into the consciousness of every man that he can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition is that he trust in God and clean house.” The second statement is from the pamphlet “A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous.” “I am personally convinced that the basic search of every human being, from the cradle to the grave, is to find at least one other human being before whom he can stand completely naked, stripped of all pretense or defense, and trust that person not to hurt him, because that other person has stripped himself naked, too. This lifelong search can begin and end with the first AA encounter.” These, and many other statements in AA literature, gave me the hope that AA might work for me.
After I had about six weeks of sobriety, I talked with a man who had many years of sobriety. He told me that if there were anything standing between me and my God, I must get rid of it or risk drinking again. He also said that a man could not act contrary to his particular nature and remain comfortable. Each of us interprets such things differently, depending upon his or her emotional and spiritual status at the time, and I interpreted them as meaning that I must be stark raving heterosexual, and happy with it! I threw myself wholeheartedly into the AA program, my marriage, and my work, expecting that the “cure” would happen at any moment. I became so busy with work, meetings, inventories, housing and furnishings for my family, having children and raising them that I had no time to discover me. Finally, after about three years of frenzied sobriety, I slowed down enough to get in contact with me—with my sadness and emptiness caused by trying to be someone other than who I was. (Really, trying to be who I thought you wanted me to be.)
Because of the pain involved in my self-discovery, I was forced to talk in AA meetings about who I really was, and slowly, over several years, I have discovered a beautiful human being inside this skin. I had to let go of the notion that everyone must like me or approve of my lifestyle. I also needed to realize that when speaking in AA meetings, I must be honest but sensitive to the feelings of others. I had to learn to use the telephone for “one-on-one” conversations, but when my sobriety was at stake, I could not be deterred from honest and open sharing in meetings. (I defend the right of any member of AA to talk in an AA meeting about anything he feels is necessary to keep him from taking a drink.)
Old-timers in AA repeatedly told me that when I became comfortable with me, others would become comfortable with me as well. I find that to be true today. Much has transpired over the last seven and one-half years of my sobriety and abstinence from mind-altering chemicals. I have a very close relationship with my children and my ex-wife, closer than was ever possible when we lived together. We see one another often in a spirit of openness and honesty. I do not hide my homosexuality from my children. Likewise, they have expressed their concerns to me and we deal with our feelings completely “up front.”
My relationships in the gay community are wholesome, loving, dignified. I have had the opportunity to help several gay friends become involved in AA. They are now beginning the journey which I began. They would not have had the identification necessary to begin this journey had someone not been willing to take a risk and be honest and open in an AA meeting.
Finally, I have found in my own way that AA is my solution for sober living. The Steps work in my life for all sorts of problems. In meetings I identify with nearly every person who shares—we are all alcoholics and have similar feelings even though the details of our experience may differ. I listen now to the heart, from the heart. I have learned to trust that God, as I understand him, loves me just as he made me. I walk in life everywhere—at home, at work, in and out of AA—with my head up high, grateful for the inner peace which God has given me through AA.
M. B.
Cardiff by the Sea, California
Sunlight and Air
MAY 1999
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous young in years but sick of soul and full of secrets. Now, in my middle age, I no longer harbor secrets, and my soul is in better health than ever. It’s freer, more generous, and able as it never was in my drinking days to receive love and joy and wonder as well as the darker emotions. While all of AA’s twelve suggested Steps are crucial to my ongoing recovery, the Fifth Step more than any other has helped me get free of those soul-crippling secrets.
I attended my first AA meetings with my then-partner. She was older than I, and her alcoholism was more visible. When our physician prescribed AA for her, I went along because, except for our jobs and her occasional disappearing acts during binges, we did everything as a unit. I realize now that I didn’t trust her to go on her own. I didn’t trust AA either, and knew next to nothing about it. How could those people understand her the way I did?
The first meeting we stumbled (!) into was open to all. I hastened to explain to the group members who greeted us that my partner was the one with the problem; I was just there for moral support. They told me about Al-Anon but said I was welcome at open AA meetings, too. Much as I did need Al-Anon, it was open AA meetings that saved my life.
My partner and I went together to several open meetings a week. We still drank, though, and I still flew into rages and battered her insensible during our drunken arguments, sometimes so badly that we ended the night in a hospital emergency room. These outbursts, I told myself, were caused by her drunkenness. Who wouldn’t lose patience with such obnoxious behavior?
At AA meetings, I listened only for what might get my partner sober, but after hearing scores of alcoholics tell their stories, I couldn’t help but look at my own drinking. I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic—after all, I wasn’t as bad off as her—but it did come through to me that normal social drinking did not result in blackouts or fits of violence or the need to drive with one eye closed to keep from seeing two sets of lines in the middle of the road.
At that time, I was a newspaper reporter. My beat was a rural county that voted with paper ballots, and on election nights all the reporters who covered the county brought food and soft drinks to the county clerk’s office to share while we waited out the vote tally and then wrote our stories. I had my last drink on an election night when I had decided that my contribution would be a case of beer. No one else ever brought alcohol, nor had anyone suggested that I bring it. Every time I helped myself to one of the beers, I urged others to join me, but they all declined, saying they needed their wits about them while there was work to be done. I defiantly drank several more beers, somehow wrote my stories, and drove myself home without incident—hardly high drama compared to the drunken domestic battles. The next day nevertheless found me face-to-face with the realization that while my colleagues had focused on their work, I had been obsessed with the beer. AA had ruined my drinking! I still couldn’t admit that I was an alcoholic, but I doubt now that I could have stopped drinking or stayed stopped without the support I got secretly from attending AA meetings as a spectator.
My partner and I eventually separated, and I no longer had a reason to attend AA meetings—or so I thought. I moved to the city, where I was heartsick and achingly lonely—although I kept that a secret even from myself—but also painfully self-conscious and fearful of meeting people. A few drinks would make all this easier, I thought, and maybe I could drink moderately now that I knew the danger signs. Fortunately, my closest friend was a sober alcoholic I had met at one of those open meetings. Before I resumed drinking, she gently guided me back to AA, suggesting that if I listened for myself this time I just might discover that I belonged here. She told me that the only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking, and that I was entitled to the help that AA provides for living without alcohol.
Almost immediately, I accepted the First Step and declared myself an alcoholic, which brought a great sense of relief. I set about working the rest of the Steps, too, but I secretly edited them because I didn’t believe in God. People who did, I thought, were just too weak-minded to face hard reality. I would use AA to restore myself to sanity. I would turn my life over to the care of … well, AA
