SHOWING UP

I came to my first meeting because I had to. There was no choice. You know how they say you can’t scare an alcoholic? Forget about that because I was plenty scared.

Anyway,
I came back because I wanted to.
Now I show up  because I love to.
This is where I belong.

Meetings are a good time! There’s plenty of coffee and some sort of goodies…cookies or cake (or something else I have no business eating). You get to hang with friends and discuss the topic du jour.

Sometimes because of all the levity, it can be easy to forget just how serious these meetings really are. It’s life or death.

Wanna know how you stop going to meetings? One day at a time. And it’s incredibly easy to do.
The longer you stay away, the easier it becomes to make excuses for not showing up. And believe me, I speak from experience.

This disease is a predator:

It wants to separate you from the herd, break your spirit and take you down.  I’ve seen better people than myself succumb.

If I stop going to meetings an interesting phenomenon occurs. It may not happen tomorrow, or the day after, but it will happen: My worst character defects are the first things to emerge. And I’ll wager it’s the same with you.

People look at me, and on the surface is a reasonably serene, well-adjusted individual.
But right beneath that thin veneer is a noxious, smoking, bubbling tar pit of disease just waiting to get out. It never goes away, and it’s incredibly patient.
That’s the bad news.

The good news is that I genuinely enjoy going to meetings.

Since I’m on the topic, if you don’t have a home group, you are seriously shortchanging yourself. Without a home group, you’re homeless.
As a matter of fact, when I’m a guest at a meeting out of town, when I introduce myself I always state my name, and the name of my home group. I’ve noticed that folks seem to appreciate that.  It gives me street cred.

Working the steps, performing service work, and doing all the stuff your sponsor gets in your face about is all right and good…but nothing happens until you walk through the door and park your butt.

When you keep showing up on a consistent basis, a lot of helpful things are going to rub off on you.

For instance:

Certain jobs have thrown me into situations where I was called upon for public speaking.
Once upon a time, that would have freaked me out.

An article in Psychology Today stated: “Surveys about our fears commonly show ‘fear of public speaking’ at the top of the list. Our fear of standing up in front of a group and talking is so great that we fear it more than death, at least according to some surveys.”

What a bunch of wieners.

Evidently, the people who took that survey don’t go to AA meetings.

Over the years, I’ve gotten more public speaking experience than you can shake a stick at.
If you show up it’ll happen for you.  However, it helps if you’re an opinionated extrovert with no shame…like me.
Never mind Toastmasters International.

I was at a meeting the other day, and the topic was “change”.
Every time I attend a meeting on change, there’s always a recurring theme that never fails to amuse me.
People will do anything and everything to avoid it.
I totally get that, because they’re my species.

Long before I joined the ranks, my drinking had spiraled down to a daily affair.
As lousy and unacceptable as life had become, I freely accepted it, because it was at least familiar.

One day (long before I got sober) I was in my car listening to a radio talk show. As fate would have it, the topic was AA.

I was just kind of half listening (because it didn’t really pertain to me) and the host said a couple things that got my attention:

First, he stated that alcoholism was a disease. That struck me as a lame cop out.
Now, leprosy is a disease I can get behind.
I knew darn well that I drank because I was weak and evil (I had wonderful self-talk).
He also stressed that if you got sober in AA you could never drink again.
For the rest of your life.
Period.

I looked at the radio and shouted, “That has got to suck!”
There was no way in the world I could ever submit to that.
As bad as things were, I’d have kept going if fate hadn’t intervened and wreaked my health.
Eventually, I was forced to acknowledge, admit and embrace my powerlessness.
Then I did something I never thought possible:
I asked for help.
It didn’t take long to see others go through the same thing. Some stay and thrive, and for whatever reason, some fall by the wayside and eventually destroy themselves.

Right about the time of my first anniversary, a man I’d never seen before showed up.
There’s no polite way to put it: this was a dumpster fire of a human being. He just sat against the wall and sobbed.

He came to the right place.
If the best you can scare up is a minor compulsion, like washing your hands too much, you’re wasting your time with Alcoholics Anonymous.
However, if you’ve alienated and disgusted anyone you’ve ever loved, destroyed countless opportunities, squandered a fortune and burned your life to the ground – we’re perfect for you.
Thus was the case with our newcomer.

His name was John Sullivan, and he was a retired schoolteacher from Brockton.
Lonely, alone, desperate and frightened.
He’d finally reached bottom, and was now at the “jumping-off place” they talk about in Chapter 11 of the Big Book.
It’s a place we all know too well.

Perhaps the greatest risk we ever take is to allow ourselves to be seen as we truly are.

Instead of pretending everything is fine, and trying to look good, he’d been ‘beaten and bludgeoned into a state of reasonableness’, and was ready to do it our way.

It’s exactly where I was (where any of us had been) before coming to our first meeting:
No one to blame, no room for excuses, no negotiations…no rationalizing.
All that’s left is to suck it up, admit defeat, and ask for help.

Every year around the Holidays, his kids would call and tell him to stay away.
John had tried AA some 18 years ago, and it failed because he didn’t take it seriously. Back then he wasn’t interested in doing the right thing, he was about seeing what he could get away with, because he was just a little bit smarter that everyone else.
This was a guy I totally understood:

I don’t think he was prepared for what was going to happen:
He’d always been searching for some elusive, unnameable thing…and of all places, he found it with us. He didn’t even know he was looking for it.

Right away, he jumped in and got busy with service work.
For a change, he approached AA like his life depended on it(which it did).

As the real John emerged, the transformation was stark.
This was an educated, witty gentleman with a sly sense of humor.
If I was hard pressed to describe John with one word, it would be, “fun.”

We went on scores of speaking commitments together, got to know each other’s story, and became very close. Being around him made me a better speaker.
John had a unique way of introducing himself . Instead of the usual, “My name is John, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said, “I’m an alcoholic, John’s my name.” That killed me.

Of all the thousands upon thousands of people I’ve known over the years, that introduction was uniquely his.

He proved to be a human dynamo, and always gave back any way possible.
In time he became a prolific speaker, and a pillar of the community.
John became a beloved and important part of our group.

What’s more, every year at his anniversary, his proud family always showed up, front and center: kids and grand kids.

John passed away several years ago.   He was a walking validation that the precedents we set in early sobriety serve to protect or plague us for the rest of our lives. 

HERE’S THE TAKEAWAY:

The endgame here is to die a sober, dignified death surrounded by family, friends, and our books.

None of that would have happened if he hadn’t shown up.