Allowing the Process to Work

When I first came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I couldn't identify with much of what I heard at meetings. Everyone was very loving and welcoming, but this was in the early seventies, and for one thing there were very few women in the Fellowship. Mostly though, I simply wasn't ready to get sober; I didn't want to do what was suggested. I had a hundred reasons why I was different from all those sick alcoholics. As my husband noted, and I agreed, after attending my first AA meeting, "They all seemed like very nice, sincere people," but I wasn't like them in any way, shape, or form. I was an upstanding member of my community, active in my church, and very involved with raising our two small children, ages two and six at that time. Consequently, although I thought they had a nice little group (sick as they were), I definitely didn't belong there. Of course, I didn't know where I did belong, but that was a feeling I'd had all my life. I did know, deep down, that there was no way I could stay sober, even one day, and that's what it all boiled down to--I couldn't imagine life for even a day without my best friend, booze.