Nineteen years ago in March, a car driven by a late for school 16 year old single mom rear ended my car at a stop light.  It changed my life.  After 6 years in 12 Step programs, a successful corporate ladder climb, and departure to start my own national business this event rendered me cognitivelyconfused, 12 Step stunned and significantly socially impaired just when I was dating, ready to marry and start a family.  I didn’t see it coming, this karmic kick in the rear. 

What happened?  A closed head injury, just from the whiplash.  They get worse over time before the brain starts to do whatever repairs it can manage.  The doctors didn’t know what to tell me about how long recovery would take.  Really, they just didn’t know enough.  They’re still learning.  Thanks to advances, now they’d be able to scan my brain and see what areas were firing normally, and which ones weren’t, and then attend to proper rehab.  That didn’t happen for me and I lost the business, my plans for children, much short term memory and self esteem.  People I knew in and out of the program became upset with me when I didn’t return their greetings (because my brain didn’t recognize them anymore) or when I stopped talking midsentence and stared into space.  My brain could no longer process normal levels of information, so I stopped attending meetings and driving because I cried for no apparent reason around that many people and moving objects.  Talking, reading and understanding and decision making appeared to regress to around age 6. 

The point of sharing this is that even after finding the 12 Steps, life has presented challenges to me – and things got better.  It was a much longer road to recovery from a brain injury.  I lost years (about a decade) of my life in many respects.  And, I began to learn compassion, patience and letting go at an entirely different level.  Now,after multiple layoffs and in my second semester of grad school I’m actually considering a doctoral program (only considering).  That’s a miracle.  Just being in school is a miracle.  I’m married, own a home and enjoy a fuller life than pre-injury.  The 12 Step programs, and the loving kindness that members have extended to me through the years helped me reach this point, and still support me on the journey.  The unexpected can happen in our lives, but it doesn’t have to become the story of our lives.  We have other options – always.  That is the miracle of the 12 Steps.

Affirmation for the Day – ” I am always making progress! ”

Remember to say the affirmation at least 3 times whenever you remember it, preferably in front of a mirror.

– If you find this helpful, pass it on to others.  For daily updates, press the orange RSS feed to the right for directions.

Since I realized that I had become an alcoholic and could never have any more fun with liquor and since I knew that from then on liquor would always get me into trouble, common sense told me that the only thing left for me was a life of sobriety. but I learned another thing in A.A., the most important thing anyone can every learn; that I could call on a Higher Power to help me keep away from liquor; that I could work with that Divine Principle in the universe; and that God would help me to live a sober, useful, happy life. So now I no longer care about the fact that I can never have any more fun with drinking. Have I learned that I am much happier without it?

Meditation for the Day

Like a tree, I must be pruned of a lot of dead branches before I will be ready to bear good fruit. Think of changed people as trees that have been stripped of their old branches, pruned, cut and bare. But through the dark, seemingly dead branches flows silently, secretly, the new sap, until leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruit, many times better because of the pruning. I am in the hands of a Master Gardener, who makes no mistakes in His pruning.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may cut away the dead branches of life, i pray that I may not mind the pruning since it helps me to bear good fruit later.

Twenty Four Hours a Day; Feb 9

G’Morning,

I remember in the beginning thinking I would have no fun in sobriety. And boy was that wrong! My life had just begun. It has been a ride of twists and turns that I could have never imagined. Life was anything but dull.

It took me awhile to re-believe in a Higher Power. At first I felt I was unworthy. Getting past that took much effort. As I began to believe in my own conception of a Higher Power and took that Third Step, life began to have new meaning to me. There was many times I would call my sponsor at the time and ask her, “Are you sure there is a Higher Power out there?” And she would laugh and say, “Looking back over your short time in sobriety, can you say there isn’t?”

My decision making process had changed. Because of that, I had made changes in my life. Things had begun to fall away that I had held so closely before for my survival. I was being slowly pruned. Sometimes it was painful. Sometimes it was scary. Yet I kept the belief. And slowly the belief turned to faith.

My garden was full of weeds when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. It took a Power greater than myself to walk along side of me and help me weed. Urging me on silently and yet lovingly. One weed at a time. Some were more stubborn than others yet they did give way in the end to a more peaceful and serene life.

Weeds will still pop up. They are never ending. Yet because I keep the soil tilled by attending meetings and reworking the steps, they pull up much easier.

Yes, I am also grateful today that I have a Power Greater than myself in my life today that I can call on in fear and anger. I can also celebrate my joys with Her by planting a new. Life has become a journey and not a destination.

Brightest Blessings,

Carol Lee

“THIS INFINITE ABYSS CAN BE FILLED ONLY WITH AN INFINITE AND UNCHANGEABLE OBJECT, IN OTHER WORDS BY GOD HIMSELF”–BLAISE PASCAL

We all remember our first meeting like it was yesterday. My “bottom” and introduction to Al-Anon is no exception.

My son was at a Wilderness-type rehab program for his cocaine addiction and I was crazy about Peggy, an alcoholic with nearly 24 years in the program. When she told me that I was smothering her and she wanted to see other people, it was the last straw. I felt like my world was falling apart.

Since she was leaving town for the weekend, I went to a bookstore and bought everything I could find about codependency. I remember completing a checklist in one of the books and having almost every symptom. While Peggy had mentioned Al-Anon at one point, I hadn’t thought too much about it. After reading for a day and a half, though, her words finally hit home. If there were an “Al-Anon Emergency Room,” I would have checked right in.

I went to the computer and found the schedule for meetings that afternoon, got directions to the next one and headed out. It was a 3 pm meeting at 609 Lee Street in a community I had never visited before. I got there early, parked, and headed down Lee Street looking for the exact address. When I got there, there was nothing but a construction site. The building had been torn down and there was a huge hole in the ground! I knew there was another meeting in a couple of hours and even had the address, but it didn’t matter. I was at my absolute bottom–the hole in my soul was as big as the one I was staring into. I got back into my car and just drove. I had no idea where I was going, but made a couple of turns and suddenly saw a small white house with “Alano Club” over the door. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, but thought the name seemed oddly similar to Al-Anon. I parked, went to the front door and found my meeting.

That afternoon, four of us took turns reading the 12 Steps, a few paragraphs about powerlessness and Step 1, and opened and closed with the Serenity Prayer. That was Sunday. I went to a second meeting the next morning and attended what has become my Home Group that evening. After that meeting, a man identified me as a newcomer and introduced himself. As we talked, we realized that we had a great deal in common. We both were dating alcoholics we had met on the Internet, both had kids from previous marriages and both had struggled through difficult divorces. I wasn’t ready for a sponsor yet, but when I was, I had found the guy.

Just as I found Al-Anon through my girlfriend, I had now found my sponsor through those meetings. It’s been over five years now and both of those “holes” are pretty well filled today. My son’s doing great and that girlfriend–she’s now got 29 years in the program and I’m proud to call her my wife.

One of my favorite jokes starts out with a guy on his first day in prison, who upon meeting his new cell-mate is confronted with the question, “would you like to be the ‘husband’ or ‘the wife’?” Neither of those is a particularly favorable answer. Back in the days of the Salem witch trials, defendants were tossed into a pond. Those who sank and drowned were found innocent of being a witch, and those who floated were found guilty and executed. Given the choice of being tried as witch, or confronted with the two options that were given to the new prisoner, I’m not sure which one I would want to take.

The two examples above are known as double binds. A double bind is one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of dilemmas. The term was created by Gregory Bateson, a British linguist who studied schizophrenia, where he used the term “double bind” to describe as a symptom the stress that schizophrenics feel when perceiving two conflicting messages. A double bind as used by Bateson is a communication dilemma, and can be conveyed both verbally and non-verbally. Double binds are used by abusers of all sorts, particularly among authority figures. I recently read about a priest who had molested a number of kids over the years, always telling him that he loved them, God loved them, and they should not tell anyone about the abuse because nobody else would understand, so they should leave it between the child, the priest and God. The double bind for the children were:

If they did tell anyone: They would be breaking a covenant with God.
If the didn’t tell anyone: The abuse would continue.

Cults use double binds in many ways, and AA is no exception. AA manipulates people with double binds in many ways, and I will go over some here.

A double bind begins with a carrot on a stick. There needs to be some bait to set the trap, and that comes in the form of a benefit to the victim. The bait varies from cult to cult, but there are some similarities, as well. Most cults offer inner peace and harmony, some offer eternal life, others offer wealth. In AA the initial bait comes with their 12 promises, which to summarize offer: new freedom and happiness, no regrets, serenity and peace, selflessness, greater self esteem, wealth (economic security), wisdom, etc.

The promises are specific, but the path to getting there is vague. Part of the recruitment trap is deception. The standard lines come into play in the trap stage. “We’ll allow anyone to join us who has a desire to quit drinking”, is the standard line. One thing that will not happen is the prospect not be led to believe that there is a religious aspect to the group. Bill Wilson instructed his flock in this situation to lie by omission: “When dealing with such a person, you had better use everyday language to describe spiritual principles. There is no use arousing any prejudice he may have against certain theological terms and conceptions about which he may already be confused. Don’t raise such issues, no matter what your own convictions are.” And later with: ““Let him see that you are not there to instruct him in religion”.

Once the bait has been taken and the person is in the group, the seedlings of the double bind begins. Remember, at this point, the newly recruited AA is likely a rational and logical person. At this stage, the absurdity of the steps stand out like a sore thumb. It isn’t important at this time for the AA to believe in the steps, but they have to at least believe in the possibility that they might work. To digress just a little, the AA, who was initially told that all they needed was a desire to quit drinking, will be asked to view the program with “an open mind”. This is classic AA doublespeak. What they are really doing is asking the AA to look at the steps without questioning them. This is in fact closed mindedness, because it is asking the person to act on faith alone. Open mindedness see things from all points of view, closed mindedness is myopic.

It is at this point that the group or sponsor will introduce the AA to the idea that the reason he or she has not yet attained these promises, is because they have been blocked from realizing the potential of the steps. This is a commonality in all cults, although there may be different explanations from cult to cult as to what is blocking them. The common theme, though, is that they have not “given in”. Whatever the case may be, there is something intangible and ingrained in an individual that is disallowing them to reach their potential. Scientologists blame it on unconscious programming – engrams; Jim Jones and David Koresh blamed it on Satan, and AA identifies such culprits as ‘pride’ and ‘arrogance’. It doesn’t really matter what it is that is preventing a person in any cult from reaching their ‘potential’. What matters is that person has unrealized potential, and it is the group’s principles that will get them there. This is the basis of a double bind:

“Are you going to give in and accept where you are now? Or are going to work the program and achieve these promises?”

With AA, if you answer ‘yes’ to the first question, you will remain in the same alcoholic state that got you there to begin with. If you answer ‘yes’ to the second question, you are implying some sort of agreement, which is counter to your rational thinking. You are also told that it is your pride and selfishness that is preventing you from giving into the program, and you are encouraged to shut off your brain and believe the emperor has no clothes – “Your best thinking got you here” and “Think, think, think me another drink” are examples of the things told to a person. Neither choice is any good which is the nature of the double bind.

A ride that never ends

If a person is working the steps and failing to prosper, they are presented with a mental mind fuck of the highest caliber. They are left deciding whether their failure is that of program – which they are constantly reminded cannot fail. Or, is their inability to give themselves over to an irrational belief the cause of their failure. They are in a double bind because they have already acquiesced to the idea of the possibility that a higher power™ will rid them of their addictions, if only they weren’t so prideful, arrogant, selfish. They have no idea when to hop off the ride, because they don’t know if it isn’t the next meeting when they will “get it”. Or the next one, or the next one. If they leave AA, they will never know if they are making a mistake. They will never know if their concerns about AA and mind control and manipulation are justified. Ever. This is why it is often difficult to convey to those who haven’t experienced AA, or those currently under its spell, that it is a cult. A double bind is a psychological and subjective thing, and they are not ‘provable’.

There are other types of double binds, as well. Here are some examples, and how they pertain to AA:

Guilt/Fear Double Bind:

“I could openly question the mind control tactics used by many of the old-timers and people in authority, and that I see that the things I am being told are simply not true, and I just want to walk away and enjoy a sober life.”

Staying in AA and working the steps and pretending to believe the dogma is uncomfortable, but it makes me acceptable to my AA peer group, and acceptable to my family who believes that only my presence in AA will allow my sobriety.

Leaving AA will detach me from my social circle, which is centred around AA; and will detach me from my family, who I love.

Fear/Guilt Double Bind

“I have always been honest with people, and if I see something I think needs to be pointed out as good or bad, I do so. I see a lot of things being said and done to people that I don’t like”

Damned if he does:
His honest appraisals will be characterized as false.

Damned if he doesn’t:
He will be guilt ridden.

Guilty Double Bind
“Getting it” is a favorite term in AA. What is often heard is something to the effect of, “I was like you. I struggled with what I was being told, I questioned how this could possibly work, and I thought I knew everything. Finally, I gave it all over to God and said ‘you take over’, and I finally got it.” I’ve heard this eureka moment described in varying ways a thousand times over. “Finally, I understood”, “Finally, I felt at peace”, etc. Essentially, it is a description of the fulfillment of those 12 promises. If you don’t reach the point of “getting it”, and you are still struggling, you did not try hard enough. “Sure you did X, but you didn’t…” The “but you didn’t…” becomes the the new ingredient needed to reach your own “get it” moment, and if you never get it, you are guilty of having not worked the program:

If you don’t work the whole program, you are guilty of not being sincere;
If you do work the program, you are guilty of not being honest.

At this point, the “suggestions” that AA speaks of become a false choice, and a way to pull a person further into the double bind: “do these things, or you cannot reach those promises”. Basically, “these things” consist of shutting off your brain and accepting on faith what AA is offering is true. This leads to another double bind:

If I shut off my brain, I won’t be able to discern the truth, as my tool for determining the truth has been shut down;
If I don’t shut off my brain, I won’t be able to believe what is false.

Our shortest slogan, “Think,” can be very helpful. However, as with most tools, I need to use it with care and reason. As I’ve heard it said around the Al-Anon rooms, my best thinking is what got me here. For me, thinking too much or in a negative way is almost as dangerous as not thinking at all. Obsessive thinking can be my symptom of this family diesease as much as obsessive drinking is the alcoholic’s. It has even occurred to me that I ight be better off if I could get licensed to think safely! Al-Anon meetings are the closest place I’ve found to safe-thinking training grounds.

This slogan is intended to help me “Think” before I act, making sure my actions are well thought out, not impulsive, compulsive, or reactive. I need to remember, though, that the slogan is not “Think, think, think, think!” Along the lines of “Easy Does It” (but do it), I sometimes need to expand the scope of this slogan:”Think” (in moderation), “Think” (and pray), “Think” (out loud with a sponsor), or “Think” (and feel).

Thought for the Day

“Think” is an invitation for clarity, not endless rumination. God, help me to think, but not too much!

“I have a program that helps me to make sense of my mixed-up thinking and feeling.” Alateen-a day at a time, p.14

Hope for Today Feb 5 p.36

G’Morning,

This is one of the best explanations I have heard or read about our slogan, “Think, Think, Think”. And…….it is exactly what my sponsors said also.I’ve heard in too many meetings how most people don’t even address this slogan. In many clubs they either don’t have this slogan posted or they have it upside down. I’ve always wondered why. I surmised that it was because they were afraid of it. Which I thought was very sad because it is one of our slogans and why keep it out of your recovery? It was put in there for a reason.

“Think” in moderation. Good one. My mind of an alcoholic, sober or drunk is obsessive. That is where another lady helped me out. She told me, “Clean house, drink water and pray.” Or another, “Put your hands over your eyes, take a deep breath, say a short prayer, remove your hands and do the first thing you see.” Those two exercises kept my mind from obsessing. Kept me focused.

“Think” and pray. Of course I am thinking when I am praying! I probably wouldn’t be praying if I wasn’t thinking. Sheesh! Yet, thinking about my prayer, about my problem and then handing it over, saying, “Thy will not mine be done” or even the serenity prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (everything outside of myself), the courage to change the things I can (ME) and the wisdom to know the difference.” These two simple prayers keep me centered. Help lesson the anxiety or anger or fear of whatever I am thinking obsessively about.

Think out loud with a sponsor. Sponsors have been one of my greatest assets in my recovery. They have become close friends. They have loved me back to health. They have gone before me and experienced. They have wisdom to draw from. They have answers that I am still searching for. Not using a sponsor in my sobriety/recovery is almost insanity to me. Doing the same thing in sobriety/recovery as when drinking, (staying alone with my thoughts or isolating) is insanity.

Think and feel. Oh! Good one! How many are afraid to feel their feelings? How many still deny their feelings? I have been blessed by being a intuitive person. I feel everything. Every word, every action. It was learning to acknowledge my feelings, write about them, talk about them, name them, claim them and then LET GO OF THEM was the hard part for me. I just wanted to go on being a self-pitying drunk. Through the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, my sponsors, I was taught how to work through my feelings. My feelings wouldn’t kill me. That was what I was afraid of. Yet, after many times feeling like I would die and didn’t of course, I am stronger now. Things, thoughts and feelings do not kill me yet make me stronger.

Brightest Blessings,

Carol Lee

My worst day sober was better than my best day drunk…

It was a good day. The weather was good, the sun shined all day but it was a little nippy. Still, no snow … I had to drop by the post office to pick up a parcel, I love parcels. Sometimes the mailman/woman who serves this building gets LAZY and they don’t feel like bringing up packages, nor do they think to leave them in the office downstairs, so they leave a pick up slip and then it takes a further 24 hours for that package to get to the drop spot at the post office, up the road from home. The post office across the street from home is not a pick up site, just a mail drop off and post office boxes.

I set off for the meeting on time. I had to pick up more coffee, we go through a lot of coffee each month, making both decaf and regular coffee along with the fixings, goodies and cookies. We spoil our visitors each week with delectable goodies and lots of chocolate.

We fared well this week being a man down. Rick is still in Kingston taking care of his parents. I don’t know when he will be back so we are flying without our fearless leader, but it’s all good. We had a good group for the early meeting the stock groupies and the same familiar faces. Our nesting technique seems to be working – keeping the newbies involved and loved. One day at a time.

I want to address something that I’ve been seeing by the traffic that comes by the blog. Many of my visitors are non-AA’ers, or they left AA because of their own issues or have really bad things to say about AA. I don’t engage them but I want to talk about that for a moment.

Tradition 11 states that: Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion: we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, tv and film.

Our group DOES NOT shove sobriety down anyone’s throat. We DO NOT force God upon any of our members. We DO NOT throw Big Books at newbies. We DO NOT force doctrine upon anyone. And We DO NOT shove ideology upon anyone who comes to our meeting. We are just a group of sober people.

Our meeting is very relaxed. With the lighting the way it is at the meeting, it is like walking into your living room with dim light and good coffee and goodies and great conversation makes for a really great atmosphere.

We welcome anyone to our open meetings, both of our meetings are open format. We don’t shove God down people’s throats. Even tonight we had a newbie come in only 4 days sober, and we spoke after the meeting and some people have issues with God, or they can’t find God or they just don’t know God. So you know we say, believe in a power greater than yourself. Believe in the group. Believe in yourself. If you cannot believe in yourself right now, then let us believe in you until you can.

We offer to anyone who comes down our stairs a warm and welcoming meeting to come to where they won’t be judged on AA literature or Big Book knowledge. It is our belief that you should read the book, at some point, but we don’t force it upon anyone. You have to come to sobriety. You have to come to believe. And that may take some time, so when you are ready, there are the books.

And when you are ready to ask someone to work with you, then it will be time, but we don’t force sponsorship on people. We believe that in order to stay sober, you should join a home group, get rooted and eventually find a sponsor. We believe that group membership and group participation in set up, chairing and greeting is very important to staying sober. Finding a routine – having a few hours to ones self to attend a meeting, is good in the beginning.

So tonight we talked about changing our old ideas once we start to get sober. I can identify with that. I had to change old routines. Once I stopped drinking I did not bar hop anymore, I don’t club hop nowadays either. I know once I returned from my slip, I had to relearn all those things that I messed up and did not learn the first time around.

I had to relearn how to stay in my day and live one day at a time. I knew where God was, so I did not have issues with God. I had to deal with the shame I felt coming back from a slip, seeing my friends in the right state I was in when I finally came back. Hindsight is 20/20 and I have enough time behind me that I can tell you that many things changed in my life once I got sober again.

I got rid of my expectations. I stopped demanding things of God. I learned to wait on God instead of demanding, like I said. I learned how to stay in my day. It took me a year to relearn that lesson. Good things happened as well. The promises started to come true as I worked my steps and went to meetings day in and day out. I got citizenship. I met my hubby. I went back to university. I got married. AND I did it all in sobriety… And here I am 8 years and a couple months later … I’ve changed many of my ideas.

I heard a member share tonight that he comes to A.A. because for him he needs a little (A-ttitude A-djustment). This is one of the members who does not come often to our group, but when he does show up, everyone cheers and hoots when he says his name. Everybody knows him. And we all think the world of him.

So that was the day. I hope you will all keep Louise and Rick in your prayers tonight. Thanks for stopping by.

I need to eat dinner, it’s after 11 p.m. and the news is on.

More to come, stay tuned…

One common thing that AAs do who enter the effectiveness of AA debate, is cite ridiculous sources, or information they do not fully understand. This is the case today with a regular reader of the blog, McGowdog, who cut and pasted from a paper that was written by three AAs, including Glenn Chestnut, who once wrote this about AA:

“…unbelievers will quickly start running you around in logical circles which you will never get out of — so I don’t even try to defend it rationally and logically.”

He was not kidding, either. He and his two cohorts came up with this review of AA’s triennial survey’s. Logical, it was not. It was obviously not written by academics who understand how to interpret the data properly. When I first read this, its conclusions were so far off base, that I gave it to some cohorts of mine at Harvard who specialize in such things. I thought maybe I was missing something. They dismissed it as “junk science”, and we actually wrote about this here last April: How Alcoholics Anonymous Lies With Statistics. It summarizes the way the data in this review was manipulated.

Most of what McGowdog wrote below is plagiarized from this paper. This is another piece of fool’s gold for someone who desperately wants to believe the steps are effective. One rule to remember in reading this: academic language does not make a paper academic.

Here is what McGowdog cut and pasted:

Like it or not, there were a couple of reasons for the survey, which started back in 1968.

1. “To enable A.A. to furnish more accurate data about the Fellowship and its effectiveness to the growing number of professional – doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, law enforcement officials and others – who are working today in the field of alcoholism.”

2. “To provide A.A. with more information about itself so that members can work more effectively in helping the many millions of alcoholics who still suffer throughout the world.”

This was back when we had PI (Public Information) committees, but no C.P.C. (Cooperation with the Professional Community) representation.

The C-1 graph data was never intended to be retention percentages in the first place and has been the fodder for reckless antiAAer claims.

Each of the 5 Triennial Surveys is a cross-sectional study – a snapshot at one point in time for 1977, 1980, 1983, 1986, and 1989. Assume that the same number of new people have been attending their first meetings every month. That is how many will be in their first month when the observation is made. Or as the chart says, “% of those coming into A.A. within the first year that have remained the indicated number of months, with the y-axis going from 2 to 22, expressed as a %, in two % increments, then the x-axis going from 1 month to 12 months in 1 month increments and the data depicting the average of the 5 surveys starting at 1 month and going to 12 months…

1 month; 19%
2 months; 13%
3 months; 10%
4 months; 9%
5 months; 8%
6 months; 7%
7 months; 7%
8 months; 6%
9 months; 6%
10 months; 6%
11 months; 6%
12 months; 5%

Rounding error shows 102% or 103%.

The ratio of the second month people in the survey to the first month people is the retention rate between the first and second months. In that same way, it is possible to find the retention between any two sampled months.

In the actual data presented: Month1 = 19% does NOT mean that “81% (i.e. 100% – 19%) dropped out in a month as some sources claim.

Month3 = 10% does NOT mean that “90% (i.e. 100% – 10%) leave within 3 months and Month12 = 5% does NOT mean that “95% (i.e. 100% – 5%) stop active participation in AA inside of a year.

Instead, what the data does show is that for every 100 people surveyed with under a year since first attendance:

19% of that population were in their first month
13% were in their 2nd month
9% were in their 4th month
7% were in their 6th month
6% were in their 8th month
6% were in their 9th month
6% were in their 10th month
6% were in their 11th month
5% were in their 12th month

What is actually shown in the C-1 graph is that 56% of those who stay beyond three months are still active in AA at the end of a year. Other Survey results show even better retention rates after the first year.

You’d have to see the graph for each individual graph for the respective surveys to understand. For example, the one shown is the distribution for all months. The 1st month distribution starts at 100% and goes down to 26% after 12 months. The 2nd month distribution goes from 100% at the 2nd month and goes down to 38%, 3rd month from 100% to 50%, 4th month from 100% to 56%…

The normalizing factor, that which you multiply everything on the distribution by, is 5.25. So Tony J is correct in saying 26.25% after the first year.

Now, two more points the Triennial Survey points out;

As mentioned above,

• 56% of those who stay beyond 3 months are still active in A.A. at the end of a year and other surveys show even better.

• Another important consideration for data interpretation and context is that not everyone who attends A.A. meeting is an alcoholic.

They have graphs in there that show from 77’ to 80’ the percentages of different age groups have come into A.A. Less than 21 years of age, for example rose from 1% in 77’ to 3% for 83’ through 89’, less than 31 years of age rose from about 12% to 22% from 77’ to 89’, 31-50 year olds have been a pretty steady 55% from 77’ to 89’, and 51 years + declined from about 37% in 77’ to about 24% in 89’.

Random suggests imprecision rather than the opposite, but in actuality, when it comes to voting polls, for example, comes to mean “absence of bias). Just because you have a larger sample, doesn’t make it more accurate. That’s what they’ve done with the above survey and it’s good enough for me.

Here’s two statements from A.A.’s Triennial Surveys that show progress in the fellowship;

“About 40% of the members sober less than a year will remain sober and active in the Fellowship another year.”

“Similarly, of the members sober five years, about 90% will remain sober and active in the fellowship another year.”

No prediction is made for those that do NOT remain active.

Length of Sobriety (Data of 1989 survey)

Sobriety Range_________% of Sample
0-1years______________34.5%
1-2 years______________13.3%
2-3 __________________9.8%
3-4___________________7.4%
4-5___________________5.8%
5-10__________________17.2%
10-15_________________6.8%
15-20_________________2.8%
20-25_________________1.0%
25-30_________________0.5%
30-35_________________0.3%
35-40_________________0.1%
40-45_________________0.1%
45+___________________0.0%
No response____________0.4%

Another bit of wonderful data; across the board, from less than a year sober to 45+ years sober, average meetings per week is 3.

I think I’m gonna go on a 36 meetings in 90 days campaign.

Or how about this? 90 meetings in 90 years? You like that?

Line for line from that review have written about before, and to which we have posted a link. Anyone who read through that nonsense should read the original post we made on this thing.

Also, I omitted the link McGow provided us with a study showing that AA reduces depression in individuals (as well the comment he made calling us “fuckin’ dick nose fucks”). The full comment is in the comment section here. I have not read the study yet, but I did get a chance to read the abstract, and it looks like there is a correlation between AA attendance and reduced depression. I don’t doubt this, but I wanted to comment it on it in blog post next week after I have read the study.

This weekend I finished reading Lit, Mary Karr’s memoir about her relationship with her husband, her addiction and her God.

Every page was a poem—no wonder the book appeared on dozens of “best of 2009″ lists last month. But what struck me most was her experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. As she gets sober and commits to daily meetings, Karr encounters a corps of unlikely comrades: a well-known musician who brings homemade cookies. A black man with tattoos from the Khe Sanh Combat Base in Vietnam. A classics professor. Hookers and bankers. Rich women in Chanel suits and mechanics picking at the grease under their fingernails and still-drunk lawyers and a young man with schizophrenia who once attended a meeting wearing a helmet made of tinfoil.

Karr joined the group after hitting bottom—ending a professional appearance by drinking martinis and wine and chartreuse until blacking out, then trying to drive home until a concrete road divider stops her progress and shoots her out of the moving car.


“A moment of deep self-loathing makes not drinking seem your only conceivable option,” she writes. “But I know that day how swiftly such moments pass, how cunning, baffling, and powerful my own logic can be….for the first time, the disease idea isn’t just metaphorical.”


Although every person at AA can tell a similar—or much worse—story, each one is welcomed, valued, listened to. Jack, the schizophrenic, created his tinfoil hat because he was “convinced his girlfriend was beaming messages to him through the radio,” Karr writes. “It’s a tribute to the radical equality of the room that I never overheard anybody challenge the reasoning.”

This radical equality permeates the group because everyone acknowledges their lives “have become unmanageable” and they cannot successfully and sanely live life without help from each other and a Higher Power. There is no pretense about being more together or less sick than anyone else. The meetings and the community and the prayer save their lives.

And so I was deeply moved by Karr’s experience and deeply convicted about the different experience to be found in many churches—places that, after all, should have the corner on the Higher Power.

We do not admit our lives are unmanageable; in fact we usually find our faults both manageable and excusable. We do not pray and admit our past wrongs and make amends with the desperation of an addict out of better options. We do not find it impossible to go on without submitting our will in complete humility.

Because most of us have not hit bottom in our addiction to sin.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your church accepts anger and skepticism and even hostility toward the Higher Power. Maybe your members regularly take a moral inventory and confess “the exact nature of their wrongs” and “defects of character” to one another. Maybe they daily help each other fight the disease of our fallen natures. Maybe Jack and his aluminum helmet would fit right in.

If so, I haven’t been to your church. But I’d like to, because my name’s Jen, and I’m a sinaholic.

Today I woke up to another beautiful white blanket of snow.  Where we live, snow happens often in the Winter.  This year we’re having less sunshine than normal for our Winter season and it’s a great opportunity to focus on what’s good about the weather, instead of how dark and dreary the day to the eye.

My teachers of how to focus on what I like, what’s good, and what there is to be grateful for come from 12 Step programs.  At meetings, women and men have taught me how to find the “silver lining” in the darkest of days and the toughest of situations.  Their courage and positive attitudes have taught me to have hope always, and develop patience.  Somewhere in 12 Steps or some other philosophy is the idea that it’s the tough, unappealing times that teach us how wonderful the easy, attractive times truly are – everything’s relative.  I can wear rose colored glasses and enjoy my day as p. 416-421 in Edition lV and 448-452 in Edition III of the AA Big Book tells me.  Or, I can sit in the problem and waste the day.  Accepting what is, and learning to find the positive and support it in my life is an answer that works for me.

There’s that Acceptance again.  Something I used to fiercely resist, but which now I usually enthusiastically embrace.  There are moments where my persistence faulters a bit, but usually, the acceptance wins out.  Yeh!  It’s so much easier, takes so much less energy and keeps me in the present moment most of the time.  So today, the snow is beautiful, the house is warm, the cat is fed and I’m making good progress on my homework.  I’m happy, and even though the website isn’t letting me post a beautiful picture today – I’ll add it when it’s working again – I’m happy to be able to focus on all my blessings, right now.

Affirmation for the Day – ” I am present in my life.”

Remember to say the affirmation at least 3 times whenever you remember it, preferably in front of a mirror.

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“DON’T COMPROMISE YOURSELF. YOU ARE ALL YOU’VE GOT.”–JANIS JOPLIN

It can be easy to get down on ourselves. Maybe we’re having a bad day and nothing is going our way. Maybe someone has been critical of how we did something, making us feel incompetent or inept. Maybe we’re reminded of a previous mistake, and feel somehow “less than” or that others are just quicker or smarter than we are.

We need to ease up on ourselves and think more positively. I believe that we all have talents and can accomplish more than we give ourselves credit for. Ruth Casey observed that, “It only takes one person to change your life–you.” Whether you call it the “power of positive thinking” or “manifesting our destiny,” our attitude and outlook on life are just so important. Thinking about how things can work out for the good, rather than focusing on the bad, can go a long way in supporting our programs and in life. If we act positively, it just creates an aura of good will around us that everything will be okay. Our mind is an amazing thing. If we train it to look for success and the good in a situation, we will be a lot more likely to find a way through a problem than if we’re expecting failure. That’s why “acting as if” is so important. If we do things consistent with how we’d like them to be, we find that they tend to gravitate in that direction and that pretty soon we’re not acting anymore.

I remember playing kickball as a kid in gym class and how the same people tended to get hits or make outs almost every time they batted. One day, a couple of buddies and I started really pumping up this big kid named Jimmy, who didn’t think he was very good and usually got picked pretty close to last when we chose teams. We all encouraged him, supported him when he did well, and told him not to worry about it when he made mistakes. Well, in a very short period of time, our buddy, Jimmy, had become a “kickball machine!” It wasn’t because of any real change in his ability, but rather because he started expecting to succeed. If we believed he could succeed, he could have that same expectation of himself. We just loaned Jimmy a little positive attitude and he took it from there.

We’ve all seen the same thing in our meetings. We come into AA or Al-Anon at a very low state, our world is a mess and we’re near the “end of our rope.” We have a poor outlook and a lousy attitude about the prospect of things getting better. Enter the experience, strength and hope of our new friends. It might as well be an “attitude transfusion!” We see people with problems just like ours who are dealing with them and displaying an abiding faith in a Higher Power and the positive nature of things. It’s one of the real beauties of our programs, how we can share the faith and positive outlook of others, while we’re developing some of our own.

A little attitude goes a long way. Whether in our programs or in life, if we show confidence and believe in ourselves, we will often fair better than we could ever dream. It all begins with us.

How often do we sit in A.A. meetings and hear the speaker declare, “But I haven’t get got the spiritual angle.” Prior to this statement, he had described a miracle of transformation which had occurred in him – not only his release from alcohol, but a complete change i his whole attitude toward life and the living of it. It is apparent to nearly everyone else present that he has received a great gift; ” . . . except that he doesn’t seem to know it yet!” We well know that this question in individual will tell us six months or a year hence that he has found faith in God.

The LANGUAGE OF THE HEART, p. 275

A spiritual experience can be the realization that a life which once seemed empty and devoid of meaning is now joyous and full. In my life today, daily prayer and meditation, coupled with living the Twelve Steps, has brought about an inner peace and feeling of belonging which was missing when I was drinking.

Daily Reflections Feb 9 p. 48

G’Morning,

I was one of these once and I find myself going there from time to time. Yet, it only takes a reading like this or listening at a meeting, to remind me that I have found a “spiritual angle.” I once was lost but now I’m found as the song goes.

Taking a Tenth Step is an important step daily for the recovering alcoholic. I can get so caught up in my woes that I will loose perception. It is through meetings, my sponsor, recovering friends and literature that help me get back to focus and a level emotional balance.

As of late my gratitude list has become VERY basic. I was driving to work one day and things were not going well in my life. The sun was shining down and it was a beautiful day. I had the music turned up loud. Things seem to melt away for a few. It occurred to me that I was very fortunate indeed. I found myself being grateful that I could feel the warmth of the sun, see the light, could smell the freshly cut grass, use my feet on the pedals to drive and hands to steer. Although my job got me down quite often, I was able to work with all my faculties. This was far more than others have. So now my gratitude list not only includes being grateful for clothes on my back, food in the cupboard and a roof over my head; I also have eyes to see, ears to hear, working hands and legs and a voice to voice it all.

I have been given far more that I have given back. I came from a drunk that didn’t know how to live with out drinking, drank 24/7 if I could, to a function member of society.

Brightest Blessings,

Carol Lee

Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy will still elude us. That’s the place so many of us A.A. oldsters have come to. And it’s a hell of a spot, literally. how shall our unconsious-from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream-be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden “Mr. Hyde” becomes our main task.

THE BEST OF BILL, pp. 43-43

Regular attendance at meetings, serving and helping others is the recipe that many have tried and found to be successful. Whenever I stray from these basic principles, my old habits resurface and my old self also comes back with all its fears and defects. The ultimate goal of each A.A. member is permanent sobriety, achieved One Day at a Time.

 G’Morning,

Ah the great Mr. Hyde lives in me to this day. And I really do not think that “he” will ever seize to live. I am not an old timer, yet coming up on 6 years in April, which gave me the shivers thinking about it, I am more focused these days on my “isms”.

It is my “isms” my Mr. Hydes that get me in more trouble. Mr. Hyde says I am a selfish, self-righteous, self-pitying, resentful alcoholic and it is O.K. to be that way. I do not have to fight Mr. Hyde today as much. Fighting may not be the right word. Handing “him” over to my Higher Power is more approipiate.

Today, I have gotton into the habit after reading my meditations in the mornings I open up my Big Book and read the Third and Seventh Step prayers and then turn to pages 86-88.  It gives me time to reflect, center my thinking. I also have found that during the day when trouble starts, by reading those pages, my recovery steps in and I find myself thinking, “Thy will not mine be done.” It helps, it really does.

Brightest Blessings,

Carol Lee

Now, what of prayer?  Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God–and in this sense it includes meditation.  How may we go about it?  And how does it fit in with meditation?  Prayer, as commonly understood, is a petition to God.  Having opened our channel as best we can, we try to ask for those right things of which we and others are in greatest need.  And we think that the whole range of our needs is well defined by that part of Step Eleven which says:  “knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”  A request for this fits in any part of our day.

I need to update the page I’m keeping of some of the new prayers I’ve found and tried to work with.  I rotate them on the sidebar and so I write them out again and again, plus I see them when I look at the blog.  I’ve kept the white binder going and I take it to work with me each day.  I still write out prayers in long hand at times at work, and there’s a section of the notebook I keep with me that has just these prayers.  So even if I can’t write them, I can read them.  I’ve also started keeping quotes, prayers, poems and such that have to do with overcoming fear in the same book.

I hope that the prayers I’ve chosen do, in essence, ask for knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that out.  I’ll look with more of an eye toward that over the next little while.  Today’s fits the bill, I think, and it helps me focus on aspects of the equation of God’s will and the power.

• An Evening Prayer – C. Maud Battersby

  If I have wounded any soul today,
  If I have caused one foot to go astray,
  If I have walked in my own will full way-
  Good Lord, forgive!

  If I have uttered idle words or vain,
  If I have turned aside from want or pain,
  Lest I myself should suffer through the strain-
  Good Lord, forgive!

  If I have craved for joys that are not mine,
  If I have let my wayward heart repine,
  Dwelling on things of earth, not things divine-
  Good Lord, forgive!

  If I have been perverse, or hard, or cold,
  If I have longed for shelter in Thy fold-
  When Thou has given me some part to hold-
  Good Lord, forgive.

  Forgive the sins I have confessed to Thee,
  Forgive the secret sins I do not see,
  That which I know not, Father, teach Thou me-
  Help me to live.

I’m sorry that my posts were sparse this last week.  My course load in school is heavy and it’s causing me to learn about reasonable limits for my time and energy.  In fact, it’s also teaching me about perfection.  This week I was confused about what was due, when, and in what classes.  Very unsettling.  In fact, for the first time in my life I handed an assignment in late.  Ugh!  But, you know it is showing me how human I am.  So I lost a few points. It gave me an opportunity to apologize to a teacher.  A new experience.  He understood, and he now has the assignment, even if it’s a day late.  I’d already done all the reading, so it was a simple fix.

This is a new experience for me, and while humbling, it’s not the end of the world.  There was a time where guilt would have hounded me.  I’d have racked my brain about how I could have made such a mistake.  I’d have beaten myself up for not being perfect.  No more.  There are tradeoffs for the choices we make in life.  With 6 grad school classes anyone is bound to get a little confused.  And I wasn’t the only one who was confused.

So, no harm done.  My dignity and self esteem are in tact. I’m resigned to the fact that this semester is a challenge.  And one of the solutions is to double check with a classmate about assignments due.  In each class, there are a couple people whom I feel comfortable enough to call for confirmation on what’s due.  They’ve all been happy to help, and it lowers my stress level to make sure I’m on track in this simple way.  It’s also helping me get to know people who will be my colleagues in the field when we all graduate.  Relatedness is a good thing.  I feel very blessed by their kindness and the opportunity to be human with myself and others.

Affirmation for the Day – ” I am learning to be more human.”

Remember to say the affirmation at least 3 times whenever you remember it, preferably in front of a mirror.

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“THE SPIRITUAL LIFE DOES NOT REMOVE US FROM THE WORLD BUT LEADS US DEEPER INTO IT.”–HENRI NOUWEN

The programs of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon unquestionably have a strong spiritual underpinning. I believe that spirituality, however, is very different from religion. To me, formal religion is far more about organizational structure and specific beliefs, while spirituality is concerned with being better people amidst the world around us.

I grew up in a religious household. My Dad was an elder of the church, chairman of the church board, a Sunday school teacher, the whole nine yards. In south central Kentucky, going to church was what you did Sunday morning. It was just that simple. But as much of a religious upbringing and appreciation as I had, my relationship with my Higher Power is very different today. I grew up with the miracles of the Bible and with a vision of God sitting on his throne. Today, my relationship with God is far more personal and day-to-day. My viewpoint is less religious and more spiritual.

The spiritual foundation of our programs, as represented in the steps, provides a framework for living a good life. You hear people in the program talk all the time about doing the right thing, providing service to others and experiencing a bigger world as a result. We have all struggled in the “real world” and the program provides us a basis for better living. The first three steps represent the fundamental spiritual foundation of our programs. They provide the necessary progression in thought and action as we begin to rebuild our lives. These steps have been summed up simply as 1) I can’t, 2) God can, and 3) I think I’ll let him. Acknowledging that we can no longer control the world around us and that we need to surrender our will and our lives to God’s keeping is fundamental. Step Three is about surrender and to surrender we have to give up our strong will. Strong will and determination can get us in a lot of trouble. Someone once said that pehaps serenity has no greater foe than our own determination. If we continue to do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always gotten–frustration, fear, anxiety and resentment. 

Many of us struggle with the idea of surrendering our will to a Higher Power. Maybe it shouldn’t be that tough. If we think about it, most of us have plenty of experience subverting our will to other, more worldly, influences. For some of us, fear may represent a power greater than ourselves. For others, resentments may be. For still others, it may be “people pleasing” or trying to satisfy the every desire of someone in our lives. These can all represent higher powers to us–negative higher powers that tear us down and make our lives more difficult. Yet when presented with a Higher Power for good, we wonder how we can ever turn over our will. We’ve already learned how to do it, now we’re just using it to redirect ourselves toward living a better life.

It’s been said that religion is for those who don’t want to go to hell, while spirituality is for those of us who have already been. Our programs bring spirituality to our every day lives and make us better people in the process.

Scenes from last night’s meeting:

I have always joked, since we started a meeting across the street, that we would be there, even in a blizzard.  Well it wasn’t a blizzard, but there were 19 or 20 inches of snow.  Carole and I headed out in it.  Rather than walking on the roads (which weren’t great, but were better than nothing) we headed down to the door of the church.  The snow was over our knees.  We walked in the steps of some kids who had tried to play in it earlier, until they hadn’t made any more tracks.  Then Carole started digging out one door of the church and I headed around to the only door that we have a key for, on the opposite side of the church.

At times, the snow was up to my waist.  I don’t remember, even as a kid, walking through snow that deep.  It was very difficult for me to lift my feet and I was truly afraid to get stuck.  It was a very primal experience.  I wasn’t truly afraid of dying or anything, as there were a few people here and there, and it was fairly quiet outside.  But I was truly afraid of needing to rescued.

I made it to the door and found that of course, the door was blocked by over a foot of snow and I couldn’t open it.  I yelled for Carole to bring the shovel, and she heard me, thank goodness.  We got inside and set about shoveling a path, pictured above, so people wouldn’t have to be up to their waists in snow.

My speaker arrived and grabbed a shovel from inside the church and he helped.  Another home group member came by to help us shovel, which he did, but then he disappeared and didn’t go to the meeting.

Along with Carole, the speaker and I, three other people came to the meeting.  One lives across the street like we do (and mentioned we could walk on the road, rather than through the deep snow).  One mentioned how grateful she was that the meeting was open.

My work is already closed for tomorrow (Monday), such is the snow situation.  My daughter’s apartment is without electricity, so she’s at my house with her two cats.  With my three cats and two dogs, we may be breaking some kind of law.  I see that you CAN have too many cats.

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
–Benjamin Disraeli

In Twelve Step meetings, we don’t talk about counseling, treatment centers, or non-program reading. Many of us have been helped in these ways, but we shouldn’t confuse them with Twelve Step programs.

We must keep our Twelve Step programs pure. Certainly, we should use these sources if they help us, but not in our program meetings. There, we must stick to the basics that have helped addicts recover all over the world for many years. Steps, traditions, meetings, and sponsorship these things work, no matter what else is in style.

Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, let me be there to help an addict in need by sharing my Twelve Step program.

Action for the Day

I will help out today by being a sponsor or by calling a new group member just to say hello.

Keep It Simple by Anonymous

G’Morning,

It has only been through the “basics” of The Program that I have learned how to stay sober one day at a time. I am consistently doing the three step waltz. I can’t, He/She can and I will let Him/Her. These three simple steps line the way for me to work the other nine. For me, if I didn’t believe, I could not have gone on to work the others.

I’ve heard over and over how this simple Program is for complicated people. I understand that far better now. My alcoholic mind can take simple things and twist them around to seem very complicated. That is why I use a sponsor. My sponsor helps me to stay centered. That is why I go to meetings. They help me to stay focused, hear the message over and over. That is why I pray. I need to have some belief outside of myself in order for me to walk through my fears and take action.

I have been to many counselors in my life. What I’ve found for me is that they are paid friends. In Alcoholics Anonymous I am gifted with free friends. Friends that don’t quit on you. If anything I quit on them.

Of course there are outside resources that I use. Books, meditations, music. Yet these are not the things that got me sober. Surrendering, belief and willingness followed by action is what did.

In the front of my Twelve and Twelve I have written:

Rx For Sobriety                                                               Smith & Wilson A. A.

12 Steps practised in all our affairs….Pages 59-60

Trust Higher Power and Clean House ………Page 98

Share experience, Strength and Hope

Stay active in Service

One day at a time for the rest of my life

A handshake, smile and hug as often as possible.

RECOVERY GUARANTEED………………………..Dr. Bob S. & Bill W.

Brightest Blessings,

Carol Lee

“IF I SAY WHAT RESONATES WITH YOU, IT’S BECAUSE WE ARE BOTH BRANCHES OF THE SAME TREE.”–WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

How many times have we basically heard someone else tell our story at an AA or Al-Anon meeting? Particularly early on, we would be sitting in a meeting, not quite feeling that we fit in, and someone we didn’t even know would start describing our situation, our pain, our hopelessness.

I think a couple of things are going on here. We do share a fairly common set of issues and problems, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that someone else had an argument with their wife, got thrown out of the house or didn’t know what to do about their son’s using. I believe that something much more powerful is also at work, however. We’ve all heard it said that God speaks to us through other people. This is never more the case than when we are new to our programs and are looking for the reinforcement and support of others to give us comfort. Knowing that someone else has been where we are and can talk about how things have improved, is a powerful incentive for us to begin taking appropriate steps in our own lives.

It also happens after we’ve been around our programs for a while. A few years ago, my wife, Peggy, took on a new sponsee whom I’ll call Betty. Betty had been around AA for more than 20 years, but had always struggled, never putting more than a year together before relapsing. Betty lived in the neighborhood near us and had also become a good friend, even getting a job as a salesperson in Peggy’s real estate office. Betty had suffered a relapse in the summer of 2006, but had come back to the program after a short time. As we got into early 2007, though, Betty relapsed again and was struggling to make it back to the program.

On the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, someone called from Peggy’s office saying that Betty had died suddenly that morning. A client had called after Betty had failed to show up for an appointment, and when she call Betty’s home, a friend told her the news. She had evidently died at home alone on Saturday and was found when her friend came to see her on Sunday morning. Peggy made a few calls to common friends, but we knew we needed to be around people and to find a meeting.

The next Open Meeting we could get to was at a store front Alano Club, located in a fairly rough area where you would expect a lot of new sobriety. The meeting was just what we needed, with each of us able to talk about Betty and what had happened. Peggy related how Betty had been tormented and just could not get serious about the program. We were hurting that morning and our program was there for us.

What we didn’t expect was what happened next. After the Closing Prayer, a middle-aged black woman came up and introduced herself as Mary. Mary thanked us for sharing about Betty and said that could have been her story. She said that she had been around the program for most of her life, but had never gotten a year in. She said that she had kids at home and needed to stop fooling around and get serious about her sobriety. There were tears in all of our eyes as she went on to say she thought we had been there for her that morning and that maybe, if she could turn her life around, something good could come from Betty’s death.

We had needed help that Sunday morning and found it. But in sharing our grief, we had helped someone else. We really are all interconnected and we never receive more from our programs than when we are there to help one another.

This is the church where my meeting is tonight.  Think anyone will be there?  I will be, which is one  thing about starting a meeting across the street from where I live.  I’m chairing, and I’ve called my lead to let him know he can come, or take a rain check.  Carole and I will walk over and open the door, should some poor soul need a meeting and manage to get there.

Yes, in my drinking days I would have braved the snow to get alcohol, in theory I would have.  In actuality, I was always prepared for such an event with plenty of booze on hand for the big dig out.  And I lived with my mother, so had I really run out, I could take some of hers and she wouldn’t know.

Today, I’m very grateful that’s not the case plus it’s an awesome day to count other blessings.

• Both my kids are “home” where they live and not in the snow, not that I know of.
• Everyone, staff and clients, all got out of work yesterday, four hours after the snow had started falling and in plenty of time to not be in danger.
• I don’t have to be anywhere, other than across the street, until Monday morning, and I’m confident we’ll be dug out by then.
• I’m not experiencing this alone.  Lots of people we know, and in a way, even the kids (at least I think), are on their own, though safe.  It’s great to have Carole here to work it and enjoy it with me.  I remember being snowed in on my own when the kids were too young to help me dig out.
• We have heat and electricity so far.  Not everyone does.
• We’re physically capable of dealing with the snow.

Finally, there is more snow than even Xandra can handle.  The snow energizes her and makes her so happy.  Until today, we hadn’t really seen her in a big snow, since we’ve only had her for 2.5 years.  Today is first time she didn’t look at all pleased to be out there.

When Richard Heene, part time pseudo-scientist and full time wingnut, set his balloon adrift above the skies of Colorado and falsely claimed that his six-year old son was inside the thing, he did so with the expectation that he would not get caught. When he eventually did get caught, he made what appeared to be a heartfelt apology when, choking back tears, he said in court, “I want to apologize to all the rescue workers out there and the people who got involved in the community.” A month later he told Larry King, “It wasn’t a hoax.” He then went on to explain to Larry that his courtroom apology had been misinterpreted, and he wasn’t apologizing for trying to dupe the world, but was apologizing for causing people such an inconvenience. I’m not sure if this guy is a narcissist or a sociopath. I’m not a shrink, and there is a lot of wiggle room in diagnosing him. One thing I know for certain is that he is self serving, and his apology didn’t ring true to me, even before he pulled his 180 apology reversal on the Larry King show. Some things a person just knows, I knew that Balloon Man was only sorry that he got caught.

We see this type of public display of contrition with a lot with sports figures who get caught cheating, or public figures who get their hands caught in the cookie jar (or other their body parts caught in…well, you know). Mark McGwire, Eliot Spitzer, Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, Charles Barkley, Ted Haggard, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Swaggart and John Edwards are among a long list of famous people who looked us squarely in the eye and told how sorry they were. Tiger Woods will be added to that list once he speaks to his handlers and public relations firm, who will advise him on how sorry he needs to be. The one thing they have in common is that they weren’t sorry until they got caught doing whatever dastardly thing it was that got them into a pickle in the first place. It is much like the time back when I was in grade five, and I got caught sneaking under Becky Johnson’s desk to get a peek up her skirt and at her unmentionables. Our teacher, Miss Scarborough, forced me to confront Becky and apologize. Sure, I was sorry – sorry that I got caught.

A few months ago, a friend of mine received a letter of apology from out of the blue. It was an amends letter from an old friend who started attending AA. Of course, it didn’t state specifically in the letter that he was now attending AA, but it was apparent by the words and catch phrases that this guy was working his step nine. “I am an alcoholic” and “I have these character flaws” and “I want to make amends” and yadda yadda yadda. It was personalized, but read as though it written from a template, where the recipient’s name and specific sins were plugged into the blanks spaces. It was apparent that my friend was not the only person to receive such a letter.

We talked about how it made her feel to receive such a letter from out of the blue, and I asked her if she forgave her former friend. She said that she had forgiven him, but had done so long before receiving the amends letter. His wrongs toward her had taken place years before, and with time she eventually stopped thinking about him and had mostly forgotten about him. Her feelings toward him had become more indifference than anything else, and on the odd moments that she thought about him, there was no animosity or even any emotion at all. Ironically, it was the amends letter itself that changed that. It is not that the letter stirred up new anger, but it did provoke her into examining his motives to write the letter in the first place. She felt used in a way that AAs working step nine do not consider. In her mind, she felt as though the apology was scripted, and therefore insincere. True contrition is not brought on by public relations handlers, or teachers dragging a student by the ear to apologize, or a moral guide book. The reaction of a person receiving a ninth step apology, essentially a form apology, is not dissimilar to our collective reactions when Balloon Man or John Edwards or Mark McGwire issued their statements of apology. They came across as insincere, and more like my apology to Becky Johnson. True contrition comes from the heart, and is given instinctively, not because a sponsor or a public relations firm tells a person to apologize. It cannot be fabricated, and much like with love, it cannot be described, but we know it when we receive it.

Beyond the perception that a step nine apology might come across as insincere, there is another element to this that I had never considered until I discussed it with my friend. It displaces the guilt onto the victim. There is a sense of entitlement that implies “now that I have this newly found humility, you have an obligation to forgive me”. One common line of instruction sponsors give to AAs working step nine is not to worry about how the recipients of the amends will react, because “we can only apologize, but we cannot dictate the other person’s reaction”. This is true only to a degree. We cannot control someone’s reaction, but we can control whether they react at all. In the case of my friend, she was content not thinking about the past, but was forced to do so simply by receiving her amends letter. It stirred unpleasant emotions and feelings in her that she did not want to revisit. AAs should understand their apologies, even if they are sincere, evoke emotional reactions onto others who would rather be left alone.

I am an alcoholic, and I have done a lot of things over the years for which I am not proud. Looking back, particularly in my earlier drinking days, a lot of things I did were a direct consequence of my addiction. Either it was something I said or did because I was drunk, or a misjudgement I made from being in a constant state of withdrawal. I never got violent or committed any crimes, and though I would guess I have driven drunk literally 10,000 times in my life, I never killed anyone or even got a DUI. That does not make me better than those who have. It just makes me luckier. The harm I caused others was more of chronic nature. Neglect of my family, shortcuts taken at work, thoughtless remarks to others, and the list goes on. I do not doubt that I may have forgotten a thing or two that I have done wrong. Things others will immediately remember when they hear my name. In this way, I am not unlike a lot of other people, even those who have not taken a drink in their lives. Nobody is immune to sin and imperfections in their character. I can appreciate my mistakes now, not because I no longer drink, or because I have had a spiritual awakening, but because I have evolved and matured as a person. Part of that maturity is empathy for others, and an understanding that any harm a person may have done to me, I could have as easily done to somebody else. I think most adults feel this way, and I think most people conduct themselves with an implied contract of forgiveness toward others. We know when it is appropriate to forgive and to ask forgiveness, and we know when that forgiveness is understood. We don’t need an instruction manual to guide us on basic human decency.

Step 9 not just about making amends. It is also about tearing down an individual. It plays off of step 8 (making a list of all people a person has harmed), which is all about guilt induction. AA is not the only group who makes people write down their sins. Moonies do this, so do Scientologists, Mormons and the other usual suspects. Forgiveness and contrition are great things, but they are only great if they come naturally, and from the heart. Forced contrition is not contrition at all, and can do more harm than good. Step away from your shame, and understand that we all make mistakes. Whether you believe in original sin, or just believe that personal shortcomings are part of the human condition, cut yourself some slack. Live by the golden rule. Move on.

-MA

“WE SHOULD MAKE GOD OUR FIRST RESOURCE, NOT OUR LAST RESORT.”–ANONYMOUS

Many of us primarily look to prayer when we are struggling or things aren’t going well. We naturally turn to God for help in those times as a means of trying to deal with our problems.

Step 11 reminds us that prayer and meditation is not just for special occasions, but should be a daily part of our lives. Routinely communicating with our Higher Power results in a more matter of fact relationship than if we only go to Him when we are troubled or need something specific. As a result, we learn to consult God whenever an issue arises in our lives or we need direction. It’s as simple as taking a moment to clear our minds, contemplating the issue at hand, and just asking God for help, direction, or to give us the words and actions to deal with a particular situation. I find enormous strength and confidence knowing that I can go to God in this manner as I work through my day.

This step also tells us that we need to make time each day not just to talk to God in prayer, but also to listen to him through quiet meditation or contemplation. Billy Graham suggests that “Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between [us] and God.” The more regularly we dialogue with our Higher Power, the more comfortable we will be with this process and the more easily we can recognize His will for us.

Step 11 reminds us that we have no way of knowing what’s best for us. Rather, we should pray only for “knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. That prayer has always been one of the most difficult elements of the program for me. I suspect it goes back to my control issues, but it’s very difficult for me not to “custom order” my prayers. It’s something I must constantly work on in my spiritual relationship with God. 

Some always raise the concern about how to recognize God’s will or that we’ll somehow miss it. I would submit that we need only consider who we’re dealing with. As Melody Beattie puts it so wonderfully, God’s will for us will be delivered “forcefully and with power.” If God thinks it’s important enough to communicate with us, he will find a way to get the message through.