Don't Come Back Here

One of the old-timers at our meeting this morning worked as a bartender for a couple of years in sobriety.  Some of her funny stories reminded me of a memorable share I heard early on in my sobriety.  I was in a clubhouse in Lexington, Kentucky.  This was before no smoking bans became ubiquitous and this was right smack dab in the middle of tobacco country so there was a serious cloud of smoke in that room.

A guy who had been sober forever at that point in the 1980s told of taking a phone call from a guy in a bar.  He went over to help out and his first suggestion was that they get down on their knees - right in the bar - and ask god to take away the obsession to drink.  As they were leaving the bartender grabbed the arm of the old-timer - and in my recollection of the story he was polite about it - and said: "Do me a favor - don't ever come back here."

There was also a guy there today who just started to come to meetings recently - after all of the church closures - so he has yet to attend a live meeting.  I think of how hard that must be, how important that face to face fellowship was to me at the start, still is to me today.  Then I think that if you are ready to get sober you can overcome all obstacles.  Reminds me of the paragraph in The Big Book where the founders point out that the alcoholics who left for service in World War Two suffered even fewer relapses than those who were safe at home.

We can do this.