Holiday A.A.

 "A smile, a word of encouragement, a word of love, goes winged on its way, simple though it may seem, while the might words of an orator fall on deaf ears.  Use up the odd moments of your day in trying to do some little thing to cheer up another person.  Boredom comes from thinking too much about yourself."

Thanksgiving Day.  Good attendance at the meeting this morning - regulars, regulars who work and can't normally attend, several people from out of town, a handful of newcomers including a dude who has had a drink already today.  The topic was . . . wait for it . . . Gratitude.  The leader talked about The End when he was "out of answers."  I like that phrase.  He also said that he was "broken."  I like that word, too, preferring it to sick.  I'm not a sick alcoholic - I'm a broken one.

I usually try to go to meetings on holidays because there are usually folks there who are traveling and folks who don't have any place to go.  Holidays can be a major source of depression and loneliness.  One Christmas Eve SuperK and I went to our regular Friday night meeting which usually had an attendance of 30 or so.  It ended up being the two of us and a couple of people from out of town who were suffering through family dysfunction.  My sponsor and I volunteered to run a Big Book meeting in a Cincinnati jail every Thursday night.  On Thanksgiving one year one dude showed up - the inmates had free time on that holiday which they chose to spend relaxing and watching TV.  "I guess everyone else is cured today," the lone attendee quipped.  We had a good meeting.  I wondered how the absentees were going to fare when they were released.  They literally wouldn't walk across the room to go to a meeting so what were the chances that they were going to drive somewhere after they were free, battling all the temptations of family and girlfriends and easy access to drugs and booze? 

Not good, I surmised.

Terrible Precedent

"I have learned to be less negative and more positive.  I used to take a negative view of almost everything.  Most people, in my estimation, were bluffing.  There seemed to be very little good in the world, but lots of hypocrisy and sham.  People could not be trusted."

"If we give out hate, we will become hateful.  If we are resentful, we will be resented.  If we do not like people, we will not be liked by people.  Revengefulness is a power poison in our systems.  If you would help even those you dislike, you have to see that there is nothing in you to block the way, to keep God's grace from using you.  Your own pride and selfishness are the greatest blocks."

We're still under a mask mandate for indoor gatherings in SoCal.  The good news is that our CoVid case rates are remarkably low; the bad news is that you should wear a mask inside - if following rules is important to you - and this simple act has taken on overt political tones.  I don't particularly like wearing a mask but I wear one - it's a thoughtful and solicitous act that shows concern for the people around me and I don't find putting one on for an hour an outrageous violation of my right to do whatever the fuck I want whenever I fucking want to do it.   I'm distressed that people who go to meetings where you don't wear masks tend to be conservative and people that follow the mandate tend to be liberal, more or less.  I almost feel that we're splitting into two groups and this is terrible for A.A. - so much of our strength comes from the fact that we are "people who wouldn't ordinarily mix."  Being around people who think differently than me has been very helpful over the years.  There have been plenty of people that I understood held very different political, social, and religious views but we always managed to keep this outside issue crap out of The Rooms.  Unfortunately, the mask is a very visible marker of how you feel about things, like wearing a T-shirt with the name of your favorite politician on it.

I had a guy who I really like ask me to help him go through The Steps.  Sure, love to, thanks for asking, working with newcomers is important to my sobriety.  In the discussion about how and when to do this I asked if he had been vaccinated.  I'm not a kid and I've got my family to consider.  "No, I'm sort of a conspiracy guy," he said.  Well, that was pretty much that.  If he's against vaccinations that's none of my business but I'm not going to sit down, inside, in close contact with someone who could easily test positive for the virus.  I ponder sometimes who is going to the anti-mask meetings and think: "Pffftt, not really the kind of people I like anyway."

Terrible.  Terrible to be in this position.

Outside Issue!

"Who am I to judge other people?  Have I proved by my great success in life that I know all the answers?  Exactly the opposite.  On the basis of my record, am I a fit person to be a judge of other people?  Hardly.  In A.A I have learned not to judge people.  I am so often wrong.  Let the results of what they do judge them.  It's not up to me."

"When I think of all who have gone before me, I realize that I am only one, not very important person.  What happens to me is not so very important after all.  As you look back over your life, it is not too difficult to believe that what you went through was for a purpose, to prepare you for some valuable work in life.  Everything in your life may well have been planned by God to make you of some use in the world."

It distresses me that my daily life has become so full of angry, confrontational, dismissive interactions.  I've found myself being swept up by this negative energy.  I'm finding stuff to criticize way too often.  This is a difficult time for many of us.  A therapist friend of mine said that her caseload exploded as the world has tried to come out of the pandemic so I know that I'm not the only one suffering from the angst of pandemic fatigue.

I've been stepping back a bit from my A.A. life.  I feel this defensiveness even seeping into The Rooms.  I've more or less let my current sponsor drift away and have begun to reconnect with a temporary sponsor who helped me during our transition from Portland to SoCal.  After a lull of a few weeks I called the real sponsor - a good man who I love a lot - and he shared this story: a new woman came to their meeting where the county mandate is roundly ignored and when she pointed this out was shouted down with the facile explanation of "outside issue!  outside issue!"  I'm not sure how obeying the law became an outside issue but there you go.

So much for taking care of the newcomer.

OTHER People !?!

"To do what is best for the other person, to put what is best for him or her above my own desires.  To put God first, the other person second, and myself last."

"We cannot find true happiness by looking for it.  Seeking pleasure does not bring happiness in the long run, only disillusionment.  Do not seek to have this fullness of joy by seeking pleasure.  It cannot be done that way.  Happiness is a by-product of living the right kind of a life.  True happiness comes as a result of living in all respects the way you believe God wants you to live, with regard to yourself and to other people."

These are tough concepts for us super-self-absorbed people to grasp.  What's best for the other person?  How do I think my Higher Power wants me to act?  While I was still drinking my motto when I encountered a long line of cars queued up to go where I wanted to get was: "You can always get in."  I was a real asshole about that.  I never thought that other people were as important as I am - well, unfortunately I still think that too much of the time - and I never considered that this selfishness made me deeply unhappy.  When I get something at someone else's expense it always left me feeling hollow and incomplete but when I'm trying to be of service to others I'm deeply contented.

The Long Run

"There is a time for everything.  We should learn to wait patiently until the right time comes.  Easy does it.  We waste our energies in trying to get things before we are ready to have them, before we have earned the right to receive them.  A great lesson we have to learn is how to wait with patience.  We can believe that all our life is a preparation for something better to come when we have earned the right to it.  We can believe that God has a plan for our lives and that this plan will work out in the fullness of time."

Patient:  Willing to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting.

For this alcoholic "waiting patiently" is an oxymoron - two things that don't go together.  It's like saying "kind cruelty" or "happy disaster."  If I have to wait it will necessarily be with impatience.

"We can bow to God's will in anticipation of the thing happening which will, in the long run, be the best for all concerned.  It may not always seem the best thing at the present time, but we cannot see as far ahead as God can.  The future looks dark no more. I do not even look at it, except when necessary to make plans.  I try to let the future take care of itself.  The future will be made up of todays and todays, stretching out as short as now and as long as eternity."

This idea that I can't know what's best for me in the long run is integral to my recovery.    This is faith that my Higher Power knows what's best for me in the long run.  I don't have to understand it and I don't have to like it but it's going to be in my best interest to accept it.  I know that the long run is the only run I have to be concerned about

Keep It Complicated, Again!

 Here's my latest screed about the Keep It Complicated meeting.  On Sunday The Malcontents lose access to their meeting space because the "church" where they meet holds "services," so some of them come back to the original KIC basement.  I have avoided this particular day, mistrusting my ability to place principles before personalities.  SuperK and I took a short trip last week so I didn't attend my regular meetings.  I decided to go on Sunday.  I was vaguely uneasy about this.  I vaguely sensed I wasn't being any too smart.  It wasn't quite as bad as putting whiskey in my milk but there was a good chance my attitude would go sideways.

When I got up and started to make a coffee I saw the machine was out of beans AND the container that holds the spent grounds was full.  This is no big deal but it seemed sort of portentous.  Because SuperK isn't up yet I try to be as quiet as I can and all of this manipulation can be noisy.  I then noticed that the tray underneath the machine that catches any overspill was full and when I tried to slide it out it splashed spent coffee grounds and dirty water all over the counter and the floor and me and this caused me to panic and speed up at which point I knocked my coffee cup - full of coffee - into the sink, breaking the cup in the process.

There's a story about a guy who has a minor problem with his cat first thing in the morning as he's trying to get out of the house and go to work.  The problem pissed him off but he ignored it and this caused a series of minor but increasingly disastrous consequences to happen.  "I should have kicked the cat," he muses later.  That's how I was feeling as I finally made my coffee - I should have just gotten back into bed, fully clothed, and pulled the cover over my head.

I showed up at the meeting a little late.  I'm wary of the malcontents and wanted to avoid having to socialize with them.  There they all were - lined up in a little group against the wall, very few of them wearing masks, a couple actually sitting under one of the brightly-colored signs the church put up here and there saying: "Notice - Mask mandate in effect for anyone using our room."  I'm not sure if the malcontents were making an overt political statement or they just don't give a shit if they're disrespecting others.

Yes, yes, I know: Why am I still attending this meeting that gives me so much trouble?

I don't know what disturbs me the most: that they're ignoring a county wide mandate that requires all people to wear masks while they're inside any public space or that they're flaunting the church requirement that masks be worn or that they don't care that all of the regular attendees were wearing masks and that many of them have chosen this meeting specifically because masks are required.  Maybe I'm not working hard enough on Principles Before Personalities.  Maybe politics and social policy is intruding on our Traditions and infecting The Rooms.  Maybe these folks are acting like assholes.  Probably a little of everything.  I know the solution is within no matter the cause of the irritation.

I'm not enjoying my Alcoholics Anonymous experience at the moment.  In my particular town there has indeed been a resorting of people to different meetings and there have been a lot of folks who have disappeared from the places where I used to see them.

Willie had a sponsor from Cleveland who jabbed him in the chest one time when Willie was equivocating on A.A. protocol: "Willie, you've been around long enough to know what good A.A. is and you need to stand up and say something."  His sponsor didn't say anything about helping him up if he gets punched in the nose.

My A.A. experience right now is not a good one.  I certainly have gone through periods of time where the recovery rooms I frequent have annoyed me but I've never found myself in this spot.  There's a guy I know who takes some time off A.A. every now and then.  I didn't think this was a very good idea, even taking into account his 40+ years of sobriety, so I asked him about it once.  He said that sometimes the routine of attending meetings prevents him from taking up other tasks and activities that might be helpful - it becomes a mindless routine.  Willie and I talked about the political creep into A.A. - he's seeing it in the upper Midwest, too.  We wonder if picking up some other recovery activity might be a helpful substitution - a yoga class or a more formal period of meditation.

Never thought I'd see the day. 

The Alcohol Questionnaire

 "The future looks dark no more.  I do not even look at it, except when necessary to make plans.  I try to let the future take care of itself.  The future will be made up of todays and todays, stretching out as short as now and as long as eternity."

The guy who led the meeting talked about taking one of those tests with 15 or 20 questions that help you decide if you have a drinking problem or not.  Like all alcoholics he lied repeatedly but still qualified as a problem drinker.  Why are we all amazed when this happens?  I think I answered in the affirmative on every question except for the one about car accidents and DUIs which - amazingly enough - I avoided.  People who don't have a drinking problem don't wonder if they have a drinking problem.  They don't think about drinking any more than they think about pasta.

Help is what someone needs and not what I want to give them.  The leader talked about the intense discomfort he felt when he was in a social situation in early sobriety.  We can all identify with that feeling that we didn't quite belong, that we didn't quite get it, that we were in the bathroom when the instruction manuals for life were being passed out.  Most of us that stay sober learn to soldier through this discomfort, often by doing things with other alcoholics so we can fuck up and not pay serious consequences.  He was playing cards at his sponsor's house one evening and excused himself for a minute to get something to drink.  When he came back his sponsor said: "Next time maybe ask if you can get anyone else anything."  He didn't start the conversation by saying: "Hey, you selfish asshole . . . "  This guy wasn't doing anything deliberately wrong - he had just spent his entire life thinking about himself.  It just never occurred to him to consider the feelings of anyone else.