End of My Rope

You wouldn't guess by looking at me—a quiet sort of person—that my story would be dramatic. My 11 years of sobriety weren't gained by going to meetings after work or weekends. I could've had 33 years in the program, had I stuck with it when I first started going to meetings. In 1976, I started going to AA and I rang up four years of sobriety. Life improved and I quit attending meetings. I had the attitude that AA was like medicine. When you get better, you don't need it any more. When I began drinking again, it didn't take long before I was throwing up early just so I could drink all night. I was also using a lot of speed. I was single, in my twenties, a hardcore biker, and no one could tell me what to do.

A Gypsy Life

Something obviously needed to be done in my 18th month of recovery. I prayed for God to take my will and my life, as he had done early in my sobriety, but my alcoholism was creeping back into my life, demanding to reassert its central place. As my physical and fiscal health returned, I felt my initial elation and freedom slowly turning to a vague dissatisfaction, a mounting sense of "not enough." enough what? I asked myself, stymied.

Story of the Day: Comparisons

AROUND THE TABLES, we often hear the adage Don't compare. Usually, it is said to newcomers, who often compare themselves favorably with a speaker to keep from facing their own alcoholism. When I heard Don't compare, I took the position that it was valid for me to compare the present me with the old, pre-AA me, in order to measure the change. Read more >

Step Seven:

PEOPLE often think that the Eleventh Step is the only one which suggests prayer; but this isn't so. The Seventh Step is a prayer Step. Although prayer is not mentioned as such in the Step, the word prayer is just a way of describing any attempt by man to converse with a Higher Power. One of the oldest forms of prayer is that in which he who prays asks something of God. Read more >

Tradition Seven

ON MY FIRST approach to AA, the movement was just ten years old. The Traditions had not yet been written, but already AA had effectively declared itself independent of all handouts, thank you. It was managing, somehow, to pay its own way, and I was very glad to learn that. Read more >