in A.A. much emphasis is placed on learning how to tolerate other people’s behavior. However offensive or distasteful it may seem to us, it is certainly not worth drinking about. Our own recovery is too important. Alcoholism can and does kill, we recall.
We have learned it pays to make a very special effort to try to understand other people, especially anyone who rubs us the wrong way. For our recovery, it is more important to understand than to be understood. This is not very difficult if we bear in mind that the other A.A. members, too, are trying to understand, just as we are.
For that matter, we’ll meet some people in A.A. or elsewhere who won’t be exactly crazy about us, either. So all of us try to respect the rights of others to act as they choose (or must). We can then expect them to give us the same courtesy. In A.A., they generally do.
Usually, people who like each other—in a neighborhood, a company, a club, or A.A.—gravitate toward each other. When we spend time with people we like, we are less annoyed by those we don’t particularly care for.
As time goes on, we find we are not afraid simply to walk away from people who irritate us, instead of meekly letting them get under our skin, or instead of trying to straighten them out just so they will suit us better.
None of us can remember anyone’s forcing us to drink alcohol. No one ever tied us down and poured booze down our throats. Just as no one physically compelled us to drink, now we try to make sure no one will mentally “drive us to drink,” either.
It is very easy to use other people’s actions as an alibi for drinking. We used to be experts at it. But in sobriety, we have learned a new technique: We never let ourselves get so resentful toward someone else that we allow that person to control our lives—especially to the extent of causing us to drink. We have found we have no desire to let any other person run, or ruin, our lives.
An ancient sage said that none of us should criticize another until we have walked a mile in the other person’s boots. This wise advice can give us greater compassion for our fellow human beings. And putting it into practice makes us feel much better than being hung-over.
“Let Live”—yes. But some of us find just as much value in the first part of the slogan: “Live”!
When we have worked out ways to enjoy our own living fully, then we are content to let other people live any way they want. If our own lives are interesting and productive, we really have no impulse or desire to find fault with others or worry about the way they act.
Can you think right this minute of someone who really bothers you?
If you can, try something. Postpone thinking about him or her and whatever it is about the person that riles you. You can boil inside about it later if you want to. But for right now, why not put it off while you read the next paragraph?
Live! Be concerned with your own living. In our opinion, staying sober opens up the way to life and happiness. It is worth sacrificing many a grudge or argument. . . . Okay, so you didn’t manage to keep your mind completely off that other person. Let’s see whether the suggestion coming next will help.
6 Getting active
It is very hard just to sit still trying not to do a certain thing, or not even to think about it. It’s much easier to get active and do something else—other than the act we’re trying to avoid.
So it is with drinking. Simply trying to avoid a drink (or not think of one), all by itself, doesn’t seem to be enough. The more we think about the drink we’re trying to keep away from, the more it occupies our mind, of course. And that’s no good. It’s better to get busy with something, almost anything, that will use our mind and channel our energy toward health.
Thousands of us wondered what we would do, once we stopped drinking, with all that time on our hands. Sure enough, when we did stop, all those hours we had once spent planning, getting our drinks, drinking, and recovering from its immediate effects, suddenly turned into big, empty holes of time that had to be filled somehow.
Most of us had jobs to do. But even so, there were some pretty long, vacant stretches of minutes and hours staring at us. We needed new habits of activity to fill those open spaces and utilize the nervous energy previously absorbed by our preoccupation, or our obsession, with drinking.
Anyone who has ever tried to break a habit knows that substituting a new and different activity is easier than just stopping the old activity and putting nothing in its place.
Recovered alcoholics often say, “Just stopping drinking is not enough.” Just not drinking is a negative, sterile thing. That is clearly demonstrated by our experience. To stay stopped, we’ve found we need to put in place of the drinking a positive program of action. We’ve had to learn how to live sober.
Fear may have originally pushed some of us toward looking into the possibility that we might have a drinking problem. And over a short period, fear alone may help some of us stay away from a drink. But a fearful state is not a very happy or relaxed one to maintain for very long. So we try to develop a healthy respect for the power of alcohol, instead of a fear of it, just as people have a healthy respect for cyanide, iodine, or any other poison. Without going around in constant fear of those potions, most people respect what they can do to the body, and have enough sense not to imbibe them. We in A.A. now have the same knowledge of, and regard for, alcohol. But, of course, it is based on firsthand experience, not on seeing a skull and crossbones on a label.
We can’t rely on fear to get us through those empty hours without a drink, so what can we do?
We have found many kinds of activity useful and profitable, some more than others. Here are two kinds, in the order of their effectiveness as we experienced it.
A. Activity in and around A.A.
When experienced A.A. members say that they found “getting active” helpful in their recovery from alcoholism, they usually mean getting active in and around A.A.
If you want to, you can do that even before you decide whether or not you want to become an A.A. member. You don’t need anyone’s permission or invitation.
In fact, before you make any decision about a drinking problem, it might be a good idea to spend some time around A.A. Don’t worry—just sitting at, and observing, A.A. meetings does not make you an alcoholic or an A.A. member, any more than sitting in a hen house makes you a hen. You can try a sort of “dry run” or “dress rehearsal” of A.A. first, then decide about “joining.”
The activities we often use at first in A.A. may seem fairly unimportant, but the results prove them valuable. We might call these things “ice breakers,” because they make it easier to feel comfortable around people we do not know.
As most A.A. meetings end, you’ll generally notice that some of those present start putting away the folding chairs, or emptying ashtrays, or carrying empty tea and coffee cups to the kitchen.
Join in. You may be surprised at the effect on yourself of such seemingly little chores. You can help wash out the cups and coffeepot, put away the literature, and sweep the floor.
Helping out with these easy little physical tasks does not mean you become the group’s janitor or custodian. Nothing of the sort. From years of doing it and seeing fellow members do it, we know that practically every person happily recovered in A.A. has taken his or her turn at the K.P. or refreshment-and-cleanup detail. The results we have felt from doing these tasks are concrete, beneficial, and usually surprising.
In
