What is the message? My experience. When I first came to AA I didn’t think I needed to stop drinking, and I thought AA was some Christian religious organization. I only stayed for two meetings. Two good things happened: I heard a lady give the main share, she was respectable, she spoke eloquently, but she told a story so horrific it sounded like something from the movies. She had obviously recovered. I also heard someone speak about being paranoid the morning after a binge. I related strongly to this – I too felt paranoid most mornings, and it was only now that I considered it might be the drink.
I then stayed away from AA for two years. My drinking got worse. Over my drinking history I burned the backs of my hands with cigarettes, attacked people I loved in black outs, drank beer with my breakfast, drove my family to tears, couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, felt hopeless self-hatred, saw life as pointless, became afraid to leave my room, hid from those who cared most about me, built up debts, wasted opportunities, and was kept in an overnight cell for violence. Then I woke up one morning and couldn’t imagine life with or without alcohol. This brought me back to AA.
I came to one meeting a week, and still drank at weekends. Eventually someone managed to get me to coffee, and after the initial social terrors, I was amazed to find how comfortable I found talking to another alcoholic. This person got me to buy and read the Big Book and go to lots of meetings. He also said that my family didn’t need to spend thousands sending me to a treatment centre, since I could recover in AA.
By this time I could see my potential future clearly: drinking until the Doctor told me to stop to stay alive. And then being unable to follow the Doctor’s advice, and falling back into drink, and going on in that miserable way to the end. With the whole of that procession being misery and agony, and many of the horrors of alcoholism I hadn’t yet progressed to. I knew I had a fatal progressive illness. But I also had a tiny bit of faith, in AA, and in the Big Book. I soon met someone who seemed to be an example of what I’d been reading in the Big Book. He became my sponsor and I made an important decision: whatever this person suggested, I would do – without question. I knew my rebellious arrogant mind was my own worst enemy, and I was determined to defeat it, and not to join the procession of hopeless drunks through history.
Six months later I’d done the 12 steps and had a spiritual experience. How can I describe to a still-suffering alcoholic the feeling of having a lifelong obsession removed? The weight coming off my shoulders. The sense of having a place in the world, of a life worth living? This is the message I have to carry – 9 years of sobriety, with many times of great joy and happiness. A fulfilling sober life, never feeling the need for a drink, and all through the 12 Steps. If there was one big piece of experience I would emphasis to a still-suffering alcoholic it would be: picking my sponsor with the Big Book.
And how do I carry this message? (Well one way is as I am doing now, by writing for Share.) I first began doing it right from the beginning by going up to people newer than myself (i.e. newer than a few weeks!) and offer my hand and my phone number. I rang them on the telephone to see how they were. I started going on 12 Step calls with my sponsor, and I began sharing my message in meetings, in 5 minute chunks a few times a week. By participating in my home group I ensure da venue and time where the message can be carried, without fail, every week. I ensured the existence of a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts, which a power greater than myself could act through. Any group service: tea, cleaner, secretary, GSR, is a service that enables the carrying of the message, and so is really a part of carrying the message itself.
Other conduits for the message are the area helpline, and the PICPC officers, who carry the message through newspapers, radios and professionals. These are all co-ordinated through Intergroup committees. Therefore, after a couple of years experience, I went on to serve as an Intergroup PICPC officer. There is also literature which sits on the table at meetings, and carries the message so successfully to newcomers, the 12 step packs, the big books. They come through our “General Service” structure. The General Service Board in the UK and the USA ensure this literature exists and is published. These national and international bodies are as important in carrying the message as a 12 step call is. Also the structure in AA that links the groups and Intergroups to the General Service Board is providing a vital service that keeps the whole machine of literature production, telephone and so forth, running successfully. This link is the Regions and the Conference. So it was that I eventually rotated into Region PICPC, and I take an active part in the UK Conference. I send in questions, I send in answers to the questions that are eventually accepted to Conference. And recently I joined the national literature committee. I help to carry the message.
My experience of carrying the message is wide ranging, from the single newcomer, to the group, the region, and the nation. Each stage as vital as the last, each saving lives. But the main life that is saved in all of this is mine: by practicing Step 12 and doing service I stay sober, alive and fulfilled. This is why I carry the message.
AK, Plymouth Road to Recovery Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, Nov 2007
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