I had attended my first AA meeting in the Alameda County Jail back in the early 60's when I lived in Oakland, California, and when they were still arresting people for public drunkenness and throwing them in jail. The first time I did 10 days. "Hell, that was easy" ... jail time, not the fact that I had once again brought my life to a halt. It caused my wife at the time real concern, but I could shuffle it into the past with hardly a blip on my mental radar ... other than noting it was a blip in a string of blips, some not so minor. This time though it was a little remorse until I got through the hangover, and then it was back on the streets and home.
The next time they gave me 90 days. I'd get out in 60 with time off for good behavior. It got me thinking a bit more about what was going on in my life. When the opportunity to attend an AA meeting in jail came up — they weren't mandatory — I used it to break the routine.
There I learned I was an alcoholic. Heck-o-dern, what a relief that was! I had begun to think that I might be going nuts. I was an alcoholic. Now all I had to do was learn how to control my drinking. No problem.
Those thirty-some years later I was going to another AA meeting, this time wanting to do whatever it took to stop the pain I was causing the people I cared about by slowly not just killing myself, but by destroying almost everything I touched.
Notes & References:
Forty-two personal stories of recovery from alcoholism can be found in the AA Big Book available online at www.aa.org/bigbookonline/.
The website of Alcoholics Anonymous is www.aa.org
The link to the Big Book of AA is www.aa.org/bigbookonline/
The link to finding AA meetings is www.aa.org/lang/en/meeting_finder.cfm
The above websites are available in English, Español, and Français.
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