Faith

My understanding of God has not improved since I joined the fellowship and took the steps. In fact, I probably understand God less today than I did when I was sitting in front of the TV day after day with my bottle of wine and bag of pot. Back then I believed that God created the universe and everything in it, but the rest was up to me. It was "dog eat dog" world where only the successful, the strongest, survive. I didn't need God while I was achieving worldly success. I was the center of my universe.

Then alcoholism began to have its way with me. Slowly it robbed me of interest in my career and enthusiasm for life. It took away my relationships, my health and my self respect. My days became predictable, mechanical and routine. I had absolutely nothing to look forward to except the next drink. Denial kept me from seeing this truth. I was pretty close to hopeless, but didn't know it.

My best thinking was that a new high paying job that would solve all my problems. When I couldn't find the motivation to even write a new resume I went to a therapist to find out why. Thank God she told me the truth -- in her words I didn't have an ounce of humility in my whole body, I had the emotional maturity of a 13 year old, and my mind was so cloudy from my drinking that I could not hope to get any clarity on my life. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! She said she couldn't help me but she knew a treatment center that could.

A few days later I walked into my first AA meeting. Almost immediately the obsession to drink was removed. This fact continues to be the cornerstone of my faith because I could not explain how, after 30 years of relying on alcohol as the solution to my life, I could wake up one day and not think about drinking at all. I didn't know what it was called at the time, but today I know I had received Grace. My higher power did for me what I could not do for myself.

Grace comes to me in exact proportion to my desire for it and my reliance upon it. I demonstrate my desire for grace by trying to the best of my ability to practice the 12 steps in all areas of my life. When I remember to do this my day turns out pretty damn good. This is not blind faith, but a faith born of my experience.

Invisible Lines

I learned early in sobriety that I had crossed a couple of invisible lines as the disease of alcoholism progressed in me. I crossed the first line a few months after my 18th birthday when I went from "liking to drink" to "wanting to drink" I paid wine-os to buy booze for me and I wouldn't go out with a girl unless she liked to drink. A few years later, once I became established in my career, I drank almost every night -- after work cocktails, wines with dinner and at all social events. I rarely drank during business hours, but drinks before and with lunch on weekends, holidays. vacations were part of the "good life" to me.

This stage lasted about 15 years. Although I picked up a couple of drunk driving arrests (out of 100s of times driving drunk), not too many "bad" things happened. My career was successful, so I almost totally ignored these "minor" hiccups. Little did I know that alcoholism had me in it's grip and was subtly taking me down, separating me from everything of real value in life.

In the mid 80's I crossed the next invisible line. I went from "liking to drink" to "needing to drink." Outwardly I still looked good. My job and bank account continued to grow, but somehow it wasn't enough. I felt increasingly frustrated, empty and stressed-out. My drinking ratcheted up.

I wasn't happy but I didn't know what to do except find the next "thing" to fill the hole: new cars, fancy vacations, investments helped for a while but not for long. One of those "things" turned out to be a woman who like to drink too. We married three months after we met. Once the honeymoon ended six months later, all the old feelings returned. Only now they were made worse by the fact that my "solution" didn't work. I blamed her and we split up.

It would be five mostly painful years that I am just now beginning to remember before I walked into my first meeting in 1994 at the age of 47. I didn't know it at the time, but I crossed another invisible line when I walked into that first meeting -- the line that separates "wanting to die" with "wanting to live."

Remembering what it was like and what happened helps to keep it green for me.

The Comfort Zone

Before AA my number one goal in life was getting comfortable and staying comfortable. I sought to create a warm cocoon of a life wherein I was protected from all fear and hardship. A life where I could do what I wanted. I decorated my cocoon with as much stuff as I could afford. As my drinking progressed. I found there wasn't room for other people in my cocoon, so I chased them all away. At the end there was only me, my bottle of wine and my remote control. Had I had enough money, I might have stayed in that dirty easy chair, in that dirty apartment surrounded by half-eaten fast food bags until the end.

Today the comfort zone continues to beckon loudly. It is still the biggest threat to my sobriety. Going to the same meetings every week, talking to the same people, saying the same prayers, and sponsoring every newcomer the same way can be indications that I've lapsed into another comfort zone where I 'm living my life largely from habit.

The book tells me that I must continue to "perfect and enlarge" my spiritual condition through work and self-sacrifice or I will drink again. This means to me that I cannot allow myself get into comfortable habits with my sobriety and think that I am living the AA way of life.

Instead I must be willing to reach out to new people, walk through the discomfort of continuous inventory and introspection, volunteer for a new service commitment, seek to be of service outside of AA in my community and the world at large and constantly work at better balance between body, mind and spirit. This to me is the AA way of life.