The only important difference I see between high or lot bottoms is that people who go all the way down are more likely to find sobriety a definite improvement from day one, as things could hardly get worse. For me, after stopping drinking, it was nice wake up in a dry bed every morning with no hangover and a clear memory of the night before. But after a while that novelty wore off and I found myself facing the same job and living in the same place cold sober each day as my alcoholism rose back to the surface and the rough edges of life and myself became problems that Itended to blow out of proportion and react badly to. One night after a meeting I was sitting in a coffee shop with other members and one of them said something to me that he probably wouldn't have been game to say at a meeting as it would be too easily misunderstood. He said, "If you didn't go through hell while drinking, you are likely to do so in sobriety." I found that a bit scary and didn't understand it at the time. I now see it as meaning that, if drinking didn't get very bad before I got to AA, things would be likely to seem worse for a while before they start to seem better. In the meantime, what kept me going was the hope that recovery in AA would eventually make things better. The only alternative was to go back for drinking, and at least I had enough experience to know that wasn't the answer. When Ross Perot was running for US president, someone said that, if Ross Perot is the answer, it must be a pretty silly question. The same could be said of alcohol. |