What Is Your Sobriety Shelf Life?

CAMARADERIE NEVER KEPT ME FROM A DRINK FOR LONG! It did for two years – but two years is not permanent FREEDOM from alcohol. For many of us the shelf life of meeting induced sobriety is much shorter – some longer.

Nearly all of the people who came into my original Home Group at the same time I did are now dead.

I am the last alkie standing.

The rest are MIA. (See the numbers here: NECRORECOVEY)

We all knew each other. All of us fast became friends, hooking up with each other and other “drunks” in the group. We had lots of fellowship with each other that was very cool. We went “on commitments” with the group, took group jobs and we shared extramural coffee talks with old timers and each other on a regular basis. We went fishing and to the beach together. We all enjoyed camaraderie we never had while we were still out there “doing our thing”.

Those who did not – are now with the worms, under the dirt – and their families have had to put their short stays on earth behind them.

None of that kept any of us from relapsing – including me – except I lived through it an managed to come back, pick up the spiritual tools, and RECOVER. Thosde who did not – are now with the worms, under the dirt – and their families have had to put their short stays on earth behind them. It did not have to be. But it is how it is.

The Twelve Steps are designed to free the individual through spiritual awakening – not to enslave him to a fellowship that “Just doesn’t drink”. When folks, especially those sober for a while – come to AA meetings to “Become a part of” so that “Together we can do it” or “So I can get MY LIFE BACK” they are circumventing the sole purpose of the AA group – recreating a NEW purpose which was never intended by the co-founders.

Our how about these sick sons of bitches, who say, “I come to meetings to see what happens to people who don’t come to meetings”?

“Sobriety–the freedom from alcohol–through the teaching and practice of the twelve steps is the sole purpose of an A.A. group.” Bill W

Groups that are doing others things BEFORE this – having picnics, taking collections for hurricane victims, offering round robin “share” meetings called “open discussion” – for members to dump their problems, etc – usually find themselves putting these well intentioned activities ahead of the SOLE PURPOSE of the group and why they are supposed to be there in the first place. The justification is always that these things are of benefit to the newcomers. But that is THEIR OPINION. These things do not treat alcoholism.

Of what good is it for a newcomer to “feel like I belong” or to gain “friends I never had before” or to have “a place to go” instead of bar if he is not learning how we got back to God so God could remove the obsession to drink forever?

“The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.” (17:2)

Peace,

Danny S