Tag: newcomers

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

My 38th Street Bridge Blackout

My friend Michael suggested that I write about a couple of my blackouts. He thought it would be helpful for some of the newcomers visiting this site. Here is one of them.

So let me set the scene…..it was 1979, I was going to school in West Philadelphia. I was 17 years old, and I was working in a bar call Doc Watson’s. (Go back and read that again-I was 17, and working in a bar).

Doc Watson’s was a dive bar. College students could get a cheap pitcher of beer and a pizza for about $5. From Thursday night through Sunday night, the place was always packed. I waited tables, delivered pizza and beer to my classmates, and made at least $100 in tips every night. One hundred dollars a night was a lot of money forty years ago.

My shift was from 4pm until 2 am, two to three nights a week. The hours from 4pm until 9pm were kind quiet, with the pizza-eaters. At about 9pm, the beer drinkers came in, and the bartenders filled pitchers of beer as fast as they could.

Doc Watsons was where I learned to drink hard. Up until then, I had a casual approach to my drinking. But at this bar, we had 15 minutes (from 2 am until 2:15 am) to clean up, and drink as much as we wanted for free. Since there was only 15 minutes between 2 am and 2:15, I spent less time on “cleaning up”, and more time on “drinking as much as I wanted for free”.

Over the course of several weeks, I learned how to drink at least a pitcher of beer in that 15 minute period. I learned to drink fast. That didn’t seem to be a problem for me. I lived about 4 blocks from the bar. I would get drunk, and glide back to my dormitory with a buzz and a hundred dollars in my pocket.

One night I lost track of how much I had to drink. (Everything I am about to share with you has been told to me by other people). I probably had at least 1 1/2 pitchers of beer in 15 minutes. I walked out of the bar, and headed for the 38th Street Bridge, which was a pedestrian bridge along my route back to my dormitory.

The route that I was SUPPOSED to take was:

1) leave the bar, walk one block

2) turn left, cross the bridge, walk two blocks

3) turn right, go one block to my dorm

Two turns, four blocks. I had done this walk a hundred times. I still have the map imprinted in my brain.

But on this night in 1979, I made it to the bridge, and I got lost. I crossed over the bridge three or four times. A campus police officer approached me, and asked me if I was lost. I don’t know what I said to the police officer, but if I had been honest, I would have sung from Blind Faith’s song and sung “I am wasted, and I can’t find my way home”.

Looking back at that evening, there are several things that seem remarkable to me now:

I was four blocks from my dorm, I had walked that route a hundred times, and I was so blindly drunk that I got lost.

A police officer escorted me back to my dorm, and delivered me to my roommate.

I did not freeze to death. I did not fall off the bridge and die. I did not get arrested.

I saw nothing wrong with what had happened. Neither did anyone else. Not my school, not my roommate, not my co-workers. But especially not me.

I repeated most of that evening many more times while I worked at that bar.

Why do I write this for you?

If you are a newcomer, you should know that blackouts happen to alcoholics. Blackouts are memory losses that happen when we have way too much to drink. Normal drinkers don’t have blackouts, because normal drinkers don’t drink that much.

I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize that I had blackouts until I went to rehab and someone explained to me what was happening.

I haven’t had a blackout like that since I got sober.

If you get sober, you won’t have any more blackouts either.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

Seven Things My Sponsor Suggested

When I was about 90 days sober, I thought I was going to drink again. I knew what “drinking again” felt like. I had previously relapsed four times in the last 18 months of my active alcoholism, after repeatedly vowing to never drink again.

After a Tuesday night meeting at St. Asaph’s, I approached my sponsor, and I told him the truth-that I felt like I was going to drink again. He reached for a piece of paper, and he quickly wrote the following:

I still have this piece of paper, 28 1/2 years later. Of course I do-it helped save my life. What did he write on that piece of paper?

1) Ask God for help staying sober in the morning. My recovery doesn’t come from me. My recovery is a gift from a Higher Power. I am convinced of that. On April 30, 1990, I got down on my knees, crying, and said “Help me God”. God helped me that day. Two days later I was at my first AA meeting, and I haven’t had a drink since. So I don’t mind asking my Higher Power for help. I need it. For more on this topic, see my essay “I Need Help”.

2) Thank God at night for that sober day. Every day that I have asked for help staying sober, I have been kept sober. Every one. As of today, that is 10,379 days. So I thank my Higher Power at night for this sober day.

3) Go to a meeting. At the time, my sponsor was gravely concerned about my sobriety, so he suggested that I go to a meeting every day. So I did. I don’t get to a meeting every day now, but I do have substantial contact with the program every day. Every day I listen to the First Step or the Second Step in my car, and talk to another alcoholic. When I’m on an airplane (a frequent happening in my life) I listen to a meeting on my phone.

4) Call your sponsor. My sponsor is one of my role models. I speak to him as much as I can. For more about this topic, see my essay “Role Models”. My sponsor always changes my perspective when I speak with him.

5) Read the Big Book. I believe that the first 164 pages of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”, (also known as “The Big Book”) represent the best spiritual writing I’ve ever read. I have copies of all four editions of the Big Book, as well as copies on CD and on my phone. When I can’t get to a meeting, I read or listen to the Big Book.

6) Avoid Hungry, Angry, Lonely & Tired (“HALT”). Alcoholics are susceptible to “triggers”- things that make us susceptible to a drink. For me, some of those triggers include being hungry, angry, lonely or tired. In order to practice self-care, I need to avoid these triggers, using tools like having a healthy snack, talking to my sponsor, being with my family and friends in recovery, and taking a nap.

7) If all else fails, help another alcoholic. On page 89 of the Big Book, it says “frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives”. It’s true. Speaking with a sponsee, or another alcoholic in distress, helps me like nothing else can.

Now there is a postscript to this story. I looked at the list my sponsor handed me, and I asked him if doing these things would help me recover from alcoholism. I was absolutely certain that he was going to say yes. But instead, he said no. So I asked him what this list of seven tasks was, and he explained to me that since I thought I was going to drink, I needed to do these seven things every day until the feeling passed (and for a long time after, as well).

I then asked him what I think is the most important question I’ve ever asked any person: What do I need to do to recover from alcoholism? And he answered, “if you want to recover from alcoholism, you need to work the twelve steps”.

We started working the twelve steps together that same Tuesday night, and my life has not been the same since. I’ll write a lot more about the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous on this site. Those steps are the most important gift I’ve ever been given.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

Recovery Resources

When I work with newcomers, I try to work the Twelve Steps with them. I encourage them to attend as many meetings as possible (a “90 in 90”), especially as they begin their journey. I encourage them to have a sponsor, and a prayer life, if possible.

What follows is a list of additional ideas for people in recovery, especially for those times when a meeting or a sponsor is not available.

Speaker Recordings: I almost called these “speaker tapes”, because when I first came into recovery, the speakers were recorded on tape. That was a while ago. There are thousands of recordings of speakers available in almost every twelve step fellowship. If you do an internet search on “twelve step speakers”, several sites display. Many of these speakers are available as free downloads. (This is useful for those of you who travel by airplane a lot).

Telephone meetings: do an internet search on “twelve step telephone meetings”. Most Twelve Step fellowships have telephone or internet meetings. I don’t find them as useful as face-to-face meetings, but there are times I cannot attend a face-to-face meeting, and a substitute is helpful for me.

Using the Telephone – it is easy to collect telephone numbers. For me, it is difficult to use those numbers. I try to practice my dialing skills 2-3 times a week at a minimum.

Literature – I cannot emphasize enough how important the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) and the “12/12” (The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) have been to me. There are now electronic, searchable versions of these books available for download, or available on the internet for browsing. E-readers are useful for finding a favorite passage, when I can’t remember where the passage is in the literature. They are also helpful for reading on an airplane, because there is no book cover to hide. There are also audiobooks available for some of the most popular recovery texts.

Joe and Charlie – I will write about them in more detail sometime later, but I strongly encourage people in recovery to listen to the full Joe and Charlie series. For the uninitiated, Joe McQ and Charlie P were two fellows who started a 12 hour (approximately) study of the Big Book, and the Twelve Steps. They conducted hundreds of weekend-long workshops. One of my sponsors told me “Joe and Charlie changed my recovery”. I encourage you to listen to them.

E-mail and Text lists: some of my friends have started e-mail and text distribution lists as a way to stay in touch with each other. Some send daily text “Thought for Today” messages. These are nice recovery reminders.

With Love,

The Recovering Urchin