Nineteen-eighty-seven was the biggest income year I’d ever had. I had a big house, two Mercedes Benzes, a Rolex watch, and my kids were in prep school. By modern standards, I had made it.
In addition, I hadn’t had a drink since December 1979. I attended AA regularly. Everything was as it should be.
Then, in 1988, I started to get into the social scene in AA. I won’t go into lurid details, but suffice it to say, honesty and spirituality started to fall by the wayside.
By 1989 AA had become an inconvenience. I was offered a huge bonus to work for a lesser firm, and because business was off, I mistakenly took this offer as an opportunity to rebuild.
I stopped going to meetings entirely in January 1990. After all, I had ten years without a drink and had gone to hundreds of meetings. AA wasn’t necessary any more. Besides, some of my old friends were getting on my nerves, and I was tired of hearing the same old stuff. I knew it all.
A few months into 1990, I started to feel depressed and burned-out. Things just weren’t going my way. It was the market, my new firm, my wife, my age (forty-four). I heard about Prozac and tried it but it didn’t work. I couldn’t keep up the payments on the house and notified the bank. I considered divorce. And for the first time I actually thought that maybe the world would be better off without me. My life insurance would provide for my family.
My old friends from AA finally stopped calling me, all except for Andy. Andy was a sixty-five-year-old ex-engineer who had been in AA for twenty years. We had similar personalities and the same sense of humor. I really liked Andy. He would call and say, “I know you won’t come back to the old club, but why not meet me at the Abernathy meeting. That’s a great meeting.” I’d always say, “I’ll try,” but I knew I wouldn’t. Andy kept calling once a month or so. But I’d convinced myself that it would be too much trouble to go back. These folks in AA didn’t care about me anyway. I had my own problems to deal with.
I decided to go to a hypnotherapist. In one session he took me back to 1981 and told me to put myself into a good memory. I visualized myself new in the Fellowship. I was enthusiastic and full of new sober life. Times were good. That vision stuck with me.
But things weren’t good now. I hated waking up. I hated my life.
I hadn’t been back to an AA meeting for over a year and the thought of returning was almost offensive to me. I was beginning to view my former AA friends as people who had offended me. After all, they didn’t call me anymore; all they cared about was their own little circle. Occasionally, I’d see someone from AA in the mall or in church. Most of the time I’d avoid contact.
One day I got a call from a woman who told me Andy had died of a heart attack. If it was anyone else, well, I don’t know if I would have cared. But I always told Andy I might meet him at the Abernathy meeting. The least I could do was to go to his funeral.
When I showed up, there were very few seats left. I recognized a lot of people but couldn’t remember many of their names. Jim K. gave the eulogy. Jim was a bar owner, eight years my junior. I’d never heard him give a public speech before. I was truly impressed and moved by the outpouring of love for Andy. I wanted to be part of it.
But it had been so long I was afraid to go back to a meeting. What would I say? I didn’t remember anyone, and they didn’t like me anyway.
A few more weeks passed and I walked into my office one morning and there sitting at my desk was a young broker named Bill, with no shoes and a T-shirt spotted with blood. He looked up at me with a funny smile. I took him downstairs and paid a cabby to take him home to his wife. Later the boss called me in and asked me if I could help Bill. Bill had been in treatment before, and if he didn’t get sober now he was out of a job. I said, “If he wants help I’ll help him.”
The next day I made a commitment to take Bill to ninety meetings in ninety days. I’ll never forget my first day back. I thought everybody would react in some way. The fact is, I hardly knew anybody there. I was very uncomfortable but I stuck with it.
About forty-five days into my ninety meetings in ninety days, I was sitting in a meeting at 7:30 in the morning. And suddenly I realized what had gone wrong in my life: I’d stopped going to meetings. It was as simple as that. The problem wasn’t my wife, the stock market, or my age. I’d simply fallen out with AA and I knew at that moment–I guess it was a mini spiritual experience–that everything was going to be all right.
I still have my ups and downs, but I currently go to about five meetings a week. I frequently share this story at meetings. Inevitably someone with eight or nine years comes up to me and thanks me, because they too were becoming complacent with the Fellowship. Thank God I didn’t drink in my year off. The insanity is always there waiting for you, to pull you away from AA and find other excuses for your problems.
Alcohol will jump at the chance to turn me against what I know is good for me and jettison me into denial. I’ve been blessed to have the courage to finally get back into AA. Most don’t come back; once they leave, they stay gone. Some drink again, many don’t. But I’ll never forget that miserable year without my beloved meetings.
I hope this story will help alcoholics who don’t go to meetings anymore realize that they can have the magic back again. Do ninety meetings in ninety days, and if that doesn’t work for you, I’ll gladly refund your misery with interest. But I’ve never seen it fail.