Web Exclusive: I Think I’ll Just Keep Coming Back

You know, I'm such an alcoholic type. I get more amazed as my sobriety lengthens as to how "garden variety" I really am.

I go to my Step study, my Big Book, my As Bill See's It, my candlelight (I still love the dark) and Promises meetings (it's at the sunny beach, but I wear my dark sunglasses). I listen carefully and pay attention respectfully to others, just like I was taught (well, I mostly do).

I find out many valuable things. Useful things. Those "living/loving sober" solutions come from the voices and real experienced sharing of other recovering alcoholics. Sometimes I even hear my own voice reaching out to tell the truth (honesty, what a concept, I think I can go through with it). Even when I don't hear or notice anything that specifically applies to my life, needs, and problems, I always feel better by attending AA meetings.

I think the meeting mystic is the big secret ingredient/dynamic of AA. It's the jumbo, larger than life, living and breathing human additive called REALITY. Yup, it can't be beat! It cures many ills—that real truth stuff. I can't ever get enough of it!

Sometimes I find myself fearfully trying to nail together formulas, precise ideas, specific reasons why my program (and yours) work. I keep looking for a "safe" place to feel entirely RIGHT and full-proof!

That seeking of a "consistent security" is one more of my alcoholic thinking attempts to create protection when I have a lack of trust (imagine, a lack of trust in my Higher Power who graced me with sobriety in the first place!). Just a little "flash back" to my emotional instability and insanity while drinking I think!

Sometimes I get annoyed when others have the nerve to think, act, and speak "differently" than I think, act, and speak at meetings. Some nerve, them not towing the "AA party line," like

I do, as I understand it! They better go meditate somewhere (take that/them/thar cotton out of them/thar ears!). Don't they know how this thing really works? They most likely are working the steps in some un-Orthodox way (right?). Well, I just sit them down and tell them a few things afterward!

I'm such a character really. Can you imagine I still, at 24-plus years of continuous sobriety, try to stand on some foundation of my making? I want to mud-wrestle with my own insecurity and occasional fears?

It's so silly when I grab hold of the moment and know that, I too, "understand but a little and more will be revealed." I'm just fine, I'm sober, I'm alive (I think) ... then I relax, knowing everything is as it should be.

It's in the "not knowing" that I'm most happy. It's in the "abandoning my self to my God as I understand my God" that I'm emotionally sober, happy and sane. It's when I stop trying to control life and recovery.

When I throw up my hands on the huge roller coaster of living and scream with delight that I'm delighted to be alive and so thankful to be SOBER (not having a death grip on my AA chair). I feel best when I trust the entire process of healing at AA, when I know I'm just fine no matter what, when I know I don't have all the answers or know the only way to get well.

I think I'll keep coming back. Surely I'll get the "hang" of this thing soon. I can never get enough of the things that give me pleasure (oops).