In November 1977, during one of my many stays “around” the program, an Al-Anon member asked me why I wouldn’t work AA’s Twelve Steps. In all sincerity I told him, “I don’t need the Steps to stay sober. The Fellowship of AA is enough to keep me sober.” I kept slippin’ and slidin’ around the meetings, convinced I had this AA business all figured out.
Two months later I took what turned out to be my last drink, although I didn’t know that at the time. Shortly afterward I was in a beginner’s meeting, for people with less than a year of sobriety, where the topic was AA’s Twelve Steps. The chairperson called on the man, seated next to me, and what he said helped change my life.
This fellow was a loudmouthed, obnoxious, self-promoter who invariably took up meeting time to talk about cars, business, and anything except sobriety. He had been “around” the program for nineteen years. I despised him heartily. Imagine my surprise, then, when he puffed out his chest, folding his arms across a flabby gut, and said, “I don’t need the Steps to stay sober. The Fellowship of AA is enough to keep me sober.”
You might say it was a sobering experience to hear my words coming from that mouth. I looked at him and said to myself, “I don’t want to be like you!” Here was a guy who’d been “around” for nineteen years, saying the same thing I’d said just two months earlier! I really did not want to be like him!
Fortunately, I had an option. A group in our town was known as a very Step-oriented, hard-core bunch with a lot of strong old-time sobriety, and that’s where I went. I don’t believe it was a conscious decision, but I knew those folks were different from some AA people I’d met, and I wanted to become as “different” from that loudmouthed fellow as was humanly possible. I attended the meetings for a while, and finally found a man I wanted as my sponsor. He seemed the opposite of the loudmouth, with a quiet grace and gentle manner that appealed to me. What really hooked me, though, were his frequent references to caring for a nephew who’d recently lost his mother in a car wreck. That touched me, so I worked up the nerve and asked him to sponsor me.
Never let anyone tell you that God doesn’t have a sense of humor. The man I selected as sponsor was a short, rotund businessman who drove a huge Lincoln and, for some reason, hated bikers. I’m a long-time Harley fanatic who, for some reason, hated short, fat, rich cats in fancy cars. Hence we were perfect for each other.
The first thing my sponsor told me was, “I don’t have time to help you stay sick–I’m much too busy for that–but if you want to get better I’d be glad to help.”
He definitely meant what he said, but my sponsor was not one of these head-crackin’ types that order their pigeons about. That was just as well, because I was extremely rebellious when I sobered up, and could have seized on a domineering sponsor as an excuse to chuck it all and return to drinking. Instead, my sponsor laid out a set of tools (the Twelve Steps) and told me how he used them in his life. There were no demands made of me. He simply said, “If you want what we have, come and get it,” and that’s what I needed to hear.
Through my sponsor, and other members, I’ve learned that this program offers much more than simple dry time. They not only told me about, but actually lived, what I now know as the promises. They explained that the promises were an end result of working the Steps to the best of my ability, and that life in AA took on a whole new definition when compared with the miserable existence I’d known out on the streets.
My friends did not lie. I have done more, accomplished more, learned more, and gone farther in the past thirteen years than all the other years of my life put together. One of my favorite words, when I came to AA, was freedom, but my concept of freedom was limited. I thought it meant doing what I pleased, when I pleased, without regard for consequences. Now I am truly free: to walk through any given day or situation without cringing in fear, exploding in rage, getting loaded, or self-destructing; to love, laugh, and know and appreciate the simple joys that come with being alive; to be a part of, instead of apart from, a society where I can serve an invaluable purpose; to recognize and utilize my own talents and abilities, as a writer, a worker, husband, stepfather and participating member in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m free to be the man I’ve always wanted to be, but never before had the courage to become.
In what I see as a prime representation of AA’s magic, I was offered two examples situated at opposite ends of sobriety’s spectrum. Adrift between the two poles, I was blessed with a clear-cut choice, and for that I’m very grateful. I needed something just that black-and-white to penetrate the stone wall of excuses I’d built around myself. I now know, and my life in sobriety has proven to me, that I’ve made the right choice.
I’m also pleased to report that my sponsor has gotten over his hatred for motorcyclists, while I’ve mellowed somewhat in my distaste for short, fat, rich folks. As for the loudmouth? Maybe he found his own examples, because at last count he had several years of continuous sobriety, and was still going strong.