Miracle of Healing

They say recovery in AA is like playing a country and western record backwards, after a little while you get your girl back and your car back and your happiness back etc. It was like that for me. I was a couple of Months sober and had started to get my life back. So there I was in my suit at a noon time meeting sharing that I had had a high bottom, etc. I was unaware that my sponsor had slipped in the room.

After the meeting he came up to me and said, "so you were a high bottom guy? Funny, I seem to recall that you are just now going through a bankruptcy, that you've been divorced, that you are deep in debt, that didn't have a job for two years and that you basically spent the last few months of your drinking inside your apartment. Doesn't sound so high bottom to me." 

The truth is that before AA I was hopeless and didn't know it. It's taken me a while to realize how far down the scale I went. Even through I still had an apartment and a car and enough money to pay for those things for a couple more months, I was in deep doo doo. I was 47 years old, unemployed and living in a dirty apartment on borrowed money which was quickly running out. My mind told me that as soon as I found another big pay job everything would be fine. But my alcoholism had taken away my will to work and to make something of my life. I had no energy for anything other than getting high and watching lame daytime TV.

Then I got a moment of grace that led me to a therapist who told me the truth. She said she couldn’t help me but maybe the treatment center up the street could. I took her suggestion and and three  days later I enrolled in a treatment program and three days after that I walked into my first AA meeting. Suddenly I was filled with hope that if I did what you did, I could get what you had. I floated on a pink cloud. 

I loved everything about AA. I went to 400 meetings in my first year and did everything else that was suggested. By putting myself in the center of AA I make space for my higher power in the center of my life. Since then there have been non-stop miracles. It's almost hard to believe that I could get to where I am from where I was.

My Eskimo

I identify with the story about the guy stranded on an iceberg floating out to sea.  As he  was praying for God to save him, an Eskimo came by in a kayak and suggested if he jumped in, he would row him to safety. No thanks, he said. God would save him. The guy dies and when he gets to heaven, he asks God why he didn't save him. God replied that he sent him an Eskimo in a kayak, but he wasn't ready.

My Eskimo was a massage therapist named Bill S. Thirty plus years ago, Bill came to my home weekly to iron out the inks in my super stressed-out body. Bill showed up at 5:30 PM just as I arrived home from the office. Sometimes he had to wait a few minutes while I gulped down a couple of quick scotches - to get relaxed enough to be massaged.

Bill had something I wanted. I didn't know what it was at the time, but today I know he had Spirit working in his life. He was friendly, kind and seemed stress free. As he worked on me, he told me his story. Just seven years earlier he had been homeless on the streets in Venice Beach, CA. Now he was married to a woman who held a big corporate job. Bill had a nice car and they owned a home. “What did you do to change?” I asked. “I sobered up in AA,” he said. And went on to talk about his experiences. I acted interested, but I really wasn't. The next week he brought me a Big Book. I skimmed the first 164 pages and a few of the stories in the back, then promptly gave it to a friend who really needed it. 

Fast forward a few months. The big-paying job was gone and my marriage was breaking up.  I decided to quit drinking as an experiment. The next time Bill came over, I told him I wasn’t drinking. “Do you want to go to a meeting?” He asked.  I reluctantly went along to prove to myself AA was not for me. It was a large speaker meeting  and I was right. Not for me.

I struggled for the next six years and floated further and further out to sea. Finally Grace let me see how pathetic my life had become. I was forty seven years old, unemployed again and living on borrowed money. I had no friends except the lower companions I met at the bar every afternoon for "happy" hour. The pain continued to ratchet up until I finally became willing to be changed and thanks to my Eskimo, Bill, I knew exactly where to go.

My Greatest Blessing

I have come to realize that, next to life itself, alcoholism is my greatest blessing. There is absolutely no other way I could have traveled from where I was  to where I am today without having a disease that was going to kill me without spiritual treatment. My alcoholism turned out to be my e-ticket out of bondage of self into a life of beauty and meaning.

I don't know who or what God is, but I do know that I was changed in a profound way at the very beginning of my journey in recovery and that I've continued to be changed -- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly-- throughout my time in Alcoholics Anonymous. I know from the core of my being my spiritual growth is nothing I did and everything God did.

The first blessing I received happened before my first meeting, before I got a sponsor and before I worked any steps. The compulsion to drink was completely lifted out of me. I haven't seriously thought about a drink for almost 28 years now. Perhaps the next most important blessings were the courage to ask for help and the willingness to do what was suggested. Meetings, steps, and service became my Life plan and they remain so today.

The blessings never stopped. Today I spend very little time in fear, anger, or guilt. Like our book says, I enjoy a new freedom and a new happiness. I am no longer baffled when a painful situation arises. Today when I lose my peace I know it is because I carry a remnant of alcoholic thinking. I am trying to impose my self-centered version of reality on life instead of accepting Life exactly as it is. Today, more than ever, I am blessed to realize that life is perfect just the way it is and that every one of my life experiences was intended to help me grow and change. So why would I have any regrets?

I've experienced great joy in my journey to wholeness. Blessed beyond words to have had so many wonderful, sober traveling companions, I owe my very life to all of those I've met along the way, especially those who have reached out their hand to me and those who invited me into their lives as a friend and sponsor. 

I am so grateful to be alcoholic and to have been graced with all the blessings I experienced in Alcoholics Anonymous.