 |
Do you think
you're different?
This is A.A. General Service
Conference-approved literature
Copyright ฉ 1976 by A.A. World Services, Inc.
All Right Reserved |
Many
of us thought
we were special
"A.A. won't work for me. I'm too far
gone." "It's nice for those people, but I'm president of the
P.T.A." I'm too old. Too young. Not religious enough. I'm gay. Or
Jewish. A professional person. A member of the clergy. Too smart. Or
too uneducated.
At this moment, people all over the world are
thinking that A.A. probably won't work in their case for one or
several of these reasons. Perhaps you are one of these people.
We in A.A. believe alcoholism is a disease that is
no respecter of age, sex, creed, race, wealth, occupation, or
education. It strikes at random. Our experience seems to show that anyone
can be an alcoholic. And, beyond question, anyone who wants to
stop drinking is welcome in A.A.
Our co-founder Bill W., in telling about A.A.'s
earliest days, wrote:
"In the beginning, it was four whole years
before A.A. brought permanent sobriety to even one alcoholic woman.
Like the `high bottoms,' the women said they were different; A.A.
couldn't be for them. But as the communication was perfected, mostly
by the women themselves, the picture changed.
"This process of identification and
transmission has gone on and on. The skid-rower said he was different.
Even more loudly, the socialite (or Park Avenue stumblebum) said the
same. So did the artists and the professional people, the rich, the
poor, the religious, the agnostic, the Indians and the Eskimos, the
veterans and the prisoners.
"But nowadays all of these, and legions more,
soberly talk about how very much alike all of us alcoholics are
when we admit that the chips are finally down.
"In the stories that follow, you may encounter
men and women whose race, age, sexual preference, or any number of
other conditions are similar to yours. They came to A.A. and found
that Alcoholics Anonymous worked just as well for them as it had for
hundreds of thousands of others of us who thought we were
"different." We found help, and we found friends with whom
we could identify and share our experiences.
We are no longer alone.
My name is Gloria,
and I'm an alcoholic (black)
A while ago, I was supposed to meet an A.A. friend
at a big meeting. When she came in, she walked right through the crowd
to where I was standing and talking. The room was full, and I was
really surprised she saw me so quickly. When I asked her, she just
said she spotted me right away, and let it go at that.
It wasn't until the middle of the meeting, about an
hour later, that it suddenly hit me the reason she saw me right away
was that I was one of the only three black people in that whole
crowded room. Me with my black skin and my big Afro, wondering how she
could spot me so fast!
That may not seem like much of a story to you, but
to me it's absolutely fantastic. You see, when I first went into A.A.,
about 14 years ago, I was in a group of mostly white people, and I
really felt different all the time. I was okay as long as we were
talking about staying sober, but when they started in about where they
had their hair done or something, I'd really feel lost. I remember one
meeting where the first lady said she'd gone to Europe and sold some
stocks in a blackout, and the second one said she'd had a terrible day
because she misplaced her tickets to the symphony. I wondered if I was
in the
right place.
I had my first drink when I was 15 years old. A man
said he'd give me two dollars to fix his breakfast for him, and I did.
Then he gave me some bourbon. It really made me feel good. For the
first time, I really felt all right Until then, I'd always felt
all wrong out of whack with everybody around me. Well, I
found out pretty soon that the man wanted more than breakfast. I got
out of that okay, but with a brand-new taste that was to stay with me
for years.
I'd been pretty unhappy at home. It was a quiet
home. Nobody drank much, and my parents were very religious. I had a
sister everybody said was prettier, and I remember I used to get sick
on purpose just so my mother would pay attention to me. But now I had
booze, and when I was drinking, I felt warm and pretty and loved
at least for a while.
I kept right at it, even though I got sick almost
every time I drank. It wasn't long before I decided I really needed
alcohol to function. In the office, I was sure booze helped me type
faster. I'd sneak out for old-fashioneds on my coffee break, and soon
switched to half-pints. Every weekend was a big drunk, and by Sunday
night I'd always be lying in state, passed out cold.
Finally, one day I had had it. I called a white
woman who worked in my office. She had once shown me an A.A. pamphlet
after she found me throwing up in the john. I had hated her ever
since, but finally this day came when I was ready to learn something
about not drinking.
She told me where her group meeting was and said
she'd meet me there if I wanted to go. I said I would, but when I
found out it was in a church basement, I almost backed out. I hadn't
been in a church in a long time, and I thought anything that met in a
church basement must be pretty grubby. But I was really sick. I had
been on clear broth for three days and finally got up to chicken soup
by the day of the meeting. So I went. Where else was I to go?
Like I said, I took to A.A. right away, but for a
while I felt different. Most of that group was white, and yet I didn't
feel all that great in another group I went to that was mostly black.
I think it went back to feeling all wrong without booze, as I
mentioned earlier. I just didn't feel comfortable with myself. I
never had, and maybe that's why I took to booze so fast.
But finally I got a sponsor, and things have gotten
better for me ever since. I think we A.A.s all carry umbrellas that we
put up over each other when the rain seems to be falling a little
harder on our neighbor, and it really doesn't matter what color we
are.
My best friend today is a white woman in A.A. who
came from a rich family. She had a governess, and her mother was
always off playing cards or something. Mine was always off working or
at her church, but my friend and I both had exactly the same feeling
of being unloved. Maybe she had a thousand toys and I had only one
doll, but it all comes back to the same feeling. Today, she sees and
feels things exactly as I do. She says what I'm thinking, and vice
versa. And both of us are more comfortable with each other than with
our families.
Today, I go to A.A. groups. I hardly notice whether
the people there are mostly black, mostly white, or evenly divided.
They're just A.A.s. For me, it's important to mingle. I think I'd
always feel different if I didn't, no matter where I was. I think
there's something about the A.A. program that goes right through
all the differences I worried about.
My name is Louis,
and I'm an alcoholic (79 years old)
I guess I've always been an alcoholic. At least,
I've always drunk alcohol. My mother used to put a few drops of
whiskey in a bottle of warm water and give it to me when I was a baby.
And that was a long, long time ago.
I quit school young and went to work on the
horsecars as both conductor and driver. At that time, six tickets cost
a quarter and so did a half-pint of rye. Every day, I had to make a
hard decision. Should I pocket the first quarter I collected, or the
second? On good days, I let the company have the first one, and I'd
wait until I had sold 12 tickets before stopping the car at Dailey's
saloon. On bad days, I took the first quarter.
In any case, service on my car stopped while I went
into Dailey's. The horse didn't mind waiting, and I didn't give a damn
about the passengers. The company did, though, and after a while they
detailed spotters to catch me. They never caught me. I quit first.
Then I really hit the skids. I panhandled and I
drank. I could roll my eyeballs so far up that when I opened the lids
only the whites of the eyes showed. Everybody pities a blind person,
especially one so young, so I made enough money to drink on. But one
day I dropped a half-dollar a woman had given me, and I ran straight
to the gutter where it had fallen. She caught on and began to holler
for the cops. I kept running and took the next train out. In the city
where I ended up, I lived on skid row and I drank. I slept in
flophouses, in doorways, in jails.
For some reason, when I got to be 21, I decided to
go to work. So I got a job on the railroad and stayed with it until I
was 73, when I was retired. I was a freight conductor. Once I locked
myself in my caboose, nobody could see me or know what I was doing.
What I was mostly doing was drinking. I drank everything: whiskey,
gin, canned heat, smoke, sneaky pete, embalming fluid, and musky. The
sores are gone now, but I still have the scars.
I don't know how many times in my life I have been
arrested 30 or 40, maybe. My first arrest was for panhandling.
After I retired, I was arrested 17 times on charges of intoxication. I
had a pension from the railroad and nothing to do but drink. My wife
had died. My married daughter wouldn't even speak to me. I lived alone
and friendless except for the company of a few other drunks like
myself.
When I was 79, 1 was arrested again. Only this time
it was different. A probation officer asked me if I wanted to quit
drinking. I said yes, and he went on to tell me about Alcoholics
Anonymous and about the local municipal court alcoholic rehabilitation
program. He asked me if I wanted to try it, and I figured I had
nothing to lose, so I started going to meetings at the court.
I went to one meeting with a half-pint of wine
hidden in my shirt. A gray-haired man named Jim said he was an
alcoholic and had been drunk for a long time, but in A.A. he'd learned
how to stop drinking and start living. He asked if there were any
questions. I asked if this organization expected a man 79 years old,
who had drunk all his life, to stop drinking just like that. Jim said
if he'd done it, I could do it, too. I figured maybe he was right, so
I reached inside my shirt, took out the half-pint, and gave it to the
man sitting next to me. I haven't had a drink since.
Right after I started going to A.A. meetings, things
began to happen to me. Good things. The nicest people in the world
became my friends. They're my real brothers and sisters. Not long ago,
at an A.A. meeting, I had a heart attack. They rushed me to the
hospital and stayed close, and their friendship pulled me through,
even when the doctors had given me up. I owe my life to these people.
My daughter loves me now, and I get to see my grandchildren and my
great-grandchildren.
The years are going by one day at a time and I
guess I don't have too much longer to live. But I don't care. The main
thing I want is to die sober. Meanwhile, I try to help the younger
people find sobriety and happiness the way I have. I tell them,
"If I can do it, so can you."
My name is Padric,
and I'm an alcoholic (gay)
Seventeen years ago, a bearded stranger sitting next
to me in the TV lounge of one of our city's least elegant hotels
suddenly turned to me and asked if I had a drinking problem.
"Whatever gave you that idea?" I retorted, knowing I was
physically sober at that moment, though slightly shaky and none too
well coordinated. He didn't answer me.
He just reached into the depths of a jacket that had
seen better days, took out a grimy and much thumbed booklet, and said
something about a meeting I might want to go to that night. He said
there would be "nice people who'll understand you" there. He
also mentioned free coffee and cake. That decided me.
Today, I thank God, whom I choose to call H.P.
(Higher Power), for that conversation. Cold and empty as I was, I
managed to pull myself together and get to the address he gave me. Of
course, it turned out to be an A.A. meeting. It was there I made the
first real human contact I'd felt in many years, with the man who
eventually became my A.A. sponsor.
A few weeks later, I went back out to drink and
bleed for seven more years. But then I came back (H.P. again), and
recently I celebrated my tenth anniversary of sobriety at our regular
gay A.A. meeting here in my home city.
My alcoholism goes way back, just as my gayness
does. One of my earliest childhood memories is stealing sips from my
foster father's can of beer and filling it with water so he wouldn't
know. Then I started going to gay bars in my early teens. Right from
the start, I loved the glow I got inside from a drink, even though I
always hated the taste.
It wasn't very long, though, before I started
getting into a lot of trouble with liquor. I began to use it as a
crutch, as well as a glow-getter. I drank to get up the courage to do
dangerous things. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but now
I see that I drank badly right from the start. I remember, for
instance, how a good friend used to get disgusted with my drinking
when I was barely out of my teens. I thought I was just being
sophisticated and looking for bed companions, like others in those gay
joints. But now I know the drinking soon took over and became an end
in itself.
Before A.A., all I had was drinking and sex. I
mechanically used people for both. Everybody was faceless. Nobody was
real, least of all me! My sponsor was the first real person I'd met in
years. And he made me feel real, too. He cut right through any
concern I might have had about my gayness or anything else. Without
sentimentality, he calmly held out his hand to me that first night as
one human being to another, and what he put into my hand was life.
Today, I believe we in A.A. have a family relationship
with one another. I think all the people in A.A. gay and straight
are my brothers and sisters. After we sober up, we are given a
chance to create healthy new relationships, compensating for the way
we fouled up others previously. Our fellow members are people we
really come to know, loving them, feeling with them, suffering when
they suffer, even lovingly fighting with them once in a while. It's a
real sharing, an honest one. It's certainly something I never had at
home.
I'm also glad I feel this special A.A. closeness to
many straight people, something I never would have thought possible.
In fact, for years I stayed sober and so held on to jobs by going to
meetings of A.A. groups that were mostly straight. In A.A. today, I
know sober leather fans, transvestites, and members of every other
sexual group there is. But the only important thing here is
that we are all human beings, all alcoholics, and all in A.A.
together.
Personally, I have never hidden the fact that I am
gay, in A.A. or outside it. For me, this has been the right decision.
But I know it wouldn't have mattered if I had hidden it. What we do in
private and how we choose to talk about it just are not what A.A. is
about. Our Third Tradition says, "The only requirement for A.A.
membership is a desire to stop drinking." And this has meant my
survival, right from the very first day. Believe me, if there were any
other qualifications, I would have flunked out!
My name is Ed,
and I'm an alcoholic (atheist)
I am addressing this to alcoholics who have had
trouble with the religious overtones in the A.A. program. To those who
do not accept the idea of a supernatural being, let me assert that it
is always people who have strengthened me when I needed help.
I admit that I need more strength than I alone
possess to overcome the compulsion to drink. I receive this strength
from the power for good generated in A.A. I have interpreted the
frequent mention of "God" in the Twelve Steps and elsewhere
as power that comes from other people.
After a year and a half of real sobriety (I had been
trying to grasp the A.A. program for three years previously), I
suffered a personal catastrophe. I do not ascribe my dilemma to
punishment for past "sins," nor have I the vanity to think
that a deity would choose me for martyrdom. Certainly, it is ironic
that I should have become crippled after a period of genuine sobriety
and not during a bout of drunkenness. But it is nothing more than that
simply ironic.
I have a deep belief in human morality. I believe
that evil impulses can be subordinated by decent actions. A.A. brings
out impulses for good, and this has tremendous force. In my opinion,
this sum total of good actions is the "higher power."
In the words of a Unitarian minister: "In a
world that has lost, or is losing fast, any convincing concept of
divine providence at work, of a personal God ordering the affairs of
humanity, it is not necessary to assume that the only alternative to a
human-cherishing universe is a hostile or satanic universe. There is
the much more likely alternative of a neutral universe where people
live, hammering out salvation without hope of heaven or dread of hell.
People can find that life has value, not because a divine being so
ordains, but because the achievements of good men and women, laboring
together with love and self-respect, are self-validating and
self-rewarding."
For a period of over two years, I was practically a
Loner, being able to attend only a couple of meetings a year.
Fortunately, my wife has a good understanding of alcoholism (because
of past association with a family group), and I was able to have
almost daily discussions with her. Now, however, we have formed an
A.A. group in this area that meets in my home weekly.
I was not able to accept A.A. or the very real help
it could give until I made a rationalistic interpretation of the
program. I am still an atheist, but I am a grateful atheist.
I don't want to change A.A. It works for me. I just
want it to be effective in attracting rationalists. Their membership
will help A.A. tremendously.
My name is Paul, and I'm
an alcoholic (Native American)
I was raised on a small Indian reservation in one of
our Western states, and my life was influenced by the good and the bad
of both cultures. My first drunk was in the summer of my 12th year,
when I ventured to town with some friend. We purchased a jug and found
a place to drink it. I got drunk, blacked out, and got sick, and we
went back to get some more. The accepted attitude was: When you take a
drink, you're supposed to get drunk.
Later I was bused away to a government boarding
school where booze was difficult to obtain. I learned to use
substitutes: inhaling glue, lighter fluid, gasoline, paint, or hair
spray and drinking after-shave lotion, mouthwash, or hair tonic. I was
expelled from that school and sent back to live with my grandparents
on the reservation.
My grandfather, although uneducated, was a very wise
man, and he told me of the difficulties I would encounter without an
education. So I wrote the school a letter asking them to give me
another chance and promising to change. From some people who were home
for the holidays, I heard that when the head counselor received that
letter, he called a student assembly and read it in front of the
student body. The only people in that auditorium who laughed were my
friends. When I was trying to do possibly the first right thing in my
life, my friends laughed at me. This hurt me deeply, and I decided I
would never trust or need anyone any more.
When I was 16, 1 left the reservation and joined the
Navy. While home on boot leave, I had my first experience of being
jailed as a result of drinking. My drinking increased. I had more
money, and it seemed everyone drank. First, my drinking partners were
the new recruits; later, the men in my section; and finally, I found
myself going it alone, as it was meant to be.
For I was different. When I drank, there was no fun,
none of the benefits of a relaxing, sociable evening with friends.
When I drank, there was always trouble. I blamed my problems on the
fact that I was an Indian. My shipmates would tell me things I had
said or done while in a blackout. I never fully believed them. There
were many puns about the Indian and his firewater, and I was dubbed
Wahoo. I developed feelings of guilt and loss of self-respect. I
became afraid of people, of being alone, of everything around me.
At 18, 1 was on the streets of San Francisco, with
50 cents and a train ticket to Los Angeles in my pocket, less than a
proper education, and a less-than-honorable discharge from the Navy. I
decided I was in that situation because I was an Indian forced to live
in a white world. I bummed awhile, staying dry most of the time. One
night when I was on Canal Street in Chicago, the man in the cage next
to mine died in D.T.s and convulsions. I remember thinking he should
have had more sense than to drink that much. ("But for the Grace
of God.") I settled in the city where I now live, and was
arrested for being drunk on 40 different occasions.
Here, I also married. Of all the good influences in
my life, my wife is among the main ones. We learned about A.A. from a
newspaper article. The call was made and returned, and we went to that
first meeting. I was much impressed by the people, and I quoted the
Big Book for seven months. But deep down inside, I wasn't ready.
And then it happened the worst drunk I ever had,
and the most beautiful, because it was my last one. The fear and guilt
were greater than I had ever known. I had let A.A. down, let my group
down, and let my wife down; the image I had built was destroyed. But a
thought, clear and concise, came to me: "The only person you have
let down is yourself." So I came back to you people, and we began
anew.
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perc้ looked upon his
people, and saw them cold, destitute, homeless, lonely, and defeated.
He said, "We cannot go on living the life we once knew. We must
begin a new life. Take the best the white man has to offer and the
best the red man has to offer, and begin this new life."
I stood at the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous full of
fear, guilt, remorse, confusion, and defeat. Those doors were open to
me, and I was welcomed in. As my mind clears and I recall the
teachings of my ancestors, I believe I found the best the red man has
to offer. Today, I have the fellowship and program of Alcoholics
Anonymous and my wonderful wife. I feel that I have found the best the
white man has to offer.
My name is Diane,
and I'm an alcoholic (15 years old)
When I first came to A.A., I couldn't have been an
alcoholic. It was impossible at the age of 14!
I had my first drink at the age of six. Being the
only girl out of three and being the youngest child, I could get my
way. I now believe I was an alcoholic from the first drink, because
from then on I set up my life in the alcoholic pattern. I lived in
fear of the day, in hatred, in resentments, in a dream world. I would
dream I had six closets full of clothes and all the girls were jealous
of me. In real life, I was fat, overbearing, and jealous of others. I
hated my mother because she would spank me and not let me go without a
shirt,
like the boys.
We moved away from that town just before I entered
fourth grade. I was really lonely. I had no friends, and I couldn't
make any. Then I met kids who smoked, drank, and took drugs. My
parents begged, beat me, and argued with me. But what the hell! They
were the ones who had me and never wanted me. They were the ones who
put me through all the years of misery. Now was the time to pay them
back, I decided.
I started taking drugs and drinking. My self-pity
caught fire. Booze and drugs helped me relieve it all. Wow! It was
really weird. Sex also became very important, because I wanted love.
Lots of love!I thought my homelife was the problem, so I started going
to counselors, church, headshrinkers, the whole bit. It didn't work.
So here came the booze again.
I always wanted to belong. Anything the group said
to do, I did. But I didn't like it, and I wanted out. My bottom came
up and hit me. I didn't go down and hit it.
I got in contact with A.A. through a doper friend.
She just needed something to do, so she didn't stick around. I stayed.
I liked the love that I got. I needed that love. I stayed in, drunk,
wanting to be "a part of, not apart from."
Finally, after 11 months, I started working the
program. Things began changing, and it was really beautiful. My
relationship with my parents and other people is great. The love I
receive, I pass along to still-sick alcoholics. God my God is
very patient, thank goodness for that. I am now losing weight and feel
fine. (I weighed 200 pounds.)
I still get some questioning looks from oldtimers,
but I know I am an alcoholic, and that's all that counts. I feel
rejected at times because the young people in our group are married
and get together quite often, without me. God willing, in about four
years I'll be married, too, and thenI'll remember to ask the single
young person to join in.
My father is still drinking, but I have to "let
go and let God." Maybe someday God will find him also. I am an
alcoholic, and in two months I'll be 16.
My name is Michael,
and I'm an alcoholic (clergy)
I am a Roman Catholic priest, a pastor of souls with
the title of monsignor. I am also an alcoholic. A few months ago, I
celebrated an anniversary of ordination. A month before that, I
celebrated a more important anniversary, my fourth as a member of A.A.
Why do I say that my anniversary in A.A. is a more
important date than my ordination anniversary? The answer is that
through A.A. my Higher Power, God, has not only saved my life and
restored me to sanity, but has given me a new way of life and has
immeasurably enriched my priesthood. Thus, thanks to God and A.A. I am
today striving honestly and sincerely, despite many shortcomings, to
fulfill my priestly vocation in the manner that God intended. My
sobriety has to be the most important thing in my life. Without
sobriety, I would immediately revert to the kind of life I led during
the later years of my drinking the life of one who found himself
going in only one direction, down.
I believe that I engaged in work for work's sake,
hyperactively spreading out in many directions anything to keep
the searchlight off my inner self. Alcohol became a reward for my
strenuous labors. By the easy excuse "I work hard, I play
hard," I tried to justify the drinking that had become more
frequent and more prolonged and had resulted in absenteeism, lying,
deception, neglect of duty.
Driven by recurring fits of remorse, guilt, and
depression, I sought help from doctors and from fellow priests, to no
avail. I tried retreats, prayer, acts of self-denial, abstention from
alcohol for periods of time, rest homes, geographic changes. Nothing
worked.
Deep discouragement and despair set in. Thus, a life
that had been motivated by grand ideals, great enthusiasms, burning
incentives, had now become almost completely enclosed within the
circle of the bottle and myself. The priest, a man of God, was bowing
down before a different master, alcohol.
Then, finally, down in my deep well, shrouded with
blackness, feeling devoid of hope and helpless, I cried out for help.
Now, at last, I was ready to go to any length to achieve sobriety. And
God heard my cry and answered.
After a period of hospitalization, I went to my
first A.A. meeting. I then involved myself with a group of alcoholic
priests, and I attended these meetings regularly. I also went to
lay-group meetings, open and closed. I listened with an open mind. I
became active. In addition, I spent six months in psychiatric
treatment.
Day by day, one day at a time, I have kept away from
that first drink. A.A. has become my way of life. I realize that,
paradoxically, I keep my sobriety by giving it away. I am responsible
whenever and wherever a hand reaches out for help. What freely I
received, freely I must give.
Of one thing I am certain: God's will for me today
is that I be sober for this 24 hours. He will take care of the rest.
If I remain faithful to this way, the A.A. way of life, one day at a
time for the rest of my life, I pray and I am confident, though
wary of complacency that God will, by His loving mercy, mold me
into the priest He wishes me to be.
My name is Mary,
and I'm an alcoholic (lesbian)
I'm an alcoholic. I'm 27. I'm a woman. I'm a
homosexual. I've been sober in the beautiful Fellowship of A.A. for 17
months and, for the first time in many years, find myself smiling,
laughing, and really caring for other people.
After ten years of alcoholic drinking, that life of
horror, loneliness, and despair brought me to the doors of my first
A.A. meeting. In the first few months of my sobriety, I tried to
follow suggestions, went to many meetings, joined a group, and found a
sponsor whose sobriety I respected. But during this time, I lived in
fear fear of my homosexuality being discovered, fear of being
rejected by fellow A.A. members, fear of being left alone to cope with
my disease of alcoholism. This fear drove me so close to the first
drink that I believed I could never maintain the sobriety I so
desperately needed and wanted. I became distrustful of my fellow A.A.s.
My fears seemed to be a bigger problem than my alcoholism.
Finally, I heard a speaker ask, "Are you
willing to go to any lengths to maintain your sobriety?" Was I
willing? Who would understand my situation? Whom could I trust?
In desperation, I went to my sponsor. I cried,
sweated, and shook. But the words I hated to say came out, painfully
and slowly. I sat back, waiting for a word or a look of rejection.
My sponsor simply smiled and told me that she was an
alcoholic just like me and that this was how and why she could help
me.
I thank my Higher Power every night for this program
that saved my life, a program of "principles before
personalities." "The only requirement for A.A. membership is
a desire to stop drinking," our Third Tradition says, and there
is a place for every person who wants help. There is a place for me. I
thought that I was unique, different, that I had nowhere to turn in
this world for help. But thanks to A.A., I have found the way to a
full and happy life.
My name is George,
and I'm an alcoholic (Jewish)
A startling, four-color advertising poster appeared
some time ago in the New York subways. Staring at the viewer was a
"typical Irish cop" about to eat a luscious delicatessen
sandwich on Levy's rye bread, and the legend was "You don't have
to be Jewish to like Levy's."
As countless subway stations flew by, and as the
rusty gears in my head meshed, the whole idea of that Irish cop (and
by now in my mind's eye he had become a Catholic-Irish cop named
O'Toole, with a thick brogue, 14 children, and a grandmother in
Kilkenny) had turned itself upside down.
One evening, while talking to my closest friend in
A.A. (whose name is so Irish I can preserve his anonymity only by
omitting his initials here) and after having attended an open A.A.
meeting where the one female and two male speakers all sounded like
characters from an Abbey Theater production of a play by Lady Gregory,
I had a brainstorm.
"At my own expense," I told my friend,
"I shall have the same advertising agency responsible for that
Irish cop make up a poster for distribution to all A.A. groups in this
area. It will feature a photograph of me in full color, and I shall be
clearly drunk, sucking on a bottle of Scotch. Underneath this
photograph of my Levantine features (once described by a friend as
`the face of Abraham'), I shall have inscribed: `You don't have to be
Irish to be an alcoholic.'"
The myth that there are few Jewish alcoholics is, as
far as my experience is my guide, sheer bunk. With many more Jews
residing in the city in which I live than in the entire state of
Israel, Jewish attendance at A.A. meetings is what you might expect. A
good number of groups in this part of the country have Jewish
memberships of up to 50%. Jews abound in other groups as well, and you
will even find handfuls of us at meetings in areas where few Jews
live.
Another myth is that the tradition of social and
heavy drinking has never existed among the Hebrews, and therefore Jews
lack that special extra "something" that turns the social
drinker into the alcoholic. Nonsense! The Yiddish language has a
perfectly satisfactory word for drunk shicker and when
it is used as a noun (as in "a shicker"), any Jew in
town will know what you are talking about!
I think, seriously now, that we Jewish alcoholics
often display a tendency to be oversensitive about our Jewishness.
Therefore, we cover this raw spot with a patina of indifference
the famous Semitic shrug of the shoulders. This attitude may keep many
a miserable Jewish alcoholic out of our Fellowship, to his or her
misery and our loss.
I am thinking now of a young woman I know, deep in
the self-torture of progressive drinking. Both my wife (also in A.A.)
and I have tried for nearly two years to bring her to the A.A.
program. All her rationalizations against us boil down to one
sentence: "Nice Jewish girls aren't alcoholics."
Maybe, Ruth, many nice Jewish girls aren't
alcoholics. But neither are "nice Jewish boys," "nice
Lutheran girls," "nice Methodist girls," "nice
Italian girls," "nice Vassar girls," or just "nice
girls" or "nice boys."
There is nothing "nice" about any
alcoholic in the throes of this ailment. In A.A., we don't care how
"nice" you think you are, or whether you are Jewish,
Christian, Moslem, or nothing. True, we end most of our meetings with
the Lord's Prayer, but even the atheists in the program do not often
object to this formality. The speaker usually says, "Will all
those who care to join me in the Lord's Prayer?"
When I was on the sauce, I wasn't a Jew, I wasn't an
American, and I wasn't a man. I was just a drunk, loveless and
unloving, respectful of no one and nothing, least of all myself.
No, Ruth, "You don't have to be Jewish."
But maybe it helps. I think that it helped me accept the truth that I
am a member of more than one minority group, and today a sober one,
thanks to the God of my fathers, and thanks to the people of all
kinds who are Alcoholics Anonymous.
My name is famous,
and I'm an alcoholic (movie star)
Early in the game, I used to work at any job, just
so I could eat and pay the rent while learning to act. Drinking simply
was not very important in those days. Then came one certain movie, and
the whole scene changed. It was a kick to have all the famous people I
had heard of suddenly calling me by my first name and insisting I come
to their parties, have lunch, or meet them in "21" or Cannes
or Venice. Almost the first thing said was always: "What are you
drinking?
Sometimes I had too much, but so did lots of people.
Usually, I didn't drink while making a film, only on junkets or on
brief holidays between pictures. But gradually I found that when I got
home late after a long day at the studio, some schnapps and a pill
helped me to sleep. One ghastly morning, I yelled at the makeup man
for being so slow. He looked at me long and hard before he said,
"Maybe I'm getting older, my dear. It can't be that those circles
under your eyes are getting bigger, can it?"
That was a jolt, but when I thought it over, I
decided I must need a vacation. For each crisis after that, there was
always some easy remedy a new diet, a different kind of pill, a
new man, more work, or a short stay at a health farm.
A worse jolt was a gossip-column item that began,
"Which Hollywood lady is giving her director and producer the
shakes with lateness and `nerves' and forgetting lines?" It was a
"blind" item no name given but the details that
followed pointed right at me. I was so furious that I tied on a big
one and landed in the hospital for the first time all the
columnist's fault, of course. I was admitted under an assumed name.
Ten minutes later, I was shrieking at a nurse, "Do you know who I
am?" And I told her.
In the hospital, I was still medicated to the
eyeballs when two A.A. women came to talk to me. I suspect they were
almost as impressed with my reputation as I was. I listened to them
graciously, but once was enough. I wanted no more calls from sweet
little do-gooders like that.
My manager and friends agreed. My case was
different, they said. For years, they went on shielding me from the
consequences of my own behavior. It prolonged my illness, I think now,
but I don't blame them. They were doing what they thought best for me,
and what I wanted them to do.
Then I was signed for the lead in a play. I stayed
on the wagon okay the pill wagon, that is. We had three press
previews. When you look at the different notices, you can tell that
one night I must have been on uppers, one on downers, and the third on
my own private blend of hallucinogens. After that, the offers just
stopped coming. I was bad news for employers, in the theater and in
films.
At a friend's insistence, I went to a psychiatrist
(a wonderful woman of great distinction in the field of alcoholism, I
know now). Underneath all my pretense, I really was scared and wanted
help. Long before, I'd had the standard Hollywood analysis, because it
was such an in thing to do and many of us felt it helped us as actors.
But the New York psychiatrist took a different approach. I was
beginning to like her and trust her when she dropped the bomb: She
wanted me to take Antabuse, join A.A., and go to group therapy. I was
kind of relieved to take the Antabuse, but couldn't imagine myself in
A.A. or any other group. What would people say?
Yet I was terrified; my life seemed to be over. So I
sat, miserable, in some A.A. meetings in a wig and dark glasses, and
sneaked out before they ended. At a group-therapy session, I explained
that my work required me to lunch in good restaurants, with wine, and
that I often did business with important people over the dinner table
at my French chateau, noted for its cellar. In my special
circumstances, I said, this kind of civilized drinking was really a
business necessity.
Another patient fixed me with a stare and said,
"You sound stupid." Long silence. I kept smiling, but it
took an effort. "At least those poor slobs in A.A. aren't
stupid," he went on. "They're smart enough to realize they
have a drinking problem and start doing something about it. You
sounded, just then, as if you haven't got that much good sense, or
courage, left."
He let that sink in and then added kindly, "But
I expect you do. Don't you want to feel better, to be happier?"
That shocked some sense into me. He was right. No
matter what I thought of people in A.A., they obviously had answers
about staying sober that I didn't have. I recalled some famous advice
to actors: "Act as if." And I began right then
to act as if I wanted to learn from each and every
alcoholic in A.A. It would be a new part for me being audience,
not star.
Since then, I believe, my "as if" has
become real. I don't have to act in A.A.; I know I am just one
more woman recovering from alcoholism. Yes, there have been rough
times. It takes a little while for some other members to see me as an
alcoholic person like themselves. At first, some of them are dazzled
by the movie star image they associate with my name (a prop I can live
without now); some ask for my autograph. For my own sanity, I have
learned not to let this attention puff up my ego (it's too big
already!) or annoy me. I try hard to be polite and turn the
conversation to A.A. matters. It works marvelously, all over the
world. When I volunteer at one of our central offices, it even works
with new alcoholics seeking help. Occasionally, one of them asks,
"Aren't you _______?"
I say, "Yes, I am, and I am also an alcoholic
working on my recovery from this disease."
My career has flourished, with some very unexpected
twists and even a new triumph or two. I am more comfortable than ever
at Hollywood parties, or sipping my Perrier at a restaurant in Paris.
By the way, I've noticed ever so many other people don't drink
alcoholic things, either not the way I used to think all show
people did.
The other night, I saw on TV a movie I made in
Europe during some of my worst drinking days. I dubbed the English
sound track in New York after I had been sober in A.A. about a year. I
got the giggles watching it, because I was seeing a stumbling,
drunken performance, but hearing a perfectly sober one. I'm a
lot better at my job when I'm sober.
My name is Phil,
and I'm an alcoholic ("low bottom")
Frightened, arrogant, enraged, and resentful of
humanity, God, and the universe (yet vaguely hopeful, because maybe
these strange people who claimed they had found a way to stop drinking
could help me) that was how I felt almost seven years ago, at my
first A.A. meeting.
I was frightened because my years of drinking and
deluded dreams had reduced me to a terrified life of skid-row
panhandling, complete with wine sores and doorway sleeping. I stank. I
didn't have a change of clothing, nor did I really want one. All was
lost, down the drain my career as a teacher plus the hundred other
jobs I had tried. There was nothing left to live for; but I was too
frightened to die.
My arrogance rested on the firm conviction that I
was better than those around me. After all, I was a talented writer,
wasn't I? I hadn't written a readable line in years, but I thought my
work was unpublished only because I was misunderstood and
discriminated against. It had never been understood by anybody. No one
had come close to feeling the agonized awareness, the suffering and
loneliness inside my soul. I was black and bright, and the world had
consistently rejected me for it. I hated this punishing world and
resented its life and its God. My rage was all-consuming; only because
my pain and sickness were still greater was I able to sit through that
first meeting with a group of clean, apparently happy, mostly white
folks who called themselves alcoholics.
They handed me coffee and gathered around me. They
were honest enough not to pretend they didn't notice my shaking hands.
They laughed and said it would get better. With difficulty, I listened
to them. They said that alcoholism is a disease, a physical, mental,
and spiritual illness, a treatable illness from which people can
recover. All this I drank in with the frantic gratefulness of a person
dying of thirst.
Yet there was a bitter tinge to this water, a
lingering doubt: Would it work for me? After all, unlike these people,
I had been condemned by society to the life of a black, beaten bum.
Therapy in the mental wards of many hospitals had confirmed my early
suspicions that my heavy drinking was caused by an inability to adjust
to the hostile world I was forced to live in. Religion had strangled
me since childhood; it offered more fears and restrictions, and
therefore reasons to drink. The word "God" stood out on the
walls of the meeting room, which was in a church, and I seriously
wondered if these godly, white, middle-class alcoholics could in any
way comprehend the grave problems that forced a uniquely brilliant
black wino to drink.
Many meetings later, I came upon certain basic
principles that not only saved my life, but have gradually changed it.
I learned that all of us alcoholics, no matter who we are or where we
come from, drink the way we do for one basic reason our
alcoholism. We have a disease that won't let us stop drinking, once we
pick up the first one. Our disease is profound and dynamic, constantly
invading the mental and spiritual tissues of our being. We must
constantly keep it arrested through the program of A.A. if we are to
recover and remain sober.
The rewards of sobriety are bountiful and as
progressive as the disease they counteract. Perhaps greatest among
these rewards has been a release from the frightening prison of my
uniqueness.
My name is Jim,
and I'm an alcoholic ("high bottom")
I was one of those drunks who never saw the inside
of a jail, nor was I ever ticketed for any offense that I could
attribute to alcohol. I have never been hospitalized for any reason.
Drinking never cost me a job or my wife.
My favorite expression was "I can quit drinking
any time I want to." It got to the point where I started to
believe it. I was able to quit drinking each Lent except for the one
just prior to my coming into the A.A. program. I believed God would
punish me more in the hereafter if I didn't do some penance for my
sins here on earth. Abstaining from alcohol was the toughest penance I
knew of. Sheer determination, bullheadedness, willpower, and egotism
carried me through.
Bullheadedness was a part of my nature. When I had
made up my mind to do something, hell or high water couldn't change
it. Many times during Lent, my wife pleaded with me to drink, just
because I was so miserable to her and the kids when I wasn't drinking.
All my friends knew I always quit during Lent. Their
adulation of my willpower sustained me through those days and nights.
The fear of what they might say or think if I happened to fall off the
wagon kept me going till Easter. I lived on the comments of my
drinking buddies' wives: "Oh, how I wish my Jack (or Tom, or
Steve) could quit like you." My wife was probably thinking,
"If they only knew what his sobriety is costing me!"
I was also the smartest man in the world, in the
company I worked for, in the departments I worked in, and at home as
the head of the family.
I had only one problem that was a little difficult
to understand, let alone solve. After waking so many mornings feeling
so terribly lousy and sick, and telling and promising myself I would
not be that stupid again, why would I go right out and be
stupid again? Why couldn't I stop after only one or two, like some
guys I knew? Why was I almost always thinking about booze one way or
another? Why couldn't I fall asleep unless I was at least half gooned-up?
What would I do with my time if I quit? What would
people say or think if I quit? What would customers say? What about
Christmas, New Year's, and my birthday without booze? How come I
couldn't quit when I wanted to, when I'd always said I could? How come
I lied so much? I was tired of lying, I was tired of trying to be
someone else. It hurt me to think I was hooked on booze like an addict
on dope.
One beautiful Saturday afternoon in July, when I was
34 years old, I blurted out to a priest that alcohol might be the root
of my troubles. I had never before admitted such a thing to anyone.
The priest suggested I try A.A.
I think one of the extraordinary yet simple points
of A.A. is that I didn't have to quit drinking in the sense
that I understood quitting before entering the program. I
think if the program had advocated quitting as I understood it, I
would not be sober today.
A.A. teaches us how to live without alcohol, how
unnecessary alcohol is, and how it increases our problems.
It is a perfectly natural thing for most of us to
say thank you to other people for whatever we receive. That's why it
is important that I say thanks for the most precious gift I can
receive 24 hours of sobriety.
My name is Jan,
and I'm an alcoholic (agnostic)
My parents gave me a faith that in later years I
lost. No, it was not a religious faith, though I was exposed to the
teachings of two sects. Neither was forced upon me; I simply drifted
away through boredom, and my fragile, superficial belief in God
vanished as soon as I tried thinking about it. It was a faith in
people that my parents gave me both by loving me and by respecting
me as an individual, entitled to make my own choices.
Out in the world on my own, I still had a feeling of
being under benevolent protection. My immediate bosses (of both sexes)
seemed to regard me as kindly schoolteachers had. Oddly, my good
fortune sometimes annoyed me. "What is this?" I asked
myself. "Do I arouse the parental impulse?" For there was
inside me an element at war with my faith in people. It was a furious,
stiff-necked pride, an urge for total independence. With my
contemporaries, I was always painfully shy, and even then I
interpreted this handicap correctly as a symptom of egotism a fear
that others would not agree with my own high valuation of myself.
That valuation certainly did not include a picture
of myself as a drunk. Often, I suspect that pride kills as many
alcoholics as liquor does. Ask for help? What an idea! The day came
when my pride was squashed flat (temporarily), and I did call for
help. I called on people strangers. But my pride, expanding as
health returned, blocked my first two approaches to A.A. After one
more failure to regain my skill as a social drinker, I was convinced,
and I began my A.A. membership in earnest.
Fortunately, I joined a group that devotes its
closed meetings to Step discussions. Most of the members had their own
concepts of a personal God; the atmosphere of faith surrounding me was
so marked that I thought at times I was on the point of joining in it.
I never did. And yet I found each discussion revealing new depths of
meaning in the Twelve Steps.
In Step Two, the "Power greater than
ourselves" meant A.A., but not just the members I knew. It meant
all of us, everywhere, sharing a concern for one another and thereby
creating a spiritual resource stronger than any one of us could
provide.
At first, Step Three was simply the way I felt on
no-hangover mornings of early sobriety, sitting by my window on days
that always seemed sunny, having no immediate prospect of employment,
and feeling perfectly happy and confident anyhow. Then the Step became
a cheerful acceptance of my place in the world: have no idea Who or
What is running the show, but I know I'm not!" And I could
also see Step Three as a good attitude, an effective approach to life:
"If I am swimming in salt water and I panic and start thrashing
around and fighting it, it will drown me. But if I relax and have
faith in it, it will hold me afloat."
Though Step Four does not mention a Higher Power, to
me the word "moral" carried an implication of sin, which in
my book translates as an offense against God. So I regarded the
inventory instead as an attempt at an honest description of my
character; on the red side went qualities that tended to hurt people.
I am not sure that I was consciously working the
Steps, but they were surely working on me. In about the fourth year of
sobriety, a trivial incident suddenly made me realize that my old
bugaboo of shyness had disappeared. "I feel at home in the
world!" I said to myself in astonishment. Now, some 18 years
later, I still do. In the whole measure of life, the benefits of the
A.A. experience have far outweighed the damages of active alcoholism.
What was it that overcame my pride (for the moment)
and made me reachable? The best answer I can find is what my father
used to call "the life force." (He was an old-fashioned
family doctor, and he had seen that force springing up or failing many
times.) It is in all of us, I believe; it animates all living things;
it keeps the galaxies wheeling. The salt-water metaphor applied to
Step Three was not chosen by accident, for to me the ocean is a symbol
of this force; I come closest to Step Eleven when I can contemplate an
unbroken horizon from the deck of a ship. I am cut down to size; I
feel serenely that I am a small part of something vast and unknowable.
But isn't the ocean rather a cold symbol? Yes. Do I
think that its eye is on the minnow, that it is concerned about any
individual's fate? Would I talk to it? No. Once, near the end of my
drinking, I did address three words to Something non-human. In the
darkness before morning, I got out of bed, knelt, folded my hands, and
said, "Please help me." Then I shrugged and said, "Who'm
I talking to?" and got back into bed.
When I related that incident to one of my sponsors,
she said, "But He did answer your prayer."
That may be. But I do not feel it. I didn't argue
with her, nor do I attack the mystery with pure logic now. If you
could prove to me logically that there is a personal God and I don't
think you can I still would not be inclined to talk to a presence
I couldn't feel. If I could prove to you logically that there is no
God and I know I can't your true faith would not be shaken. In
other words, matters of faith lie entirely outside the realm of
reason. Is there anything beyond the realm of human reason?
Yes, I believe there is. Something.
In the meantime, here we all are together I mean
all of us people, not just alcoholics. We need each other.
Now
we are all special together
Different from one another as the stories in this
pamphlet are, did you notice a common theme that runs through many of
them? In the words of just four:
Louis: "They're my real brothers and
sisters."
Padric: "We are all human beings, all
alcoholics, and all in A.A. together."
Mary: "There is a place for every person
who wants help."
George: ". . . the people of all kinds
who are Alcoholics Anonymous."
This is a theme you hear over and over again at our
meetings and read over and over again in our literature: the theme of community,
of sharing. Gloria says, "We A.A.s all carry umbrellas
that we put up over each other." Sooner or later, most of us come
to express this truth about our Fellowship.
In some large cities, you'll find some special A.A.
meetings for police officers, gay men and lesbians, members of the
clergy, young people, doctors, Spanish-speaking people, A.A.
beginners, or women only. Going to some of these when we are new in
A.A. may ease the recovery path at first, but the happiest, healthiest
recoveries seem to come to people who go to all kinds of A.A.
meetings, not only the special ones.
We have found it unwise to limit our A.A. circle to
folks exactly like ourselves. Segregation gives our
"uniqueness" an unhealthy emphasis. We find it more
enjoyable, and more healing, to get into the mainstream of A.A. life
and mingle with everybody else, not just "different" people.
Here we are. We are all different. We are all
pretty special people. But we are also all alcoholics and
all sober in A.A. together.In this, we are more like each other
than different. Here in A.A., we find the shared humanity that enables
us to live out our widely differing lives and pursue our separate and
individual destinies. You are welcome to join us.
The
Twelve Steps
of Alcoholics Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that
our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over
to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human
being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and
became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we
were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve
our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying
only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of
these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to
practice these principles in all our affairs.
The
Twelve Traditions
of Alcoholics Anonymous
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal
recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate
authority a loving God as He may express Himself in our group
conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a
desire to stop drinking.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters
affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose to carry
its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend
the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest
problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary
purpose.
7. Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting,
declining outside contributions.
8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever
non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may
create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they
serve.
10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside
issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public
controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction
rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at
the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our
traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before
personalities.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUSฎ
is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength
and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and
help others to recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to
stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership; we are
self-supporting through our own contributions.
A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics,
organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any
controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to
achieve sobriety.
Copyright ฉ by The A.A. Grapevine, Inc.;
reprinted with permission
A.A.
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