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When I was new, about all I could understand was that I needed to stop drinking, something I still saw as about the only really enjoyable thing I did, at least when it didn't come with the unpleasant side effects that were becoming all too frequent. But stopping drinking for a while seemed to be my best hope for keeping my job, so I was willing to try it. Sometimes a chairman would end a meeting by saying, "You can leave this room and need never drink again." and that sounded more like a curse than a blessing. With drinking stories dominating almost all the meetings in Sydney then, 1974, I thought other members were confirming what seemed obvious at that time, that the problem was alcohol and the solution was sobriety, although it didn't seem to be working for me as I felt crazier than when I was drinking. I was "restless, irritable and discontent" along with anxious, fearful and increasingly angry. It was nice to wake up in a dry bed with no hangover and full memory of the night before, but my mood swings and the tension and turmoil inside me meant that coping with my job as a high school teacher was no easier, a job in which I still think they were out to get me. I eventually found that the new mental illness I'd discovered after I stopped drinking was alcoholism, the disease that surfaced when I stopped taking the drug that I'd been taking for nine years to deal with it. I had thought that my problem should have been solved when the compulsion to drink left, and had wondered what was wrong with me because it clearly wasn't. I eventually learned that inability to handle drinking was not the main problem. It was that I couldn't handle sobriety either, and that was the problem that the AA program was there to deal with. Unless that was dealt with I might have been stuck with a life of stopping drinking when it became intolerable, and then starting again when sobriety became intolerable too. One night in a cafe with other members after a meeting, one of them said, "If you didn't go through hell when drinking, you may do so in sobriety." That was scary at the time, and I didn't understand it, but I think I do now. If someone drinks himself into the gutter, life in sobriety has to be better almost from day one. For me there was a period when it wasn't at all clear that sobriety was better than drinking. But it was pretty clear to me that drinking was not the answer for me and there was hope that sobriety just might be, eventually. The turning point came when I heard a guy on a tape say that, "The second and fifth drinks are caused by alcohol, but the first one is caused by sobriety." I could then understand that I needed to get to meetings and work the Steps to handle living in sobriety, and that it had little to do with just being reminded not to drink. Being an alcoholic, a fish out of water, seemed like a terrible handicap when I was new, but I eventually could see how silly that attitude was when I pictured myself sitting on a street corner with a sign around my neck that said, "Can't Drink Socially." and realised that it wouldn't arouse much sympathy in anyone, including myself. In Japanese and Chinese, the word for crisis consists of two characters, one for danger and the other for opportunity. The crisis that got made me sick of myself and the way I was living that got me to AA was clearly one of those. It was a chance to get off the road to self-distruction and change my habits so I could stay on a new one that would eventually lead to serenity, happiness and contentment, finding a life much better than anything I could have found as a social drinker. I feel like I'm living in a paradise I never could have found directly, only by backing away from hell for many years in AA. I now think that the main reason I am still sober and sane after 35 years is that I never felt I didn't need AA. I have no fear of drinking again as long as I keep doing the things I do to maintain my sobriety and sanity, so there is little danger of getting crazy enough to drink again. I see sanity as the ability to adjust reality, something I really like now that I can see that it is not at all like the version that my fears once painted, something I needed to run away from. It used to sound nuts to me when someone said they were glad they were alcoholic. Only a nut would be glad they had a mental illness. I have never heard anyone say they were glad they were paranoid or schizo. But now I am glad that I am alcoholic, with AA, God and the wonderful and meaningful life I've found here. I used to agree with a guy on a tape who thought it was silly that some thought they would one day be happy all the time, but now I feel that I have been for several years. I feel that this will last as long as I keep doing what I do, and see no problem with doing that as there is nothing I would rather do. Jim in Tasmania |