Expectations of AA

When I was a few years sober in AA, I received a telephone call early one morning in New York from the West Coast, telling me that my sister had had a brain aneurism and was in a coma. I flew out the next morning and found that she had come out of the coma and her husband and grown children were there in the hospital visiting her. They were very much relieved. However, that night she suffered a setback and went into a coma again. After having their hopes raised, her family went into a state of depression and shock. The tension among them was palpable and some were trying to cope with it by having a few drinks. After a couple of days of living with this tension myself, I decided I better get to an AA meeting as a safeguard against picking up a drink.