A member shares her thoughts about applauding when people come back from multiple relapses
I recently attended the memorial for a woman who I had sponsored on and off for about eight years. Although she went to meetings pretty regularly over that time, when she died she was not sober.
As I listened to the shares at her memorial, I realized that we in AA may have enabled her—not purposely, but in celebrating her return to meetings each and every time she came back from drinking sprees. That got me to thinking about her state of mind when she was in meetings: Did she plan her next drink knowing she would be received with open arms when she came back? Did she know there would be no consequences and that she, in her alcoholic state, was “getting away” with it?
As her sponsor for that period of her life, I saw a person who did not want to be accountable for her decisions. She grudgingly did the First, Second and Third Steps and then quit before we got into Step Four. That was the Step that she most dreaded because it meant taking a look at her own inventory and she didn’t want to go there if it meant giving up the booze.
Soon after, she began avoiding me and stopped calling, although I can’t say she ever was much of a phone caller. When I would see her at a meeting and ask her when she wanted to get together, she always had an excuse for why she was “too busy” to meet with me. She seemed to be living between the lines of what she knew she had to do to maintain her home life while also being unwilling to do any work to change her thinking.
As I listened to the shares at her memorial, I realized that she knew that we would always accept her—no matter what—when she came back. Unfortunately, this led to her drinking on the way home from meetings. Once, she admitted to me that she had stopped at the liquor store on her way home from a meeting where she had celebrated her sobriety with an anniversary cake.
I see people come into AA who have been around the block a time or two and although they know the consequences of their actions in the outside world, they are always accepted and loved by us in AA. However, for my sponsee who led a secret life outside of AA, that acceptance gave her an out to continue the cycle of drinking between and around meetings.
As a sponsor, I believe in tough love. When my sponsees go out, I don’t reward them with kindness and understanding. I tell them they are lucky they didn’t kill themselves and I ask them to look at how their actions affect their loved ones.
Alcoholism is kept alive by the self-centered thinking of the alcoholic. This disease starts in our mind and then becomes physical as we take the drink. Until that cycle is broken, there will always be new and creative excuses for not working the program. Going to meetings is not enough. That’s why we have the Steps. We have to apply each Step to our lives in order for the change to take place.
My sponsee died an alcoholic without recovery and there was nothing I, or anyone else, could do to stop her. Yes, we all have free will to make our own choices, but to welcome back those who relapse time and time again with applause and smiles is not, in my opinion, helpful. Acceptance, yes, but not enabling.
Today I will remember that alcoholism is a strong foe and without an even stronger program, it can easily win the battle of life or death.