I don't have to show off long legs in a miniskirt anymore. I can just sit on them and be happy. And I can say no to a lot of things I'm not interested in. All the people-pleasing activities I used to engage in, I can cut out now. That gives me time to do the truly helpful, gut-warming little things, just because they need doing and I truly care. I have time to work my program.
I can sit quietly and really listen to people trying to communicate with me. My mind is no longer racing to find just the perfect quip to say or story to top theirs.
The eternal internal war I can do without, too. The fighting inside me is over, and am I glad!
And the most important item of all to leave out is the old, familiar foe, alcohol. Without it, life is just plain wonderful!
Tricia J.
Houston, Texas
In All Our Affairs
July 1956
WORDS HAVE A WAY of taking on an entirely new significance when we enter into the new world opened up to us by AA sobriety. We all know how the first apparent clichés of our simple formulas change and become a vital part of our daily life. We discover after a time, for example, that we never really had an inkling of how practically useful "think" is until we accept how very long it has been since we really understood it. "Humility" came, with a bit more sobriety, to take its place as a lovely, living word, a quality of acceptance of our limitations, most devoutly to be searched for; the most desirable member of our family of words — humility.
"Gratitude," that much abused sister, also altered her face and was transformed into a joyful appreciation of our miraculous recovery. We grew to know that without daily gratitude our personal miracle would lose its lustre, and in time it could cover our shiny new world with a-dull-for-granted-taking that would lead us inevitably away from the fellowship and equally inevitably to our most welcoming enemy. We might drink if we became careless with our "gratitude."
"Pride" by a peculiar shift in syntax became the most active and omnipotent devil of a word, perhaps the most dangerous of all, and yet, while unresolved pride can lead us quickly to the bottle, we are tremendously proud that we are a part of AA.
"Honesty — " I heard an AA friend say at a meeting that he had heard a dictionary definition of honesty given by a rural postman at a country meeting in the middle-west. This old boy was sick of hearing this sensible word kicked around so he had gone to the County Court House and looked it up in "that big old dictionary there." It was good enough for him, it's good in any man's life. "Honesty — is the absence of the intent to deceive." Only what does "intent" mean?
Now I find that with all my new-found confidence in the validity and importance of semantics, I have been retarded and stifled by periodic waves of doubt and despair because of my blindness concerning the meaning of the key word to our entire program.
It occurs with perfect rightness in the Twelfth Step: "awakening."
Some hidden closet in my mind had failed to open. To me spiritual awakening meant an absolute conviction of and close relationship to a God everyone seemed to understand but me. I felt, in this untidy recess of my brain, that, without this revelation of spiritual grace, I couldn't begin to "carry the message" adequately and, of even greater importance, I was continually unsuccessful in handling "all my affairs."
I finally looked up the definition of awakening. It means to quicken, to stir, to wake up. It doesn't say anything about a great white light or an aura of divinity, in my dictionary.
Well, now I know without any more fuss or feathers, that I, like every other member of AA, have had a very tangible spiritual awakening. My belief in a Higher Power is as strong as it was when I went to my first AA meeting and accepted the first and second steps as simply and trustfully as a child accepts its mother's milk. And certainly AA with its never ending procession of miracles, has deepened and made tangible the evidence of the workings of that Higher Power. So what on earth was I looking for? I just don't know. I guess I wanted a little Tinker Bell all my own to show me the right and only way out of every situation.
In my peculiarly alcoholic way of creating difficulties, I discovered this semantic truth in the most involved way. Recently I was confronted with a work project that should have presented no particular difficulties, and yet it did. I blocked and blocked and couldn't rationally get around why I was procrastinating, fearful, unable to come to grips with it. I was thinking resentfully that in this year and a half in AA the only departments of my life that had become remotely manageable were my AA activities. I had no feelings of guilty inadequacy after I had been secretary of my group. I met my Grapevine deadlines. I spoke frequently at open and closed meetings. I had done everything requested or required of me without any anxiety as to the perfection of my performances. Why was I having so much difficulty in the other areas of my life?
Quite suddenly and without any warning bells, the simple solution came to me. I had surrendered to only one thing: my alcoholism. I accepted divine and temporal help in everything that had to do with my disease with complete humility but I never had extended this wonderful freedom from pride, resentments, envy and need for perfection and competition into "all my affairs."
So it finally came to me in this time of really deep need: I had had no understanding of the meaning of spiritual awakening. And because I accepted all things in AA as natural and just and healthy and good, I was only permitting an unconscious use of my spiritual awakening in AA areas. And I had never brought it out and looked at it before.
Now I hope and pray I can indeed carry to all my affairs the conscious use of surrender and humility and gratitude, employing them with the knowledge that, if I do, my affairs, under God's direction have a better chance of reaching a daily truth.
H.W.
Westport, Connecticut
Win Or Lose
August 2001
AS A HARD-CHARGING MARKETER, I used to focus only on winning. I worshiped people like football coach Vince Lombardi, revering him as the patron saint of conquest. So any time one of my victories was less than complete — or, God forbid, I actually lost — my sense of failure was absolute. And this always made me a sitting duck for self-pity — the handmaiden of John Barleycorn.
Joe C., my sponsor, picked up on this soon after we met. He gave me some good advice. "Take the words 'success' and 'failure' out of your vocabulary. Replace them with 'honesty' and 'effort,'" he said.
I wasn't yet ready. I was an advertising hotshot who thought he knew more about competition than did Joe, an electrician at the time. So I continued my Type A behavior and reveled in constant conflict at home and on the job. But his words haunted me for years.
In time, I began to weary of the anger, resentment, and hate fostered by my competitive attitude. One day, another old-timer, Claude W., asked, "Why are you so afraid of losing? Don't you trust God?" Heatedly, I pointed out that, like him, I was in marketing and was paid to succeed.
His response had roots in the same stock Joe had planted years before: "Don't you know that success and failure share a common denominator?" He paused and then really let me have it. "Both are temporary!"
His words have stood the test of time. They helped me to stay sober and to find joy in my chosen profession, with my family and among friends. I thank God, Joe, and Claude for teaching me this lesson in plenty of time to reap its rewards.
Jim M.
Escondido, California
Spiritual Agony
February 2001
MAKING AN AMENDS to the murderer of a precious friend was the most terrifying prospect — next to taking another drink — that I have faced in sobriety. But it also turned out to be the most liberating action I have ever taken sober and the opportunity for which I am most grateful.
My drinking career was short but intense, complete with downing eye-openers on hangover mornings, innumerable blackouts (including a few of the four-day-long, wake-up-in-another-country variety), two car