Tag: sobriety

Page 87

Several years ago, one of my colleagues sent an email to his boss’s boss. He sent the email in anger. The email was typed in capital letters, with multiple colored fonts. Some of it wasn’t very nice. There were curse words and accusations. He lost his job the next day.

My guess is that he regretted hitting the “Send” button on that email.

One of my friends in the program likes to say “let’s think about Page 87” when things get heated. Anytime there is a clash of personalities, or someone gets upset, he says “it’s Page 87 time!”

He is referring to a passage in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, on (you guessed it) page 87, that states “…we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action”. A couple of sentences later it says “we are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity or foolish decisions”.

My guess is that the colleague who sent the email in different color fonts (and lost his job) would have benefited from pausing.

I attended a training course at work a few years ago, and they described “the 24 hour rule”. The idea was that any time I see an email that makes me want to yell, I should wait 24 hours before responding. In other words, I should pause. (By the way, I am convinced that World War III is going to start with an email).

In our society, we put so much emphasis on acting quickly, on responding right now. That makes a lot of sense if you work in an emergency room, but for the rest of us, it pays to wait sometimes.

I use this tool at home a lot. I will ask for a day to think about something (“can I think about this overnight and get back to you?”), and I wait. That gives me time to ask my sponsor, or one of my role models. I can pray and meditate. Whatever I do, if I take my time, I avoid some foolish decisions this way.

Just after the text on page 87, at the top of page 88, is a one sentence paragraph:

“It works -it really does”.

They were right. It really does.

With Love,

The Recovering Urchin

Honesty

Early in my sobriety, my wife and I received our monthly credit card bill. My wife noticed that there was a $1500 credit. The credit was a mistake-it should not have been on our bill. This was a big mistake. $1500 then was like $10,000 now.

My first reaction was “Shopping spree!” My wife (let’s call her Mrs. Urchin) reminded me that:

  • the money wasn’t ours
  • we had an obligation to notify the credit card company of the mistake
  • the credit card company was probably aware of it already anyway

She called the credit card company, and just as she had predicted, the company had already corrected the error.

I share this story with you because it shows that my first reaction is not my best reaction. I find it difficult to be honest sometimes. Dishonesty is one of my character defects.

I don’t think I am alone here. In the first 100 words of “How It Works”, the root word “honest” appears three times:

1) …”usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves”….

2) …”they are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty”….

3) …”but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest”.

In the first 164 pages of the Big Book, the word “honest” (or honesty, or dishonest) appears 38 times.

It must be an important part of sobriety.

Bill W. understood this. Several times he wrote about Fear, Selfishness, Resentment and Dishonesty in the Big Book as the primary character defects to be analyzed (and hopefully relieved).

My experience is that dishonesty with others is only part of the problem. I understand that it is wrong to lie to other people. I think I do much better with this today. But for some reason, I struggle to be honest with myself. The word for this is “denial”. I was in denial for years about my alcoholism. I have company here. I recently heard someone say that “my alcoholism was bad only for the last 15 years”. Only 15 years?!

I have blind spots in my life. There are things that are present in my life that I don’t want to see, so I choose not to see them. Then other people take a quick glance at me, and they see those things immediately.

My sponsor and my wife (two of my role models) help me with this. They gently nudge me towards seeing the truth about myself. They help me with those blind spots that I can’t see.

Lord, help me to be honest with others, and myself, today.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

What’s The Problem?!

About 35 years ago, I was driving a clunker of a car. One day I hit a pothole in my city, and my car started making a lot of noise. I thought the noise might be my muffler, so I drove to the muffler shop. I told the mechanic that I thought I had a muffler problem. He lifted my car up on the jack, took one look at the underside of my car, and said “the problem is that you no longer have a muffler”.

I have a friend who likes to ask “What’s the problem?” when he hears people complaining. What he means is that he wants to know what the root cause is. Until he understands what the problem is, he can’t possibly know what the solution is.

When I first realized that I had a problem with alcohol and drugs, I decided that I was going to quit. That seemed like a reasonable solution. I thought that the problem was alcohol and drugs, and that the solution was quitting.

So I quit (“once and for all, I swear I mean it this time!”). I quit “once and for all” four different times in the last 18 months of my active alcoholism. I did not understand why I kept relapsing after I had quit with the best of intentions. After all, hadn’t I quit forever?

At my home group, I sometimes share that “the problem isn’t alcohol”. That seems like a provocative thing to say at an AA meeting. I believe it to be true.

I believe it to be true for several reasons. The first reason is that that is consistent with what is in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. On page 103, it says “our bottles were only a symbol” (of our problems). On page 64, it says “our liquor was but a symptom”.

I also believe that alcohol isn’t the problem because I quit “once and for all” four different times. If alcohol was the problem, then quitting would have been the solution.

Lastly, I can share with you that my life actually got worse early on in AA. I was abstinent for 90 days in AA, but I was in so much pain that I finally asked my sponsor for help. If alcohol had been the problem, shouldn’t I have gotten much better after 90 days of not drinking?

So as my friend likes to ask- What’s The Problem?

I believe that the problem is that I do not know how to live my own life. That is a difficult thing to admit. In my culture, and my upbringing, I was taught to show self-confidence, and never admit problems publicly. Admitting problems would not be consistent with “keeping up with the Joneses”.

But in AA, after working through the Twelve Steps, I finally had to admit that I had made quite a mess of my life. Only with the help of AA, my sponsor, and the Twelve Steps, have I been able to reconstruct my life and rebuild trust with my family and friends.

So I ask you-if you are struggling to stay sober, or if you are struggling with some major life problems- what’s the problem? The problem may not be what you think it is.

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

I Need Help

I heard someone say at a meeting that three of the most spiritual things she had learned
were:

I need help
I was wrong
I don’t know

I certainly need help. I need help staying sober. I have had that demonstrated to me again and again. At the end of my active alcoholism, I tried to quit drinking, once and for all (I mean it this time!) four different times. Four different times I stopped temporarily.

The first time I stopped, I lasted about a week. The last time I stopped, I couldn’t make it through 24 hours. When I was finally introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous, a gentleman shared his story, and explained to me what worked for him (the Twelve Steps). He also explained to me that he attended AA meetings frequently, and that meeting attendance helped him to stay sober.

I listened to him, I followed his advice, and I haven’t had a drink or a drug since that date. That was May 2, 1990.

Frequent attendance at AA meetings helps me to stay sober. I need the experience, strength and hope that I find at every AA meeting.

I need help with more than only the “not drinking”. I need help and direction in how I live my life. I wrote an essay entitled “Role Models”. I have four role models, and they show me how to live through their actions. They show me how to be the best father, husband, son, employee, and member of AA that I can be. They show me because they are the best parents, spouses, employees, and sober people that I know.

They truly are role models.

When I was young, I remember saying “I can do it myself”. That may have been an acceptable strategy when I was a toddler, but it doesn’t work for me anymore. I have no problem asking for help with car maintenace, lawn mowing, income tax preparation, or medical advice. But for some reason, I sometimes think it is a good idea to “go it alone” on really important things. In the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, there is a passage that states “It is worth noting that people of very high spiritual development almost always insist on checking with friends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel they have received from God”.

If people of very high spiritual development can ask for help, why can’t I?

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin

Welcome to The Recovering Urchin!

Welcome to The Recovering Urchin. This is a website for recovering alcoholics and addicts, and people who love us.

I am a recovering alcoholic and addict. I have been sober for 36 years (as of November 2026), and I believe that my experience, strength and hope can benefit others, and hopefully help someone recover from alcoholism/addiction. I will share my story sometime soon, in a post on this website.

You are probably wondering “why use The Recovering Urchin as a website name?” Good question. Some of the answer has to do with AA’s Traditions, and some of it has to do with me.

AA’s Eleventh Tradition notes that “we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films”. That was published in 1950, and it is as true today as it was when it was written. When it was written, there was no internet. Had the internet existed in 1950, the Eleventh Tradition would state “at the level of press, radio, films and the Internet”. An A.A. Guideline on the Internet notes that “the internet, social media, and all forms of public communications are implicit in the last phrase of the short form of Tradition Eleven, which reads “at the level of press, radio and films””. The Guideline later notes that we should avoid using our full name, or full-face photographs.

So you won’t see my full name or my photograph on this site. Because of the need for anonymity at the level of the Internet, I am using a pseudonym on this website: The Recovering Urchin. I am in recovery (36 years as of November 2026), and I refer to people as “urchins”. I don’t know why, but I do. I refer to my children as “the little urchins”, my wife as “Mrs. Urchin”.

I am the Recovering Urchin.

I promise you a few things about this website. First, I will remain anonymous. Second, I will not share any of your personal information with anyone, ever.

If I share parts of any of your stories (I am considering some guest blogs) I will either use only your first name, or a pseudonym.

I will try to write something recovery-related to you, about once a week. I may miss a few weeks for travel or work, but I will try.

I promise that all of the content on this site will be free.

There will not be a “Comments” section on this site, because I do not want to monitor the Comments section for trolls. I did that on another site, and it wasn’t any fun. So no Comments section.

I will try to share my experience, strength and hope with you, as it pertains to alcoholism and addiction. My hope is that my experience may benefit someone that I may never meet.

I will try to follow the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on this website to the best of my ability. Some of my recovering friends have promised to check on me, and let me know how I am doing. I will try to be free of resentment, fear, and ego on this site, unless I am sharing an experience where those topics are warranted.

I wish you peace in sobriety.

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

Role Models

Role models are incredibly important for me in recovery. Why are role models important? My role models show me healthy ways to live.

I believe that my problem in recovery is more than just a problem with alcohol and drugs. I believe that (by myself) I do not know how to live my life.

How do I know this? For one, I tried to quit (by myself) several times before I came around to AA. Four times I quit, “once and for all, I mean it this time”. And for times I stopped temporarily, only to go back to drinking and using.

I can also tell you that I had plenty to write about in my fourth step, and I had plenty to write about in subsequent fourth steps. I kept doing the same things in recovery that I had been doing in my alcoholism. There is a passage in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that notes that “our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions”.

So what did I do about that? Briefly, I worked the twelve steps with my sponsor, and I continue to do so. I try my best to practice these principles in all my affairs. But since I had no experience practicing a principled life, I had to find people who lived principled lives, and I tried to model my life on the way they are living their lives.

So here are some thoughts and observations on four of my role models. They are also my heroes.

I have four role models. These are people I have known and watched forever. One of my friends calls them “angels”. I won’t name them by name here, but they know who they are.

A few years ago, there was a TV commercial about role models. In that commercial, a famous athlete came on screen and said “I am not a role model”. He was incorrect. You don’t choose to be a role model. You are chosen to be a role model. And sometimes you don’t know that you’ve been chosen.

My role models have several things in common:

They have all been married to their original spouses, all the days of their lives. One of my role models has been married for 63 years, so far. My role models are all happily married, too. I know because I know their spouses. Their spouses are crazy about them, and would marry them again in a minute.

With their spouses, they are great parents. They provide their children with even better lives than they have had. They provide their children every possible opportunity in education, culture, athletics, arts….and they do it with great love.

They all work for a living- and they make it look really attractive. They don’t complain about it- they view it as a privilege. (A quick story- one of my role models is 90 years old. He still works for a living. He does my taxes. Whenever I ask him when he is going to retire, he replies “Retire?! Why would I do that? I love what I’m doing!”) These 4 people never ever call out sick. Why is that? I think it because they love what they are doing. No matter what it is that they are doing, they do it with great love. They have great passion about their lives, and what they are doing with their lives.

None of them complain. Maybe that is because they love what they are doing?

A subtle trait- they are all great listeners. Whenever I speak with any of them, I notice that they give me their undivided attention. And they do that for everyone that they speak to. They make other people feel really important- and it is genuine. I know that they do that for everyone that they speak to. They aren’t looking at their smart phones, or watching TV. They don’t have headphones in their ears. They make time to speak with me, with total attention. And they do that for everyone.

They all give back to their communities. They do so in different ways (charitable foundations, coaching, mentoring programs, volunteering) and they do it with a great sense of purpose.

They show up when they say they are going to show up. They RSVP, too. For everything. For weddings, funerals, baptisms and Bar Mitzvahs. For dinner, and for coffee. For dates. For everything that they say they are going to show up for.

They all have an insatiable curiosity. They read a lot. They travel a lot. And they ask a lot of questions. They love to learn.

Interesting thing- they all love to eat. They eat with a passion. When food comes, they light up. Food isn’t just something that they eat- food is life for them. Meals get loud when they are around. Loud with laughter, and stories, and a lot of fun.

This is important-maybe most important- they have the highest integrity. I can’t stress this enough. They always (always!) do the right thing, regardless of the consequences to themselves. They do what they say they are going to do.

How do I know all of this? I watch them. I don’t ask them- I watch them very carefully. I watch what they do, not what they say.

Why do I write this? What is the point?

My role models lead very attractive lives. Each one of them has a life that looks like the kind of life that I want to live.

I like to say “when I grow up….”. When I grow up, I want to lead a life that looks like the kind of life my roles models lead. They live rich and rewarding lives. Lives that matter to them, and to those around them as well. They live purposeful lives. I have been blessed to know each one of them.

When I grow up, I want to be a great husband. And a great father. A great son, and a great brother. And a great employee. I want people to feel that they were lucky to know me. I want to be a great role model for someone else someday.

That day is today.

With Love,
The Recovering Urchin