Tag: Alcoholics Anonymous

What’s The Problem?

In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the second chapter is called “There Is A Solution”. On page 25 of that chapter, there is a paragraph that opens with “There is a solution”. But what is that the solution to? In other words, what is The Problem?

I go to a lot of AA meetings. And at many of those meetings, I hear a lot about not drinking. I hear that the problem is alcohol. But what if the problem isn’t alcohol?

I realize that question is provocative to ask in an AA meeting. I ask that question because I quit drinking a number of times. Every time I started again. Every time I quit drinking, it seemed to me that my life got worse, not better. The whole “don’t think, don’t drink and go to meetings” was not working for me.

I have a number of addictions. A brief list includes alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, spending. Maybe food too. Maybe internet doom scrolling. I’ve attended meetings for four of those addictions. I gravitate towards anything that provides a dopamine hit and a minute of distraction.

When I first started attending AA meetings, I abstained from drinking and taking drugs for about 4 months. And my life got worse. I got worse. I didn’t have my pain medicine anymore (alcohol and drugs) but I still had all of the pain.

After a meeting one night, I asked my sponsor what to do to recover from alcoholism, and he said “you need to work the Steps”. And it changed my life. Now my life didn’t get perfect. But it started to change. I started to change. And the obsession to drink and take drugs was lifted.

What working the Steps did for me was to help me understand The Problem. I learned that the problem wasn’t alcohol. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t pornography or gambling or the internet.

It was my alcoholism. It was me.

I wasn’t happy when I learned that. Far from it. I learned that I have a void. People call it “a hole in my soul”. For me it is a sense of “Not Enough”. I read in a Patrick Carnes book on sex addiction “Out of the Shadows” a phrase (and I’m paraphrasing here) that Carnes core message was “I am not enough, there isn’t enough, the world is not a safe place, and my needs can only be met with sex”. I related to that.

I had been trying to meet all of my needs with a combination of alcohol and drugs and sex and spending and porn and….whatever. Whatever I could pour into the hole in my soul to temporarily help me feel like I was enough. And none of it worked. And I became addicted to all of it.

I also learned that I couldn’t just “stop drinking and go to meetings”. That wasn’t a solution for me, and I didn’t know why. Now I do. I now understand that The Solution is a spiritual solution to a spiritual malady.

Part of my spiritual solution comes from connecting with all of you. By trying to be authentic, and transparent, and by trying to help others.

Thank you for letting me share!

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

The Importance of Home Groups

I have belonged to the same home group for 25+ years, ever since I moved to the county that I live in. I think that one of the reasons that I have been sober as long as I have is that I have a home group.

My home group is a place where people know me. By “know me”, I mean that they know my first and my last name, my address, what I do for a living. Many of my home group members know my family. We have attended weddings and funerals and other ceremonies together.

It is so important for me to have a place to go to where I feel comfortable being myself. Recovery can be challenging sometimes, and I need a place to go to where I feel comfortable sharing my truth. My home group is such a place.

My home group is also a place where newcomers thrive. We ask at every meeting for people who are willing to be sponsors, and we regularly have 30-40 people who volunteer to do so.

I have a very strong home group. We do service commitments (prisons, hospitals, rehabs), and we contribute to AA as a whole (GSO, Intergroup, our local Area and District). Many home group members enjoy fellowship together (coffee, meals, sporting events and concerts). And we have a lot of recovery in our group. One time we did a count of sobriety, and counted over 1000 years of sobriety in the room. On most days, we have 2-3 people with 40+ years, twenty or so with 30+ years, and lots and lots of people with 10 or 20 years sober. On most days, we have 100 or more people attending our meetings.

I need the help of sober people to stay sober. At the end of my active alcoholism, I tried the “I can do it myself” method, and I failed several times. I failed so badly that I now know that the only way I can stay sober is with the help of sober alcoholics.

I find those sober alcoholics at my home group. I sometimes share at my group that “I can’t share this stuff in the deli line at the supermarket”. If I did share my stuff in the deli line, I think people would probably leave that line!

When I come to my home group, I am with kindred spirits. They are people just like me-trying to stay sober, and help someone else to achieve sobriety, one day at a time.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

The Law of Averages

I wrote this essay for another site. I am posting it here, because it applies for people in recovery. My experience is that the average result in life isn’t what I want. My experience is also that the average result in Alcoholics Anonymous is not what I want.

Think about that when you read this essay. Do you want the average? Or do you want something better than that?

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

The Law of Averages is a principle that states that a large randomly selected subgroup is likely to reflect the population as a whole. For example, if 10% of the entire population is left-handed, then it is likely that 10% of a randomly selected large group will also be left-handed.

But that law doesn’t work with small sample sizes.

Like my family.

Sometimes I have a conversation that starts with “most people don’t live the way we do”. Allow me to explain.

Do an internet search on any of the following lifestyle behaviors- diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, saving/spending, TV watching, etc. Type in “the average American ____” for any of those behaviors.

The average American watches 35 hours of TV a week. Five hours of TV a day.

The average American marriage lasts 8 years. The American divorce rate is 40-50 percent. (Are all of the remaining marriages happy marriages? Probably not.) So the average marriage may not result in divorce- but it doesn’t look very happy, either.

The average school loan debt just passed $30,000. The median American household (not individual- household) salary was just under $52,000. Meaning if two partners each have $30,000 in school loans, in a house with the median income….well, it’s going to take a long time to pay those school loans.

The average American savings rate is about 3%. But the median (the most frequent) savings rate is 0%. I just read online that 4/10 Americans have no emergency savings. None.

The average American male weighs 191 pounds, and his ideal body weight is 162 pounds.

18% of American adults smoke.

Only 3.2% of American adults are vegetarians.

Only 30% of Americans have a passport. Many of those with passports don’t use them. So the average American is never going to see London, or Paris, or Rome.

So what’s the point?

The point is that I live a different life than most people. Not better. Not worse.

But a lot different.

Have you ever seen the movie “The Matrix”? In that movie, Keanu Reeves does some time travel. He has an experience where he exists in a place, but he is separate from that place and the people who live there. He can see the other people who live in that place, but they can’t see him.

My experience is like that sometimes.

At our house, we sit down for dinner, and we talk about life in the Matrix. We don’t call it the Matrix, but that’s what it is.

We have two TVs in our home. This year I watched part of the Super Bowl, and part of a basketball game during the Final Four. That two hours of TV makes me the super-user of the TVs in our home. I cannot remember the last time anyone else in my family turned on a TV.

Try explaining to someone that you’ve never seen Seinfeld. Or Cheers. Or Friends. Never binge-watched a show, because you haven’t watched a show since the 1980s.

I have turned on a TV series since 1980.

We are all vegetarians at my house (except for my dog). Being a vegetarian isn’t rare anymore, but it isn’t that common. I recently ate at a restaurant that had no vegetarian main courses. The one “vegetarian” option had bacon in it. I’m not making that up. My daughter and I had to order a side salad as our main course.

As a result of our diet, we are all at our ideal body weight.

We avoid debt. Our hope is that our girls graduate college without any school loans. That’s the plan, and we are sticking to it.

We travel. Some people tell us that we travel a lot. I’ve travelled to 41 countries, a total of 105 times. My girls have been to 14 different countries so far. It’s what we do for fun, so it doesn’t seem like a lot.

I have been to 5 continents, and I have a trip planned to the sixth (in New Zealand) in six weeks. I’ve been to AA meetings in 14 countries on 4 continents. I’ll go to a meeting in New Zealand soon.

In the movie “The Incredibles”, the family has an adventure, and at the end, Violet is speaking with a young man. He tells her that she looks different.

She replies “I feel different. Is different ok?”

The young man replies “Different is great!”

I hope he’s right.

The Challenge of Being an Introvert in Alcoholics Anonymous

Have you ever taken one of the “personality type” profiles at work? There is a popular one called the Myers-Briggs Indicator. You answer approximately 60 questions, and you receive feedback about four different indicators. One of them is whether or not you are an introvert or an extrovert.

I have taken this test four different times (it was popular for a while in my industry). Every time I took it, I received the same feedback: I am really organized about my time (that’s good), and I am almost painfully introverted (not so good).

In my alcoholism, I never really liked to go to bars or clubs. There were drunk people there, and drunk people annoyed me. I didn’t like hanging out with other people who were drinking. I preferred drinking by myself.

The good news is that I wasn’t doing a lot of drinking and driving, because I was doing my drinking alone by myself. The bad news was that I was home alone, doing my drinking by myself. And almost no one knew.

I was lucky enough (blessed?) to get sober in 1990. One of the things that I was told was that I should go to an AA meeting every day, for at least 90 days. (My sponsor said “120 meetings wouldn’t hurt!”). So I went to a lot of meetings. I still do.

The challenge for me has been that I am still the same introvert that I have always been. And my meetings are full of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed people who are on fire with the idea of interacting with other people.

In AA, we talk about Unity (through the Traditions), Recovery (through the Steps), and Fellowship. I struggle with the Fellowship part. I struggle when people invite me out for coffee. “Struggle” means I don’t want to. I do not want to go out to a diner with people I don’t know that well, and try to make small talk.

If you are an extrovert, you might be thinking “that sounds like a really good time!” For me, that sounds like torture. I get very anxious when I have to talk to several people at the same time. I am much more comfortable in intimate 1-1 conversations.

I do understand the importance of making connections with other people. I have been sober for 28 year, I’ve been married for 25 years, I have worked in my chosen field for 30+ years.

I understand how important my relationship with other people is. I know that I cannot do this alone. I need help (see my essay “I Need Help” for more about this….).

I do participate in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. But instead of having 100 close friends (I don’t even know if that is possible), I have a handful of people that I consider very close friends. They are friends for life. They know everything about me, and I know everything about them.

If you are an introvert, and you are new to AA (or any other twelve step fellowship), please know that you can recover every bit as much as the extroverted people.

Find one or two people that you really trust, and get close to them. Sit next to them at meetings. Call them, and try to get to know them. Just as importantly, let them get to know you.

If you are like me, you also need help getting sober and staying sober. You may not wind up with hundreds of friends in recovery, but you might wind up with a few very close friends for life, as well as a wonderful life in sobriety.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

The Taping Pit

The Grateful Dead played more than 2300 concerts between 1964 and 1995. They were known for their unique improvisational style, and also their unique way of bringing their music to their fans.

Most bands in the 1960s and 1970s recorded albums, and did a little bit of touring to support the sales of the album. The Grateful Dead did things the opposite way. They would do a little bit of recording, in order to support their ability to go out on the road and bring their music directly to their fans.

They loved playing their music in front of fans. They felt that what they were doing couldn’t be properly expressed in the confines of a recording studio. They enjoyed looking into the audience and seeing (and hearing) their fans singing along with songs that had never been recorded on an album. (When your fans know the words to songs that haven’t been recorded on an album, you have dedicated fans).

The Grateful Dead were the first band to allow their fans to tape their shows. That was revolutionary at the time. Their record company tried to stop the fans from recording, but the band said “once we play a concert, we are done with it-let the fans have it!” So many people wanted to tape their shows that the Grateful Dead set up a special section for tapers, called “The Taping Pit”. The taping pit at a Grateful Dead show typically looked something like this:

Deadheads would tape the shows of the Grateful Dead, and then listen to those tapes. They also would make copies of those tapes, and trade them with their friends. Most Deadheads initially heard the Grateful Dead by listening to these homegrown concert tapes.

The members of The Grateful Dead were initially surprised when they saw people recording their concerts and following them from town to town. They were amazed at the response, and the dedication required to tape them and follow them around.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I was one of those people that followed the band from town to town. I loved the idea that every show was different (they never played the same setlist twice), and even when they did play the same song a few days apart, that song would be played differently.

I went to a lot of Grateful Dead shows, because there was always the possibility of magic when the house lights went down.

Like the Grateful Dead, I am trying to make magic. But instead of making musical magic, I am trying to make recovery magic. Like The Grateful Dead, I want to give it away to as many people as I can. I love what I do. I am ridiculously lucky to be able to write for people who love to read my writing.

So if you want to set up microphones in The Taping Pit and record this, go ahead. If you want to share it with other people, go ahead. If you want to copy it and use it or read it to someone else, go ahead. The record company may not like it, but what does the record company know?

Eight weeks into the life of this site, we have an email subscription list, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and people are subscribing with an RSS feed. We will soon launch an Instagram page, because I think younger people will connect better that way.

Now it’s time for the house lights to go down. Let the magic begin….

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

Meetings When I Travel

On page 162 of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”, Bill W. wrote “someday we hope that every alcoholic who journeys will find a Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at his destination”. These were amazing words for him to write, because at the time he wrote them, there were fewer than 100 recovering alcoholics in Ohio and New York.

Eighty years later, alcoholics journey all the time. I am one of them. I was lucky enough to go on a vacation in the first year of my sobriety. My sponsor suggested that I should attend a meeting (or 7) while on vacation. He explained to me that my alcoholism didn’t take vacations, even if I did.

I promised him that I would go to meetings, and I am so glad that I did. I remember those meetings even though 28 years have passed.

I am now in a position where I travel overseas for work. So I make it a point to go to meetings when I travel for work. As of today, I am lucky enough to have attended AA meetings in 14 countries.

I hope that you do not mind if I share some of my experience in locating and attending meetings when I travel. I hope that my experience is helpful for you.

It helps me to do a little bit of research before I travel. Since I have an internet connection at home (and I don’t necessarily have one in every destination), it helps to find a meeting schedule in advance, and print it out.

It helps me to commit to someone else (my sponsor, my wife) that I will go to a meeting when I am travelling. The truth is that travel is hard. Sometimes I don’t have a lot of energy after flying for 14 hours. But since I have made a commitment to someone else, I feel obligated to go to a meeting.

It helps to have cell phone (mobile) service when I travel. If you travel internationally, make sure your cell phone works in your destination. This is helpful for navigating from your hotel (or apartment) to a meeting.

It is really helpful to do a bit of mapping, in advance, if you are travelling to a large foreign city. Some places are complicated. Going to meetings in Tokyo, for example, is very complicated (at least to me). The layout of the city was confusing for me the first time I travelled there.

One of the great benefits of going to meetings in other places is that I have met wonderful people, and attended some of the best meetings I’ve ever been to. Here are a couple of travel stories from some of those meetings:

1) My wife and I attended a meeting in Bermuda. At the meeting, three gentlemen started talking to us, and were surprised that we were attending a meeting where this meeting was located. They graciously noted that the neighborhood was not very safe for visitors, and they escorted us to the bus after the meeting. Theirs was a kindness I have not forgotten many years later.

2) I recently attended a sunrise beach meeting in Florida. I did very little advance preparation (I ignored my own advice) and I came to the meetings with only a towel. I noted that every other person at the meeting had a beach chair, but I didn’t think much of it. A few minutes into the meeting, I felt some pain in my feet and my ankles, and I realized that I was being eaten alive by a swarm of fire ants. I spent the rest of the meeting watching these ants carry parts of my body away for breakfast. Next time I’ll bring a chair.

3) This year I visited Africa for the first time. I arranged to attend a meeting in Johannesburg. I connected with a wonderful man at Intergroup, and he picked me up at my hotel and took me to the meeting. The people there were so passionate about their sobriety. One thing they did that I’ve never seen before- they lit a Serenity Prayer candle at the start of the meeting. I stared at that candle for an hour, during one of the best meetings I’ve ever attended.

4) Lastly, I attended a meeting many years ago in Hawaii. At the end of the meeting, it was the chairperson’s prerogative on how to close the meeting. This chairperson announced that we were going to hold hands, and sing the first two verses of “Mustang Sally”. I kid you not, we sang the first two verses of Mustang Sally.

I do hope that you have the opportunity to attend some meetings when you travel. And as it says on page 164 of the Big Book, “may God bless you and keep you until then”.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

Meditations on Anonymity

What is anonymity? Why do we need to maintain anonymity? What is the Eleventh Tradition all about?

The Eleventh Tradition states “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”. I’m going to focus on the highlighted part that states “we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films”.

Why do we need to maintain anonymity? There are a few reasons. For the best discussion, it’s best if you go read the Eleventh Tradition in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. But briefly, imagine if a movie star or rock star goes on TV and talks about getting sober. Then imagine if that star then quickly relapses. You can imagine that someone at home might think “getting sober doesn’t work-it didn’t work for Johnny Rockstar”. In addition, if you weren’t a fan of Johnny Rockstar anyway, you might think “maybe that sobriety thing isn’t for me- I never liked that guys music very much”.

So one potential way of breaking with the Eleventh Tradition is not staying anonymous enough.

Another potential way of breaking with the Eleventh Tradition is staying too anonymous. I don’t hear as much about this (compared to not staying anonymous enough) in my recovery community. There is a good discussion of this topic on pages 264-265 of the book “Dr. Bob & The Good Oldtimers”. I won’t repeat it all, but Dr. Bob was quoted as saying “If I gave my name as only “Dr. Bob” without my last name, people who needed my help would have a hard time getting in touch with me”. He was quoted as saying “there were two ways to break the Eleventh Tradition: by giving your name at the level of press or radio, or being so anonymous that you can’t be reached by other alcoholics”.

In my recovery community, people know my name. I’m on my home group’s telephone list. I have a unique name, and I’m easy to contact.

What about anonymity in the Internet Age? The Eleventh Tradition only states “….anonymity at the level of press, radio and films”. It doesn’t mention the internet, because the Eleventh Tradition (and all of the Traditions) were developed in the late 1940’s and published for the first time in 1953.

AA published a Guideline on the Internet (https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/mg-18_internet.pdf), which notes that “the internet and social media are implicit in the last phrase of Tradition Eleven which states at the level of press radio and films”. In other words, anonymity should apply on social media and the internet. A bit further in the Guideline, the authors note that “AA’s do not publicly identify themselves using full names or full-face photographs”.

Because of that, you won’t find my name on this site. I decided to use a pseudonym: The Recovering Urchin.

So there you have it. It is possible to be not anonymous enough and break the Eleventh Tradition. It is also possible to be too anonymous and break the Eleventh Tradition.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

The Purity of the Message

I attended a meeting this week where the topic was the Eighth Tradition. The Eighth Tradition states “Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers”. We also touched on the Sixth Tradition, where the second part of the tradition states “…lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose”.

Our “primary purpose” in AA is to stay sober, and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. If you are a member of another twelve-step fellowship, your fellowship has a primary purpose focused on something else-but the principle is the same. You have a primary purpose.

One of the reasons that the message of recovery works is because it is pure. When I hear the message of recovery in a meeting, I know two things about that message:

1) The person who is sharing it has had the same (or similar) experiences as me.

2) The person who is sharing it is sharing it freely, without thought of personal gain or profit.

They aren’t charging me anything to hear that message. They are sharing that message because they have the same primary purpose that I do.

If I thought that someone in a meeting was there to make a profit off of me, I would have the same type of skepticism that I have when I go to purchase a car. I know that the salesperson is there to make money off of me (I’m sorry if you’re a salesperson, I am not a very trusting buyer). In the back of my mind, I wonder if the salesperson wants the best for me, or if that person just wants my money.

People who go to twelve-step meetings aren’t selling anything to anyone. There is no profit motive. As it says in the Preamble, “….there are no dues or fees. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking”.

That is a pure situation, as pure as it was when first designed in the late 1930’s. Had it been any less, I don’t know if I would have stayed for a second meeting to hear the rest.

With Love,

The Recovering Urchin

Roll Call

When I was in elementary school, my teachers assigned us seats in every class, and they took “roll call”. Roll call meant that the teacher read out the names of the students, and we had to respond if we were present. (By the end of the first week, the teacher could take attendance without roll call, once the teacher knew our names).

The point of Roll Call is to know who is present, and who is absent. The point is also to make it obvious that someone is taking attendance, and to show that there are consequences for not attending class.

I sit in the same seat at every meeting. I receive some good-natured teasing about this, but I have a reason why I do it. I do it because I want my home group to know if I am present or absent. (Unless I am travelling, I am present. I have been present at my home group for almost every meeting for the past 25 years).

I apologize if this offends you-but twelve step groups and meetings are easy to disappear from. It is too easy to sit in the back, be invisible, and stop attending. That is not what I want from my recovery. I want to be right in the middle of the pack, present and accounted for, at every meeting that I attend.

I want to act like my life depends on my recovery, because it does.

When I was young, I learned to swim at a crowded public swimming pool. The lifeguards used “the buddy system” for our safety in the pool. Everyone in the pool had to have a “buddy”- someone who we stayed with at all times in the pool. When the lifeguard blew the whistle, we were supposed to check on our buddy, and make a lot of noise if we couldn’t find them. Between the times of whistle checks, if our buddy was in trouble, we were supposed to make a lot of noise.

We took some responsibility for the welfare of our buddies. We did that in the swimming pool. We do that in my family. I try to do that in my recovery, too. If someone is floundering, I try to help. If I am floundering, I want someone to call the lifeguard (my sponsor, my wife, anyone).

I sometimes wish that we took Roll Call at meetings.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

The Most Important Thing

Several years ago, I made a list of all the people I knew who had 30+ years of sobriety. I referred to these people as “oldtimers”. My list was a small one at the time. I knew five people who had 30-40 years of sobriety, and two people had 40+ years of sobriety. That meant that I knew seven people with at least 30 years of continuous sobriety. (I had met a couple of people who had more, but only met them once or twice, and didn’t know them on a first name basis).

I decided to ask these seven oldtimers the following question: “what is the most important thing in your life?”

I have asked a lot of people this question. I have asked people in the rooms of AA, and I have also asked work colleagues, relatives, and friends who are not in recovery. It is a great conversation starter at a party or a work function. I have heard many answers, like “my spouse”, “my children”, “my pet”, “my career”, and many others. And all of those answers are correct. There is no right or wrong answer. Whatever your answer is, is the most important thing in your life.

When I asked the seven oldtimers what the most important thing was in their lives, they all said “my recovery” or “my sobriety”. (One fellow did say “my relationship with my Higher Power”, but I think that is close enough). None of them said “my career” or “my investment portfolio”. They all mentioned recovery.

I think that it is significant that all of the people I knew who had long term sobriety said that their recovery was the most important thing in their lives.

A couple of weeks later, I realized that I had to ask these seven oldtimers another question. I went back to them, and I shared with each of them that they all answered the “most important thing” question the same.

Then I asked each of them, “how did recovery become the most important thing in your life?” Within 60 seconds, all seven of them mentioned working the Twelve Steps.

Several years have passed since I asked these questions of the seven oldtimers. Luckily for me, I now know five people with 40+ years of continuous sobriety, and another twenty-five people with 30+ years of sobriety.

I have asked all of these people the same “most important thing” question, and always receive the same answer.

I know that recovery from alcoholism is supposed to be done “a day at a time”. So I hope that I do not offend you with what I am about to say. Someday, I want to be an oldtimer with 50 or 60 years of continuous sobriety. That looks really attractive to me.

I believe that the way for that to happen is that my recovery must be the most important thing in my life. I also believe that I need to continue working the twelve steps in my life, a day at a time.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin