My name is James and I am an alcoholic. There is a reason people say the first month of sobriety is the hardest — generally speaking, it is.
Getting sober in the first month was hard for me, and it was more like hanging on for dear life, and not so much on the recovery. Every day was difficult. Not only did I have to not drink, I also had to deal with the AA group with all of its nuttiness.
I did not like most of the people in AA, and most of them did not seem to like me. I was still more comfortable around the bar than I was around a bunch of sober drunks.
There was one thing that kept me in the rooms that I wanted badly; the people in AA knew how to stay sober and I did not.
For some reason, thank God, I knew I could not beat this alcohol thing on my own. I had lost. It seemed I had little choice — hang around this bunch of people I did not care for, or continue my misery with a wicked downward spiral.
So with great irritation, I decided that I hated what I had become more than I did not like sober people who smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much coffee. They told me to get a sponsor, or a guide to help me through the Steps, so I did. He was about the only man with any amount of time who would talk to me.
So he was it. I did everything that man said to do. Since he never asked me to do anything illegal or immoral, I thought “what the hell” — and the meetings! I went every day and sometimes 2 or 3 a day. That is pretty much all I remember about how I stayed sober the first 30 days.
The brain was still muddled and it is a blur to me today. All I did was hang in there by going to meetings and do what my sponsor told me to do. They told me that a monkey could have run my life better than I had done. With my track record, I concluded that they were probably right. So “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization” got me into AA.
The solution and the fact that the longer I was in AA the better things got, kept me in the rooms. Today I even like most of the people I did not want to be around. I do admit though I still feel a bit distant from them. Point is, even if I don’t fit in all the time, these AA guys still managed to help a drunken bum like me sober up and feel happy about being sober.
If you feel you don’t fit in, well, welcome to the club. If you want to be sober more than you want to be drunk, pull up a chair and prepare for the best part of your life, even if the start stinks for a bit. If I can do it, anybody can.
James
