Looking back I can see that I didn’t do what I did
in AA out of a sense of obligation or responsibility or worry about the
new people twenty years from now. I did it because it felt good then and
it continues to feel good today. It is self interest, pure and simple.
It’s icing on the cake if someone else benefits from the time and
attention I give to Alcoholics Anonymous, but I’m doing it for me. My
participation in AA in meetings, in service positions and sponsoring
others gives my life a growing sense of purpose and contentment I never
had before.
When I was new I saw that the happiest folks in
the room were the ones doing service. I wanted what they had, so I did
what they did. I listened when you told me that grateful drunks don’t
drink and that gratitude was a verb not a feeling. If I was grateful for
my sobriety, you said I should do something to show it. I arrived early
and set up the chairs, picked up cigarette butts in the parking lot and
swept out toilets. When I was 90 days sober the 70 men in my home group
elected me doughnut guy. It felt like I had just won the Nobel Prize.
I
moved to China when I was three years sober. I was graced with the
opportunity to help establish AA in Shanghai. We grew from four
alcoholics and three meetings a week in 1997 to more than 120 regular
members and twenty-three meetings a week today. I held the Monday night
meeting in my apartment for years, then five years ago we opened the
Shanghai Alano Club. I served on the board as the Club’s treasurer for
four years. It’s easy to hit bottom in China. Fortunately for me there
has been a steady stream of newcomers to sponsor. I simply pass along
what I had been so freely given. I returned to the states a few months
ago and already I've taken on the secretaries job at one of my local
meetings.
It is none of my business whether or not AA survives
in the future. That's God's business. My job is to suit up and show up
and help where I can. Short of the total destruction of the planet, I
can't imagine AA not surviving in the future. It is a force for good
that is divinely inspired. I suppose it’s possible that science will one
day invent a pill that will allow us all to drink moderately and think
lovingly. Then instead of AA, all us drunks would walk around like
Moonies with goofy-looking smiles plastered on our faces. I wouldn’t
take that pill.