Snow P

OK, so I didn’t get the concept of “singleness of purpose” for the first 25 years of my sobriety.  I don’t know if it took me that long to overcome my terminal uniqueness and self-centeredness or that long to feel safe, but I finally made the break through seven years ago and understood the first tradition,   “Our common welfare should come first.” Until that time I identified myself at thousands of meetings as an “Alcoholic and an Addict.”  I acted as though I joined “Alcoholics and fill-in-the-blank Anonymous.” We are all as different as every blade of grass God made  and really only has one thing in common. If we focus on that one thing, we are all saved. If we don’t, all of us, and the whole program, are doomed.
My generation revolved around alcohol, sex, drugs and rock and roll. A social revolution began in the sixties ignited by marijuana, LSD, speed, barbiturates, and birth control pills and I jumped right in the middle of it all.  Nothing was ever the same after that and it was impossible for this alcoholic to drink without taking every chemical under the sun. The only thing I didn’t touch was a needle, as it seemed too complicated.  I satisfied that urge by photographing my friends who shot up.  I stopped smoking pot about 5 years before I stopped drinking. When I smoked my last joint in San Jose, California I found myself so racked with paranoia I hid under my roommate’s bed all night.  I made a decision at that time to stop smoking pot, just as I had after dropping too much LSD. I knew that stuff was bad for you, especially if your head seemed a little too fragile, as mine had gotten. Cocaine was not in vogue at that time, so there was not much around. Meth-amphetamine was a rare treat, so it was mostly prescription drugs, like Black Beauties. If you could get your hands on some Tuinols you could spend a good night blasted on wine and tuies jamming on guitars with your friends. Some did not wake up the next morning, but that is another story.
At the end of my drinking I spent the night on a barstool getting too drunk, so reaching in my pocket and taking some prescription diet pills so I could drink more. After all, they were not “illegal.”  I could then drink the way I wanted to without falling off the stool. If the effect was too buzzy, I would drink faster, then get too drunk and need more pills, then need more drink. This went on all night and I was going up and down on the barstool like a horse on a carousel. It was only luck when I finally got in the car and drove 30 minutes to my apartment and passed out in my bed. There was no such thing as DUI at the time, and if I got stopped, I could always talk my way out of it. How I never had accidents or fell asleep driving with one eye, I will never know.
My addiction had convinced me that I could land on a perfect combination of booze and drugs that would take me to a chemical Nirvana like the place I had visited as a small child with my first whiskey hot totty. In truth, only the angel’s intervention kept me from overdosing and exploding as I never went to medical school and had no idea how these chemical combinations were going to effect my brain or body. Speed helped me drink the way I wanted to and keep the illusion that I was in control and not a drunken sot.  At the time, I had a doctor who gave me diet pills even though I was paper-thin. He was about to go on vacation and give me three weeks of pills before he left. I guess all those prayers my parents said, all those wishes in my heart, and all my unborn children must have pleaded must have pleaded with the angels for intervention. I finally came to the place where I whispered the alcoholic prayer that always works, “God help me.”  I crawled into an AA meeting a couple of days before I was to go to that doctor’s appointment. I believe it would   have been a fatal appointment. I was too young to be an alcoholic and I did not want to stop drinking for the rest of my life, but the rest of my life was only going to be another few weeks long.
After my first meeting, they told me to go home and throw all the booze out. I still had a successful day job with an executive position and made good money which allowed me to have a fully stocked bar. I could not bear to pour my precious fluid down the drain, so carefully packed a suitcase to pass along to another alcoholic. They told me to get rid of everything. Throwing my pills out was really hard, because I knew the doctor was going on vacation. As I watched all the colored capsules swirling down the toilet bowl, I had only one thought. ” I can always get more.”  I had spent many nights in the bathroom of bars asking other addicts to split their ups with me by opening the capsules and pouring half into some toilet paper and then rolling it up and swallowing it. God knows how much toilet paper I have swallowed!
We had lots of Young People’s Conferences in AA at the time, about every three months somewhere on the east coast. There was no ICYPAA yet. There were only about 50 or so of us in our twenties and we held onto each other for dear life. At the first one, I heard someone say they were an “Alcoholic and an Addict” I thought, well that is definitely me, that’s what I am going to say from now on.  We felt we were the new generation in recovery and these old timers are just going to have to move over and get used to it! When I brought this title to my home group, there were guys who hated hearing that I was calling attention to anything other than alcohol. They were the ones leaving the meetings “which were only for alcohol” and smoking pot. This only reinforced my need to include the focus my drug addiction.  I was terrified I would go back to where I came from, as I knew I could not drink without taking drugs.  Saying I was an “alcoholic and addict” just reinforced my commitment to my sobriety.
When I got to my 25th anniversary, I looked around as a semi mature adult and the light bulb went off.  “Oh, it’s not just all about me???”  The patience, tolerance and grace my Higher Power gives me until I arrive at the next enlightenment is mind-boggling. I think that’s why it says we are “willing to grow along spiritual lines”, because we never stop growing. It took a long time for this alcoholic to feel safe in the bosom of the program, surrounded by principles and traditions that held tight and fast despite any of my unique interpretation. The childhood of my sobriety over, I now identify myself as an alcoholic only. We are all so incredibly different and really only have this singular thing in common. The Twelve Steps was written only for alcoholics, but turns out to be the exit of all self destructive behavior that keeps us from the sunlight of the spirit.   I don’t know if my children or grand children or great grand children if they come to be, will ever need this program, and it’s none of my business. My only business is to make sure there is a program here if anyone anywhere needs it. Let it begin with one alcoholic pledging their daily commitment to singleness of purpose so that we all, as a group,  can come first. It is not a self-ish program, it is a self-less program.  I wonder what I will find out in another 25 years?

If you take a small precious living creature and make a home for them in a bowl of alcohol and drugs, eventually they will not know much about anything. If the creature spends a lifetime in the bowl and a moment of divine intervention plucks them out, it is a lucky start, but there is no reversal to “normal”. There is only learning everything for the very first time.
I was stark raving sober my first year in recovery. Every minute of every day of the first 365 days was a brand new experience. It was like being a newborn. The first birthday, the first mother’s day, the first shower, all the anniversary grief, writing the first letter without a glass of wine in hand was as foreign to me as walking on the moon.
I did not know I could have died from the withdrawal of all the alcohol and drugs I had been consuming, and that had been consuming me. I really didn’t see myself as that bad. The shaking and spasms of withdrawal knocked me to consciousness, and the woman who said she was my sponsor at my first meeting pro-mised me that if I just didn’t pick up one drink for one day,  I would never have to go through this again.  I called her on the phone about 6 times a day. She worked in a very quiet carpet store and had the time to speak to me and soothe me through the next hour until she got off of work and could pick me up for the meeting. I had taken a leave of absence from my job as an executive where I was in over my head. I didn’t want her boring life, but I surely wanted what she had, whatever it was. There was not a chance I could identify it. She reached out from the lifeboat of sobriety, and pulled me up from the bottom of the ocean.  I was so crazed; she was advised to stay away from me so she would not get drunk. Thank God she didn’t listen to that advice.
I asked her if everyone went through this. She smiled and said in her broken English, “Don’t worry about them, you can do it, they all did it already, and don’t think about them. You only have to do it this once, just for today, just for a few more hours.” She was an escapee from East Germany, the perfect hard core kind woman  I needed for my excruciating journey into sobriety.  She knew me much better than I knew myself. She told me that the worst drunk in the world could stay sober for one day. I laughed at that, as she knew I did not see myself as such, but as time went on, that one-day got very long,  and I was shocked to find out  how really bad I was.
I could not find the place called normal. Even just the basics took time. I did not know when or what to eat. She told me there was lots of sugar in alcohol and that I should have some honey or something sweet around all the time, because the cravings I had could simply be for sugar. What I was shaking for was definitely not a Hershey bar, but I was willing to listen to anything. I had a heavy coat, as it was March in New York, and  I kept two rolls of chocolate chip cookies in the large pockets. I went to two meetings a day and to Cook’s Diner after meetings at night. It was a central location for after meeting fellowship from five towns.  If no one was there, you just waited. Someone always showed up, day or night.  I ate a  hot fudge Sunday every night for the first year.  I figured I would rather be fat than dead. Eventually my sponsor talked me into more balanced food groups.
I could not sleep, and was told “Nobody every died from lack of sleep”.
Like so many of the things I heard, all I could think of was  “What the hell does that mean?” It meant that being awake would not hurt me, drinking would kill me, watching TV would not.  I was told that most people have trouble sleeping when they get sober because the whole central nervous system is shot and needs time to figure out how to get to normal. Nothing just happens when you stop drinking.  It’s all a process, not an event.  I looked for the people who stayed up all night after Cook’s closed. Some people were still night birds and available to baby sit newcomers.  I would talk to Pete the Plumber until 3:00 am, until I thought I might be able to try to fall asleep. He would have stayed on the phone with me until the cows came home. He gave me my first Big Book at 90 days, and it simply read, “Thank you, Pete the Plumber”. I had no idea what he was thanking me for. That book is one of my most valuable possessions.
“First things first” Well, how do I know what is first? Who do I ask?  I lived alone and didn’t even know how often you were supposed to change the sheets. All boundaries, all rules, all common sense was completely blurry.
What was the normal meeting protocol? After I had attended meetings for two weeks, a guy came into the meeting jumping out of his skin as much as I was. My sponsor said, “Go shake his hand”. I thought she must be crazy and reminded her that I only had two weeks without a drink.  She said, “You have two weeks more than he does”. After I shook his hand, he asked if he could kiss me. I looked at her to find out what was normal, what was I supposed to do. I was only in my twenties, way to young to be an alcoholic and didn’t even know what an alcoholic was yet, but I didn’t want to take any chances with my ignorance just in case.
She said, “Go ahead, and let him kiss you on the cheek”. She offered me up to the man on the bench, whose name was Lenny, and I complied. Lenny came to meetings every night and between him and I, the tables were nearly levitating they were shaking so hard.  Four weeks later when I got to the meeting and did not see him, I asked some of the guys where he was. They did not want to tell me, but had to. One of them said,  “Lenny hung himself last night”. My grief was instant and profound.  I was still working on one hour at a time. I stayed sober that night for me and for Lenny. Many alcoholics after that bought me at least one night of sobriety. They used to call my home group the “Hari Kari Group”.
The second most valuable thing my sponsor taught me… even when you have nothing, if you are sober, you always have something to give.
I am now sober more than half my life, and although I have the basics down, I still have to ask a sponsor what normal is. If you never had a starting point of normal, how are you supposed to know?
I have had a spiritual awakening as a result of taking the 12 steps and my life revolves around my sobriety and my program. However, it is a daily reprieve, the story is not over yet, and fortunately, I have lots more to learn. I have found for sure that in the moments that you know what normal is and ones you don’t, no matter what stage of sobriety you are at, even if your sponsor is not around, God will meet you anywhere.

Someone brought up Love as the topic at a meeting recently. The response was as varied as all the alcoholics in the room. With our collective self centered experiences, I am sure no population ever had more convoluted ideas of what love is than us. I’ve come to believe Love is when someone else’s well being is more important than your own, be it man, woman or child. That’s it, no strings, caveats, contracts.  So how does one get from the nearest bar to that altruistic place?

I came into the program walled inside a pitiful prison of isolation from people and God. My sponsor spoon fed me and only required baby steps, as I could barely hear her through the pounding and echoing of noises in my head.

The journey began with her telling me to do things that were really peculiar. What in the world did it have to do with drinking I wondered? I was picking up cheap smelly ashtrays, making bad coffee, moving broken chairs, and getting to scary dark church basements early to put on the lights. These small assignments, being half willing to follow directions, began the amazing transformation we are blessed with of turning from self centered greedy takers into a God centered givers.  I did what I was told to do even though I couldn’t understand why.  She knew a lot more about this sober thing than I did and I had conceded to my innermost self that I could not stop drinking on my own.

When she told me that I was going to be the new Treasurer of the group, my knees were knocking. I didn’t yet have 6 months of sobriety and was “underage” for the job. She said she got special permission from the group and they all agreed it was ok. I had no idea what they could possibly see in me, nor what the job meant. I still was not sure it wasn’t a cult.  It was a low bottom group where half the people lived under the bridge, came to the meeting for the coffee and cookies, were barfing in the back row, and people only put a quarter in the basket. I guess she knew I was not going to run away to Hawaii on a drunk and steal the group’s $6.00.  I felt a great sense of pride, honor and responsibility with that job and no one seemed to mind that I wasn’t very good at it.
Being willing to do these simple things led me to being willing to do the 12 steps and get the spiritual awakening they promised at the end. The process took me out of that tower of isolation and got me connected to God and people in a real way, in a working everyday way and in time, after I got loved sober,  I became able to love.

When you get the coin at the end of your first year and it says right on there how you got it, Service. It’s the only action word on there. If you want to get another coin, you have to do more service. This seems to be the only reason I was pulled out of the pit of hell. I know God didn’t save me so I could spend more time getting my nails done. I didn’t even have nails when I came into the program. I didn’t even have one visible nail until  I learned how to pray and ask for help to stop biting them. I was self destructing in every way possible.

Love is being willing change someone’s diapers, whether they are 2 or 90, being willing to be inconvenienced, interrupted, delayed, put out, humbled, and available to others. Being able to do things that people don’t even notice, things that you get no recognition for, no payment for and is taken for granted. Isn’t that what service is? So it turns out service is love and love is service.

It’s very simple, it’s very complicated, it’s just for today. Move a chair, save a life. It may be your own.

Every single person is wearing a pair of look back glasses. Each is a different color with different things glued to the rims. Some are fuzzy and pink, some have chards of broken mirrors on the edges, and others are just blood red. When I sobered up, it took me years to figure out what kind  I had on.  I was buried in such a morass of self pity I couldn’t move, but I did not know what you called how I felt.  My glasses were dark and scary. The kind women of the program held my hand and explained, and the kind men repeated and repeated the solution. Sometimes they said it softly, sometimes they said it in a way that got my attention. Like Big Jim, “You can’t drink and you can’t fly Big Shot, get used to it!” Or like Frank W., “What makes you think you can get something in 11 months that took me 11 years to get?”

My brain was so scrambled I could not read, nor comprehend most of what they were talking about. My sponsor said she did not know if we had a generation gap or if I had brain damage. I was young.  I went to two meetings a day and tried to understand what all these old people were saying. I thought after all my 1960’s misadventures; I had finally wound up in a cult. When they talked about the Big Book, I thought they meant the bible. I was one of the lucky ones as I stayed anyway, even if it was a cult. I had to become willing to consider there was a different way and be willing to give it a try, if only for a very short amount of time. They told me 90 meetings in 90 days, but that was too long.  I could only consider not drinking and listening to these strange people for one day. Some of those days were too long and I had to cut it down telling myself I only had to stay sober for the next 1/2 hour and go to one last meeting.

In time, I had a different pair of glasses on. I don’t even know how or when the transformation happened, but when I looked back with these new glasses, I could see all the angels in my path since the day I was born, loving me, holding me, guiding people to me and intervening in my premature death.  They became the Gratitude glasses and I have to fight my disease every day to keep them on.

The first paragraph of the first step says “we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.” Knowing they were not talking about Rhode Island, I looked up the word in Webster’s dictionary. It read: Providence, God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny. Wow.

If the power had not been working in my life long before I even knew a first step existed I would not have blindly  stumbled into the program.  I would have just been another lost drunken girl banging into walls, unable to see the present or the past with clarity, unable to see my drinking, unable to forgive others for being human, unable to forgive myself for failing, unable to move out of resentment, persecution, and self centered fear and totally unable to participate in my own life. I was emotionally crippled; because I could not see things differently than I had seen them since I was 5 years old.

They say, “Don’t quit until the miracle happens” The miracles had been happening all along. That’s how I got to the shore of recovery  in the first place.   With all the jackpots, unplanned adventures, and close escapes, there is no reason why I should be alive.

The incredible thing is that no matter what shape you are in, no matter what you believe or don’t believe, no matter how broken your glasses and your heart are, God will meet you anywhere, under all conditions.  In fact, He is already there waiting for you at the next meeting.

During the holiday season, many old feelings can pop up and say “Remember me?” They want to drag us into the past, make us see what we don’t have, who took something from us, what we are missing, and whom we are missing. It’s the disease all dressed up in soft inviting morose velvet ready to dance us into a bar. It is the worst time of the year for these hauntings, because so much emotion is connected our family of origin which the holidays are associated with. I believe much of our brokenness began very early in life and a lot of these memories surface at this time of year. We can’t let the past own any part of us. We have 12 steps to clear away the wreckage and this is just a time of the year that is a great opportunity for our disease to try to grab us.

I was in my car on a 12 step call at midnight my first New Year’s Eve sober. Another new girl and I  were too new to know what to do, but for that night we all stayed sober. Just another snapshot I can look at and see that I was the only one from that group who is still sober. I can keep saying I don’t know why I have stayed sober so long, but I keep following the directions and there seems to be a correlation!

A plan to stay sober includes:

#1 Don’t Drink and Go To Meetings

Get to as many meetings as you can, including as many Alkathon meetings as you can, which are 24 hours a day.  Find people newer in sobriety than you are who are experiencing their first holidays and love them through it. We do everything in life by holding hands in this program. Voluntee to be of service at the meetings.
#2. Work on your Steps

Even if you are brand new and on the first step, you can read at least one sentence a day in the Twelve and Twelve book and think about what it means for a bit. We are looking for progress, not perfection. Do something to add to your sobriety bank every day that is related to the 12 Steps.

#3. Stay in the now.

Get your head where your feet are. Make a gratitude list every day. If you have to talk out loud to yourself, do the exercise. Now I am washing the dish on the front, now I am washing the dish on the back, now I am putting this dish on the counter, etc.  Practice, practice, practice.
#4. H.A.L.T.

Don’t get hungry, angry, lonely or tired & Don’t Procrastinate!
Take the time to honor God’s handiwork, which you are, by being good to yourself and eating good food instead of junk food, sleeping 8 hours a night and not making impossible lists that even Superman couldn’t accomplish in one day.

#5 Gifts

If you have a shopping list of gifts to buy, don’t wait until the last minute to do it all, do a little at a time.  If you have no bucks this year, plan on making gift certificates for things you can do for someone, like wash their car, drive them to work for a week, give a foot massage. Be creative, God gave you lots of imagination! Think of the fantasy world we lived in when drinking! Go to www.givecoupons.com.
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#6 Parties

Arrive late with a full stomach, leave early. If possible, take a friend in the program with you. Whenever you put a glass down, never pick it up again and always get a fresh one. Keep sweets in your pocket.

The enemy never sleeps and never takes any time off, but neither does God! Invite Him into your Holiday!

Ask It Basket: Write Snow@sobercelebrations.com.

Step Ten: Building the spiritual basis for recovery each day

The Twelve Step program of recovery from alcoholism and other addictions rests on a notion of spirituality that is not about having the “right” beliefs. Instead, it is about adopting daily practices that help people stay clean and sober.

These daily practices are the subject of Step Ten of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous: “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

Here the word “inventory” means taking stock of our emotional disturbances, especially those that can return us to drinking or other drug use. Step Ten suggests that we watch for these disturbances every day and make an immediate response. Taking a daily inventory is important to all people, but especially to those in recovery.

“After several years of recovery and doing vigorous work in completing Steps One to Nine, I felt I had arrived, that my work was done,” says one long-time practitioner of the Twelve Steps. “I stopped talking regularly to a sponsor. I stopped going to as many meetings. I started going it alone in the fellowship. I was shocked when, after three years of recovery, I used one day. That led to two decades of repeated relapses.”

This woman’s desperation led her to reread “Alcoholics Anonymous” (often called the “Big Book” of AA). While studying the suggestions for Step Ten, she recalls, “I realized something that I had been missing: daily work.”

The Big Book’s suggestion for daily work on this Step is to “watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help”

Some people are put off by the word “God” in the above passage. Remember that AA and other Twelve Step groups do not require members to accept any particular definition of this word. In fact, the term “Higher Power” is often used instead, referring to any source of help that comes from outside ourselves. Your Higher Power might be a friend, a family member, a therapist, or the members of your Twelve Step group.

What’s most important is being willing to release selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear in the very moment that they occur. And this calls for a radical change in how we deal with negative emotions.

A typical response is to blame our feelings on other people. Alcoholics and other addicts are especially skilled at nursing resentments and finding fault. Their logic is essentially this: “I am always right, and my problems will end when everyone else changes their behavior.”

Contrast that with the attitude suggested by Step Ten. “It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us,” notes the author of “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,” another core text for people in recovery. “If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also.”

We give other people control over our lives when we say that they “make us” angry or afraid. The truth is that we usually say or do something that helps to create the conflicts in our lives. Step Ten suggests that we take responsibility for this fact, clean up our role in these matters, and practice forgiveness.

“You might find things coming up on your inventory that you have an emotional hangover about–when an anger starts turning into resentment, or fear becomes my life,” says Mark Sheets, executive director at Hazelden in charge of a wide range of continuing care programs. “That’s when you need to talk it through with someone who understands.”

“My problem was not just learning how to put down my drug of choice,” says the woman in Twelve Step recovery. “My problem was dealing with life. Here in Step Ten I have a plan to cope with life, a plan of daily action that will work each day that I work it.”

“You never have to feel this way again” (I hope she’s right) “Just don’t’ drink for tonight” (I hope I can do it) “Your life will be beyond your wildest dreams” (What in the world is she talking about?)

No one can make it through one single day when life is dishing out stress for supper without the promise of better things to come. We in recovery have to learn how to just hang on by our fingernails without any chemical assistance and wait, and work, for the promises.  We learn that things don’t come to stay, they come to pass.

Everyone gets a turn in the fish barrel. If you are in there with life taking shots at you, I know it’s hard, but be good to yourself.  Keep feeding your joy as much as possible.   Splurge on small pleasures. Buy a really good cup of coffee at least once a week. Go to the nearest beach or skyscraper and have a chat with God, He is there waiting for you.  Get some really good smelling fabric softener for your clothes; go to the library  and read a good science fiction novel for a few hours a week while cozy in bed.  They also have free internet at the library. Go online and watch some funny videos on You Tube or find a joke channel. We need to nurture ourselves through these times and invest in hope in whatever way we can.

When I was a child, my cousin Michael and I went out into the woods running around up in Mechanicsville, NY. We got stuck in a dirt pit of some kind and couldn’t get out. We kept clawing our way up the sides but were too small and would slide back down with the clumps of dirt in our hands.  The pit was not that deep, but the panic made it much worse and we were bereft because no one knew where we were in the forest. Michael got out first and went running. I was stuck in there alone for what seemed like an eternity. I was so tired I just sat down to rest a bit. When I tried to get out of the pit again, it was easy to climb right out. The panic had kept me in there.  What is it our literature says, “Pause when agitated?”  Sometimes the pause needs to be for a really long time, but remember in God’s time the last 100 years were just a blink. He knows what you need and when you should get it. He has the 30,000 foot view and we don’t. Trust your partner in this walk through hard times, He won’t let you down. The more you trust God, the more you will take the pressure off of the people around you. Go to the source for your supply.

I have been praying for prosperity for my little family for about six months. Two weeks ago we moved to a new apartment in Ft. Lauderdale that suited our situation much better. Yesterday I woke up and looked out the window and realized we are surrounded by bank buildings!  God surely has a great sense of humor! We only need to try to keep up with Him!

In our precious program it is always a season of hope.  Right now the whole country has caught the season and it feels so good to sense an elevated spirit in the streets. Be part of the solution, not the problem!

I just came back from a cruise to Alaska where a posse of us carried the message to several small local meetings while on the road. At one meeting a gentleman was lamenting that he could not have a couple of beers in celebration of Memorial Day. After all, it was summer, and it was his American right to have a few beers. He could not make the connection between beer and the fact that he had just gotten out of jail after his sixth DUI. It truly is an astounding disease.  Alcohol twists our minds so much we can’t quite comprehend what it says in the Big Book, “We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones.”
My first summer sober, I remember being on the beach playing scrabble with another newcomer. We wanted to be like the other young girls in bikinis seemingly having fun drinking.  The weather was steaming hot and I remember really wanting a cold beer. It didn’t even matter that I hated beer’s bloating bubbles and bad taste and that I didn’t drink it even when I was active.  I kept telling myself it was just a another cold drink. It was the seduction of it that I had to deal with, and another old idea that I could drink like other people that had to be smashed. I bought a cold soda, played several resentful games of scrabble that day, and just put more time into the getting sober thing.   I was not sure I wanted it, all I knew is that I would get it first and decide later if I wanted it or not.  They told me I could go back to drinking any time I wanted to.
How do you stay sober in summer when it seems like everyone else is having fun drinking?

#1 You must first accept that we are bodily and mentally different from our fellows.

For us to drink is to die or go insane. I had a pretty easy time admitting this, but a hard time accepting it. I had to pray fervently on my knees every day to the God of my sponsors understanding for help accepting it, just for today.

#2  Never go to any event on an empty stomach. We get confused on body signals with cravings and huger.

#3  If possible, take your own car to all events so you can leave if you feel uncomfortable.

#4  When you go to the beach

Take a small cooler of your very own with water, drinks and snacks. Bring some for sharing so you don’t run out if there are moochers around!

#5  When you go to B-B-Qs

Bring your own preferred beverages and some sweets to the host/hostess as a gift.  Leave a small cooler with your favorite beverages and snacks in your car in case you run out.

#6  When you go fishing or to a baseball game
See above.
#7  When you go on vacation, go to www.aa.org and get the list of meetings that are available in the city where you will be going. Use the telephone to call your sponsor at home or the local intergroup to tell them you are in town. Get a temporary sponsor if you are spending lots of time on holiday in one place.

#8  Have fun at fellowship events
Check your local Intergroup for fun events like “Bowling for Big Books” “Movie Night”
“Picnics,”

#9  Plan a Fellowship Vacation
There are plenty of conventions, round ups and conferences to attend. Get some pals and plan to go on a program vacation at one or more of these. Plan on going on a Gratitude Cruise in fellowship.

#10 Create your own events to look forward to

Have a fellowship BBQ, Pool Party, Breakfast Bike Ride, Scrabble Tournament, or Pictionary Party. Get involved on any fellowship committee that is planning something, especially any fundraiser for your local Intergroup.  Become part of the solution of staying sober in the summer for others.

#11  Carry Support
Gratitude Boosters: Write on ten small pieces of paper things you are grateful for and keep them in your pocket.  If you feel bad for a minute, take one out and read it. Also, carry a little Big Book so you can go to the rest room and read until the dark moment passes.

#12  Remember, God will meet you anywhere!

I don’t keep any alcohol in the house because I am a real alcoholic. Although it has been many moons since I had a drink, I know that it is cunning, insidious and powerful. I awoke many mornings in the old days baffled as to how I got yet another hangover when I set out with such determination the night before. I was sure I didn’t want to get looped and yet there, against my will, it happened again.
I don’t keep booze in the house because with this disease, I don’t know when or how it will strike and I prefer to keep constant vigilence. There can be a split moment when it looks at me and before I know it, I could be lifting a glass with poison in it to my lips.
Of course, there are many things I need to do to stay spiritually fit so that alcohol has no relevance in my life, but good housekeeping is also part of a healthy lifestyle. I find when someone brings over wine for a dinner party and there is a leftover bottle, it bothers me the way a mosquito in a room does. I don’t know if it will bite me, but I am surely not taking any chances.

When I first heard the words “Big Book” I thought they were talking about the Bible and that I would have to read it.  I was crazed, shaking, full of despair, and all I could think of was “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into now, a cult?” Although I wanted to be invisible, people kept surrounding me and saying that it was a matter of life and death for someone like me to pick up a drink. This was news and got me listening. I kept going back only for one more meeting in case I heard something else that helped make sense of it all. I heard a lot of God gibberish. I could not speak Chinese or the language of the heart.  It was all unattainable to me, but the love of strangers kept pulling me up from the bottom of the ocean and getting my attention.
My sponsor told me that I needed to believe in something greater than me. I was raised a catholic and had a punishing God who always failed me and whom I always failed.  I had no desire to have a relationship with that God. She told me to pray to the radiator in my apartment. She said just believe that as long as it’s there, I wouldn’t drink. My sponsor was greater than me because she knew how to not drink and I didn’t. She was my higher power and I asked the radiator to keep me sober each day and spoke to her to find out how.  .
Where I got sober, there were three or four young people, so I got to be babied by a lot by really old folks. I was in my twenties and after a few months heard about a young people ‘s conference which I signed up to attend. I was shocked to be in the hotel room paralyzed with fear about meeting anyone my own age. My chest was tight, my hands sweating and I was in physical pain. I couldn’t leave the room. I didn’t know how to talk to anyone without a drink in my hand. That was the first time I saw how incredibly broken I was. I got on my knees and I said “If there is anyone out there, please help me.”
In time, I started praying to “Big Bertha.”  Every day that I asked Big Bertha to keep me sober she kept me sober. It doesn’t matter what you call your Higher Power, as long as you call. It took three years for me to unlearn my catholic upbringing so I could find a God who loved me unconditionally and was always in my corner. This Higher Power has been revealed to me many times in many different ways.  I am positive I am not alone, nor will I ever be.
Like so many things in the program, we take the action first and later we understand why. I would say living this way you need blind faith, but it’s not so blind. While you may not be able to see the miracles in your own life, look around. You can see the miracles in other people’s lives in the meetings every day. Start to pray and you will come to find that God will meet you anywhere.