“Maybe I don’t need this any more,” I said to myself out loud in the parking lot of a Los Angeles church. It was 7:30 on a Monday evening and I had just walked out of a women’s meeting; I felt disconnected, uncomfortable and like I didn’t belong in that room.
Many times I had listened to other alcoholics share about what had eventually become their indefinite leave of absence from AA—the disease whispering such absurdities as: “Meetings are useless with enough sobriety in your pocket.”
Given how active I had been in my program since the very first day, I always assumed that the voice wouldn’t dare to whisper in my ear like a malevolent, fucked up Jiminy Cricket.
“I’m not stupid,” I’d silently brag. “I won’t make the same mistake.” I heavily judged those who had drifted away and taken the gift of sobriety for granted.
I knew that I owed my new life to the program and to the tools I’d learned along the way—like having a sense of accountability within the community or simply telling the truth.
Life has been really good lately. My boyfriend is also a sober alcoholic, we have just moved in together and I even quit smoking. But, even though I only have a little over two years of sobriety, I recently traveled extensively and in that time went to only a handful of meetings. I justified the low attendance with how busy and rich my schedule had suddenly become.
I knew that not calling my sponsor for two weeks in the midst of my step work wasn’t wise yet I discarded the symptoms of alcoholism the same way I usually ignore the early signs that I’m getting a cold. And so I then let myself get even more isolated from AA, allowing the emotional distance to grow wider.
“I’ve got this,” I firmly concluded. “I’m not going to drink and I need a break from sharing experience, strength and hope and listening to people read ‘How It Works.’”
Weeks went by, and I moved to a new neighborhood quite far from my regular meetings so I stopped going altogether. The last one I attended was a 90-minute one and I wanted to leave after barely half an hour.
A few days ago—while driving on the 101 in rush hour—I felt irritable, discontent for no apparent reason and somewhat craving material stuff to give me an added value; a shopping spree sounded like an appealing way to temporarily feel whole again. I shared the feeling with my sponsor—who I had finally resolved to call—and admitted that I had contemplated a drink and a binge.
“You know, Alice, when you feel disconnected in AA, it’s usually because you are,” she said. She didn’t judge, but simply asked when I had last been to a meeting.
“The last one was 10 days ago,” I admitted.
Timing working the way it does, shortly after the conversation, two overwhelming and frightening obstacles appeared on the near horizon. Without stopping to pause, I exploded and went for the default road: in excruciating pain, I switched to self-pity mode and slept for 15 hours. I threatened my relationship with a man who loves me deeply and—driven by fear—behaved childishly and hurt him and myself. I had become the old Alice and discarded as useless all the principles that had been carrying me this far.
Fear soon became rage. All I could think of was that nobody had been calling me to find out how I was doing; people hadn’t asked me why, lately, I hadn’t been in the rooms. Most of the women that I believed were friends and companions at my regular meetings—meetings that had become difficult to reach because of distance and traffic—weren’t acknowledging my absence. I concluded they didn’t care about me.
To be honest, I had not called them either, but why, I asked myself, was I supposed to be the one keeping the relationships alive?
Then I thought: how could I possibly believe in a power greater than myself when my immigration status was at risk and my professional aspirations had not yet yielded the career I deserved? How was I supposed to daily recite the Third Step Prayer when all I wanted to do was scream at a God above that, for all I could see, he had betrayed me one more time?
I seemed to completely have forgotten to what extent I had always been taken care of.
I am currently working on Step Three—probing daily my levels of willingness to open the door on faith. Relying upon God is not exactly my primary instinct.
I have also recently committed to going to 30 meetings in 30 days to reconnect and gain perspective, rise above the present moment and trust the bigger picture.
I don’t know how long it will take and how things will turn out—if, for example, I’ll ever get the professional reward I impatiently and jealously crave. However, as of today, though I’ve been irritable and very depressed, I haven’t taken a drink or gotten high; I haven’t binged and thrown up and I haven’t cut myself. I slept my pain away for two days when I knew picking up the phone was a better solution and did some shopping, but hey, I needed new jeans. And it’s all okay. I’m a huge advocate of progress and not perfection, however slow that progress may sometimes seem.
Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Productions for RKO Radio Pictures (Trailer for the film) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons (resized and cropped)
Sponsored DISCLAIMER: This is a paid advertisement for California Behavioral Health, LLC, a CA licensed substance abuse treatment provider and not a service provided by The Fix. Calls to this number are answered by CBH, free and without obligation to the consumer. No one who answers the call receives a fee based upon the consumer’s choice to enter treatment. For additional info on other treatment providers and options visit www.samhsa.gov.
