. He wanted to pound his head against the gray iron bedpost in a futile rage.

Three months ago neighbors from the nearby AA group came to call. Sick, scared and shaken, the man was an easy convert. Sure he was alcoholic; ready to admit it, why not? The man went to meetings, read the pamphlets, made new friends. Slowly, he began the build-back to an alcoholic's "normal." No miracles happened except the daily one that lasted twenty-four hours. He didn't' drink. Sobriety stretched for weeks; then months. Thanksgiving came (holidays were always big drunk days for him)--the man sailed through it!

Confidence grew as Christmas approached. Even the family felt it. "Pa, this year c'n I have the skates, like you promised?"

"You bet you can have the skates, boy!"

Oh, it was going to be a good Christmas, this time! New ornaments to replace the broken ones; tree lights that all lit; safe again to ask the relatives over! Come back, you lost years; gather 'round the green branches!

Christmas Eve day, the man awoke with a strange tension. It was a hangover from a senseless argument. Always with anger, a confusion stepped in between the man's hearing and mind. Speech and action were in subtle conflict.

The man "hung-on," doggedly. He sat through a boozy lunch that started the office party without taking a drop. Everyone (it seemed) was passing a bottle. When the party grew so noisy he wouldn't be missed, the man sneaked his coat and parcels and hurried out the back way.

A light snow was falling. Cold air hit the man with a heady exhilaration. Thoughts spun faster than swirling snow. Unreasonably, now that he was safe, the slush of self-pity welled up. Everybody was privileged to celebrate a glorious holiday except him! "Mix Yourself a Bowl of Merry Christmas," begged gorgeous lithography from every saloon window. The man's mind began stirring a bowl of resentments, spiced with the fruit of imaginary good times. A compulsion gripped him, tight as fingers around a glass. He felt he had to drink or die. A saloon beckoned from across the street. He hurried to it.

Blocking the way stood a woman with kettle and bell. The man swung out to avoid the charity and bumped into a sidewalk sign, waist high. It was a Navy recruiting poster. His bare hand touched the icy metal frame. Then the man gripped tight, for sickness of soul swept from head to foot and held him there.

With a clarity never known before, the man saw the beginning and the end of what he was about to do. A hopeless panic shook him. He grinned fatuously at the woman and fumbled for a quarter, hoping that no one would speak to him. Warm air came from the saloon door, opened. Juke records spun 'round and around. The bar was packed four deep; singing gushed fitfully from the rear. Tiny glasses quivering with amber light slid down the bright mahogany.

Crystal sharp now came his vision of the wrecked Christmas! The fragile ornaments spinning, smashed on the tree, and every one had mirrored a bright promise. A dustpan full of pine needles. "Skates for the kid--don't make me laugh!" Tears came into the man's eyes because lie knew the compulsion to drink was stronger than he. When his hand stopped trembling and his legs were safe, he would push his way to the bar and set the terrible cycle in motion.

Suddenly, he remembered a way out! That first meeting his sponsor had said: "If you're ever hanging on the ragged edge and you haven't strength to light off getting drunk, stand right where you are and pray."

The man held tight to the sign and breathed into his woolen muffler, "Our Father, who art in Heaven." It was the prayer at the end of every AA meeting, but it didn't seem quite right for now. "Christ," he whispered, "take me home on your birthday. Help me home for Christmas. Amen."

The words swirled away on an updraft of snow that was rising instead of falling. It was dark in the sky. . .the man couldn't remember what happened, then. His deep, vivid impression of Christmas Eve ended there.

Now consciousness was returning. It was another day.

Wondrously, the man who had awakened so many mornings in the Place for Drunks lifted his arms from the side of the bed. He folded his hands together, eyes still closed.

Was his prayer and the answer a dream?

"Thy Will Be Done," whispered the AA man, accepting the thing he could not change.

The dream faded. He opened sober eyes on the wallpaper and windows of home.

It was Christmas Day and Christ was born again.


Les D.

An Old-timer Says: We Forget to Duck!

AA Grapevine® - Our Meeting in Print Online September 1948 Vol. 5 No. 4
THE question of persons, who after two, three, even five or more years of continued sobriety in A.A., "having trouble," came up in a discussion meeting recently. How to avoid the "trouble" is an important question.

It seems to boil down to something like Jack Dempsey's reply to a questioner, after Gene Tunney had flattened him, who asked, "What happened?" The "Mauler" answered, "I forgot to duck!"

We, too, forget to duck. We get out of practice. We learn early in A.A. that we should practice the Program continuously. That slip doesn't occur when we take the first drink--it may have happened a day, a month or a year before we take the first drink. Indeed, I have observed cases where everyone but the chap himself saw it coming. Strangely enough, no one can talk to the "slipper." Usually he has been on the Program longer--dry longer and has all the answers.

However, he has fast grown away from the very simple Program he learned when he first came in. That is kindergarten stuff to him. Through the habit of not drinking, he feels that he is safe.

In spite of his knowing, "once an alcoholic always an alcoholic," he is forgetting the 10th Step. Envy has slipped into his thinking. Jealousies and resentments lurk within him--The fellows at the office or shop are picking on him again--The wife doesn't understand him anymore--Other A.A.s are running, or trying to run, the group--The speakers are boring--He resented the fact that he couldn't drink with the other fellows at the company outing--People don't appreciate his staying sober.

These and a thousand other little things may be the slip he didn't catch soon enough.

We are never going to reach perfection. The above-mentioned things are insidious, but we can strive to keep them out of our thinking. They are our weeds. Unless we remove them, they will choke out our correct thinking to a point where we will get into trouble.

Years ago I was taught by those who preceded me that I must ever be on guard--that I'd always be an alcoholic--Thank God I've always remembered it.

When we find envy, jealousy, resentments, creeping into our thinking, let's weed them out. The simple way, it seems to me, is to review our actions each day. Check where we could have been a little more understanding, or tolerant to someone else--whether the time we blew up was really as important as we tried to make it. Let us try to recapture the wonderful feeling we had when we first came into A.A.

We'll usually find, as always, that the fault is within us. So let's talk the misunderstandings out. Let's give the other fellow the word of encouragement that he needs. It is good to get away by ourselves and think things through, honestly, humbly, as we'd advise a newcomer to do.

I'd like to see the ideas of others regarding this subject published in The A.A. Grapevine. It will help you to write it. It may help someone who needs it and certainly it will help the newcomer to realize that this is a continuous Program. To get full benefit out of it we must live it continuously--not just give lip service.

Dick S.
New York, New York