Being Convinced
I come from a really long line of moonshine makers, bootleggers, dope-selling, gun running country boys. That didn’t however make me an alcoholic. I grew up in a home where the disease manifested in me from an incredibly early age by obsessive worry, fret, a false sense of being in control, and low self-esteem. I was afraid of everything and everyone and didn’t even know it.
This degree of restlessness, irritability and discontent was not satisfied until I took my very first drink of the spirit alcohol. I remember the feeling of when that smooth taste of Southern Comfort touched my lips, slid down my throat and warmed my whole body. My shoulders relaxed dropping from up around my ears, air filled my belly and I breathed a big sigh of relief for possibly the first time in my entire life. I was sixteen years old. From that very moment, alcohol set off an obsession in my mind that if I was not thinking about drinking, I was thinking about not drinking and that is thinking about drinking. The ingestion of that first sip of alcohol created an obsession and a phenomenon of craving that once I started drinking, I had no control over where it would end which was near death and institutionalized twenty-five years later.
When I look back over the timeline of my drinking career, it includes three failed marriages, domestic violence, emotional and physical abuse, ruined lives of three innocent children, car wrecks, bankruptcy, geographic cures from Arkansas to Alabama to Minnesota to Arizona, job changes, confused employees, lost friends and totally bewildered family members. I tried controlling my drinking and would stop countless times until the spring in my gut twisted so tight that I had to start. I started until I had to stop and stayed stopped until I had to start over and over and over again. Each time feeling even more isolated and alone.
I had no idea I could not by my own devices and will power stay stopped. It wasn’t until I crossed the threshold of Alcoholics Anonymous and met the fine people in the fellowship that I began to understand alcoholism and the cunning, deadly nature of the disease from which I had been suffering my entire life.
Being armed with a head full of knowledge was not enough and one day after being dry for twenty-seven months, I was once again faced with a self-imposed crisis I could no longer postpose or evade. Stopping drinking and going to meetings was not enough. Still trying to run my life based on the old ideas and beliefs that brought me here in the first place, my life was more unmanageable than before. I checked myself into a hotel with a bottle of booze and a bottle of pills to kill myself. When I came to on the following morning, beaten into a state of desperation and reasonableness, I admitted complete defeat. Alcohol won. I was done.
I surrendered which does not mean to fail or lose. It means to lay down the sword, stop fighting and join the winning side. It has not always been easy. I am far from perfect. Trust me when I say I have made a lot of mistakes.
I was asked to set aside my old beliefs, prejudices, and ideas about the way I thought life was supposed to be including my childhood faith. Through the guidance of a sponsor, I grew in acceptance and surrendered to what I know today is a God within me. My relationship with this Higher Power has grown from being the group, to GUS (the guy upstairs), to my own conception of a Creator, Universal Source that is alive, within me and ever present in my life. Each day I choose to turn my thoughts and my actions over to the care of my Higher Power through seeking an ever-deepening belief, trust and reliance on a God that allows me the dignity of my own human experience.
Through the process of working the twelve steps, with a sponsor and God, I discovered patterns of thinking and misdirected behaviors that left me in a constant state of irritability, deep resentment, and anger towards the people nearest and dearest to me. I realized the patterns in my thinking that if only “they” would take their “act right pills” and behave as I think they should my life would be wonderful. I always, always, always ended up hurt, sad, frustrated, disappointed, full of self-pity, self-righteous anger, and contempt. All I wanted was to find “the one” who would be the answer to all my problems. At the time, I was incapable of forming a true partnership with another human being. In order to live peacefully and sanely in cooperation with my fellow travelers on this planet, I now have this beautiful toolbox and a set of keys that unlocked the doorway to a new way of seeing, thinking and being the woman God created me to be.
However, I have found time is not a tool. The master key is that I remain teachable. Willingness means I am prepared and have been made ready to receive this priceless gift of sobriety. The program allows for limitless growth and expansion. My current struggles are indicators of where my childhood fantasies are bumping up against an experience, I am having in the moment that is a mirror for me to see myself more clearly and grow spiritually. The choice is mine as to whether I continue to live in misery, self-pity and depression or learn gracefully through peace and ease. When disturbed, I forgive and make amends. I ask, pause, listen, and receive direction. Even in times of illness and seemingly tragic events that occur in life, by staying close to God and AA, I find gratitude and joy.
How did that happen for someone like me?
The answer is so eloquently written in the Forward to the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. “A.A.’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happy and usefully whole.”
So, with Alcoholics Anonymous, the steps, the traditions, and the fellowship, I found my way to God. One day at a time, I plan to stay. I hope you do, too.