From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

ABOUT ALCOHOLICS ANNONYMOUS

On the Purpose of A.A.

A.A. is for people who don’t want to drink anymore. It’s not for people who want to control it or learn to hold it better, but for those who just don’t want to drink at all anymore.

There are several things to notice in this quotation. First, it says nothing about alcoholics or alcoholism. I am an “alcoholic,” but A.A. wouldn’t refuse me if the word was too much for me to say. Second, A.A. is not for those who wish to cut down, change brands, or drink like ladies or gentlemen. A. A. is for those who want to stop. A final note is about the word “want”. Millions of alcoholics and alcohol abusers need to stop, but only those who want to stop will be helped by A.A.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Rules and A.A.

There are no “must” in A.A., but there are a lot of “you darned well betters.”

All the literature and traditions of the fellowship of A.A. are gentle, nonjudgmental, and persuasive. There aren’t any must. There are no “Thou shalt nots” in the A.A. Big Book or the Twelve and Twelve. A.A. members and A.A. groups are free to do as they wish. A.A., which is more than 50 years old, is a distillation of the experiences, good and bad, of millions of people. So when the wisdom of A.A or the group conscience recommends not doing something or not going somewhere, you are well advised not to do it or not to go there. It is worthwhile listening to the fellowship, because there is no problem, no situation, and no feeling you may experience that many people before you haven’t already experienced and survived sober. “Stick with the winners” remains very good advice, even if what the winners do doesn’t quite seem to be your cup of tea at the moment.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On the Nature of A.A.

This is a “Save-Your-Ass” program, not a “Save-Your-Soul” Program; we’re concerned with the here-and-now, not the Hereafter.

A.A. does not put down alcoholics. After all, we are dealing with people just like ourselves. Programs traditionally associated with a more moralistic view toward alcoholism – often with a specifically religious orientation – emphasize reformation of a sinner for the soul’s good. The alcoholic in crisis has a lousy self-image, and being prayed over usually accentuates this.

A.A. – being formed by, of, and for alcoholics – has a different view of things. We aren’t against religion; we merely recognize that religion, of itself, is not a part of recovery.

We must feel this way or else an alcoholic who lacks religion must either become religious or be rejected. We alcoholics know rejection; we aren’t going to practice it on our own kind.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Alternatives to A.A. for the Alcoholic

Death if you’re lucky, insanity if you’re not—take your pick.

To some people, this must seem heartless. Actually, it is heartfelt, because it is nothing less than the simple truth. In most cases, an alcoholic has only three alternatives: death, insanity, or abstinence. There are some who have learned to live without alcohol and without the fellowship of A.A. There are reputed to be a few who have learned how to go back to “normal drinking.” There aren’t, however, many in either category. As my sponsors said, “Before you go out to try it alone, consider the consequences if you gamble that you can make it on your own and find out you’re wrong!”

A.A. treats alcoholism as a progressive, irreversible, and terminal disease. Therefore, in A.A.’s way of thinking, the alcoholic can never return to social drinking, because the alcoholic can recover from alcoholism but cannot be cured.



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

ABOUT JOINING ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS: WHY AND HOW

On Reasons for Joining A.A.

People who come to A.A. for anyone but themselves are trying to swim with concrete flippers—it can be done, but it’s a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be.

Again and again, we see people who have come to A.A. because of their wives, husbands, bosses, judges, and so on. Unless these folks come to terms with their denial and compliance (for example, “I’ll agree to anything, if you’ll only shut up!”), they have less than average chances of success, If I’m not in A.A. to save my own fanny, I will most likely not get better.

I had a friend who sobered up the first time for her job; when she retired, she got drunk. She sobered up again, this time for her husband. But he died. And then so did she.



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Giving A.A. a Try
Try us for 90 day; if you’re not satisfied, we’ll refund all your miseries.

I didn’t believe them when they told me this. I was an “almost” alcoholic – almost divorced, almost fired, almost jailed, and almost killed. When I came to the program, life was just about intolerable. To an alcoholic, “intolerable” means “I’m having thoughts of suicide.” The A.A. people said “Go to 90 meetings in 90 days.” Because one of them was nearly always with me—either on the phone, at my doorstep, or riding with me on the commuter train—I did go to 90 meetings in 90 days.

After spending only 90 days in the fellowship of A.A. my life was a mess—it still is! With seven children, grandchildren, and assorted animals, my wife and I live in a soap opera. To tell the truth, we probably prefer it that way. But thoughts of suicide are gone. Some of the wounds in my family are healing. I’m acting like normal people do, getting up and going to work and even doing a good job. I sleep well at night. I eat like a pig. And, at the same time, I’ve lost around 30 pounds. My miseries have pretty much gone away—nothing dramatic, they’ve just gone away. And they haven’t been back, either!



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Insurance
You go to A.A. meeting for the same reasons you have insurance, for protection when you need it—and you would be in a hell of a place without it.

By this reasoning, A.A. meetings may be seen as premium payments. There are times when we have nothing within ourselves to withstand the temptation do drink. That’s why we have the insurance policy we acquire when we belong to A.A. and go to meetings regularly. I can remember my sponsor telling me that you can tell an A.A. member by his wallet or her purse full of phone numbers. Now that my won wallet has burst from being overstuffed with phone numbers, I understand the concept of A.A. as insurance.

The temptations we face as recovering alcoholics are often quite easy to overcome. But we never know when a temptation will come along that’s too much for us to handle alone. The cost of not being able to handle a temptation may to too high. A.A.’s position is that we can’t afford to let our God given insurance lapse, because we never know if we’ll receive the grace period to reinstate it. As my sponsors said, “We all have another drunk left in us; we don’t know whether we have another recovery in us.”



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Having an A.A. “Birthday”

Congratulations, but you really ought to know

that the Nth year is the dangerous one.

The “Nth year” is this year. The message is that the dangerous year of sobriety is the present. Years past are either successful or otherwise, and years to come aren’t here yet. There is a rather somber aspect to this quote, or at least it seemed so to me when I first heard it. My sponsor was having a meeting at his house in observation of his eleventh A.A. birthday. His sponsor, who at the time was 23 years sober, made the quote. I had less than a year of sobriety at the time, and it bothered me to think that the potential for relapse would exist as long as 23 years.

From my present vantage point, with about fifteen years under my belt, it is sobering to realize that my recovery is an ongoing process that can be interrupted anytime I pick up a drink, no matter how many years I may have with the A.A. program. I don’t worry about this a lot, but I do spend some time on each of my A.A. birthdays remembering that the key word for me is “recovering,” not “recovered.”



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

ABOUT ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS MEETINGS:

WHEN AND HOW MANY

On Going to Meetings (#1)

Nobody ever got drunk from going to A.A. meetings.

Obviously, the first benefit of going to A.A. meetings is that they keep one from drinking—at least for the period during the meeting. What my sponsors meant by their remark, I think, is more subtle. The act of going to an A.A. meeting is a form of commitment to A.A. and has a time value beyond the actual evening of the meeting. Even more than a time value, this commitment to A.A. is a commitment to what A.A. stands for, which is not drinking. That’s why the common response to many alcoholics’ complaints is, “Go to a meeting!”

Meetings have a wonderful therapeutic value. The day could be stormy, full of doubts and frustrated emotions, but going to meetings helps to hasten serenity. Do you have a problem with your recovery program? Take it to a meeting and let the group conscience work on it for a while, and you’ll be surprised and helped by the results.

If you’re in doubt about whether you should go to a meeting, resolve the question on the side of caution, and go. At least 99.9 percent of the time, it’s the right decision.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Going to Meetings (#2)

For an alcoholic, there is nothing more pressing than a meeting.

This was spoken to a new recruit who had exclaimed, “But Tuesday is bowling night!” Especially for alcoholics who are newly sober through A.A., sobriety is a fragile thing in the early days, and to let anything have a higher place than one’s A.A. meetings is to risk it all.

A.A. meetings are more important than any bowling league, television show, baseball game, or whatever. One can always bowl earlier or later or in another league. One may not have another chance at sobriety, and the alternative simply doesn’t bear thinking about.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Finding the Necessary Number of Meetings (#1)

How many days per week did you drink?

That’s a good place to start.

Regular A.A. attendance replaces the social part of the drinking scene and, thus, assumes an importance of its own. The value of doing something else to avoid the drinking scene is difficult to overstate. So, as my sponsors reasoned, if you went to taverns five nights per week, you’d better go A.A. meetings five nights per week, at least at first.

Another way to look at this advice is to realized one should make as determined an effort at sobriety as one earlier made at drinking. Therefore, the five nights per week drinking commitment is replace b a five night per week A.A. commitment.

The wisdom behind the A.A. message of 90 meetings in 90 days should not be ignored. After my “90 in 90”, I settled in to a routine of going to a certain number of meetings per week that I continued for almost three years. Then I cut back a meeting or so, but not until then. I’m still sober today, and I learned how from others who are still sober, too.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On “Too Many Meetings”

Would you rather have him out four nights a week and sober or home seven nights a week drunk?

This was said to a woman who complained she never saw her husband anymore. This was the same woman who only a few weeks before had said she didn’t care if “I ever see that drunken bum again!” The question she was asked doesn’t require an answer. Naturally, she preferred to see her husband sober.

There are A.A. members who have less than perfect marriages and use the A.A. meeting as an escape. One could say that this is going to too many meetings. There also are A. A. members who don’t have families and use A.A. as a substitute. I don’t think that’s so bad.

For the newly-sober, there’s no such thing as “too many meetings.”


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

MORE ABOUT MEETINGS

On going to Beginners’ Meetings

We’re all beginners, we begin anew every morning. If you think you’re too old or senior in the program for a beginners’ meeting, you’re in BIG trouble!

We must realize today is all we have. Yesterday is over and we may not see tomorrow. So we are all beginners. We do start again each day.

The beginners’ meeting format is a four-week rotation: one meeting each on Step One, Two, and Three, with a fourth meeting on the history of A.A. The meetings are simple, direct, and comfortable; they help ease the entry of the often shaky newcomer into the fellowship.

For these meetings to be most helpful for the newcomer, it is essential that some older members also be present to lend their experience and help.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Open Meetings

Open meeting are great, but if they make up more than half of the meetings you go to, you’re not working your program.

Open meetings, where outsiders are also welcome, are good meeting for new A.A. members to attend. They’re a good way to meet other people, hear speakers, buy literature, and more. But because outsiders are present, open meetings tend not to be as instructive in emphasizing the meaning of the Twelve Steps and the Traditions of A.A. as closed meetings often are.

In closed meetings, newcomers who are skirting disaster are confronted with their actions and the potential consequences. Confidential experiences, which are most helpful to the newer member, are shared in closed meetings, but never in open meetings.

If one is still playing around with the idea of drinking, one is less likely to stand out at an open meeting which tends to have a larger number of people attending. Attitudes which lead to relapse may not be so obvious at an open meeting and thus not confronted until these attitudes have already done damage to one’s sobriety.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Fears of Meeting Someone You Know at an A.A. Meeting

What do you think they’re there for? Ingrown toenails?

A common fear of newcomers is they will be identified as alcoholics by someone from their “real” life. A.A. respects the confidentiality of its members. A.A. is not a breeding ground for gossip, nor is it a news service. This is one of the attributes of the fellowship that can be believed only with experience.

A friend who is an attorney had finally decided to do something about his drinking and come to A.A. When he walked into his first home group meeting, there were two attorney acquaintances in the group who greeted him. “Hi there. We’ve been waiting for you.” Before he came to A.A. their anonymity, and his, had been respected.

A.A. life is the real life. Until the lessons and principles we learn in A.A. become part of our outside lives, we can’t claim to be truly working the program. Twelfth Step say it all: “practice these principles in all our affairs.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Not Wanting to Go to a Meeting

The more certain you are that you don’t need or want to go to a meeting,

the more certain I am that you do.

Don’t think denial of your alcoholism goes away with the first A.A. meeting. If you feel you don’t have to go to a meeting, denial is often behind the feeling. Granted, not every alcoholic returned to drinking because he or she missed a single meeting, nor did every alcoholic permanently lose his or her sobriety because of a single drink. It’s that very fact that makes skipping meetings or taking occasional single drinks so terrible dangerous. The natural thought to an alcoholic is, “I got away with missing a meeting, and I got way with having one drink. I’ll bet I can handle two or three drinks.” Where that type of thinking leads is obvious.

There are going to be times when you don’t feel good or the boss has dumped a short deadline on you or your family is having a special occasion, and you need to skip a meeting. Always test the feeling to assure yourself there really is a need for missing a meeting, making sure it’s not a sign of denial.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On the Home Group
One of your regular meetings should be you’re A. A. home,
no matter where it meets.

In the part of the world where I got sober, we met in each other’s homes, keeping our groups limited to ten to twelve people. I can’t overstate the importance this had for me in my recovery, this is, to have had ten or a dozen people who really knew me and who really cared whether or not I showed up the next week. These were people I could trust with any information, no matter how personal, knowing it would never be repeated.

A.A. home groups need not be located in living rooms to be effective. For example, they can be in church basements, storefronts, or hospital cafeterias. What makes a home group to me, “A home group is a place where, if you break both your legs, you crawl to get to. It is a bunch of people who, when you arrive from California after a week away, you go to before you go home.” A friend once came to our home group on his way home from the hospital after the death of his infant daughter. He only said, “I can’t talk, but I have to be here.” He made it through the tragedy in a sober state, and he still is sober.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


ABOUT SPEAKERS

On the Quality of a Speaker

Any alcoholic who has been sober all day

today has something of value to tell you—all you

have to do is open your ears.

This is another way of saying your troubles with A.A. are often, if not always, revealed in the mirror. When a speaker has taken 45 minutes to tell history his or her story, and he or she isn’t yet up to the year 1937, it’s only human to wonder if the end of the talk will ever come. My sponsors reminded me it’s important for a speaker to share, and giving a talk is a part of recovery that should not be denied.

They also reminded me that any drunk who is free of John Barleycorn for this day does in fact have something to tell me about how this was accomplished. That’s the foundation of A.A. – shared experience. The gift is there for the taking, but you have to reach out to get it.

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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Speaking at a Meeting

Something in what you have to say may make all the difference in whether some poor drunk lives or dies – and you never know.

The “pass it on” theme occurs again and again in A.A. The reverse of the quoted statement is also potentially true: something we may want to say, but don’t, might make the difference.

In one of my early home groups there was a person whom we thought was drinking again, but we didn’t confront her. She was faced with the loss of sight in one eye; since I am one-eyed, I was asked to talk to her. I did talk to her for a long time about how to live with one eye, but I didn’t mention how to live without drinking. Shorty thereafter, she committed suicide. The thought of what might have been comes back to me from time to time, even now, some twelve years too late.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

ABOUT THE PEOPLE IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

On Kind of A.A. Members

There are two kinds of people in A.A. –

hard-noses and others. Hard-noses get well.

The implication is that “others” don’t get well. For alcoholics, not getting well probably means a shortened life.

A “hard-nose,” according to my sponsor, is someone who “sticks with the winners.” Hard-noses go to meetings, stay in touch with sponsors, and take their programs very seriously. They place their sobriety ahead of everything else. They know there are no shortcuts, and no easier, softer ways to maintain sobriety.

The others, on the contrary, miss meetings, are “too busy” to make Twelfth Step calls, and are too embarrassed to speak in public. They don’t’ take their programs seriously. This is a big mistake because they probably will never get well.



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Hard-Noses (#1)

Every hard – nose I’ve ever seen is still sober,

and those who are dead died sober.

Others just died.

It is realistic to think that any alcoholic who returns to drinking is not a hard-nose. Hard-noses don’t relapse.

I have never seen this fail: an alcoholic who relapse after spending a year or so in the fellowship has, for several weeks or months, been skipping meeting r not keeping in touch with his or her sponsors.

My sponsor told me of an A.A. friend who was dying in an intensive care unit at a local hospital. Because he was being given oxygen to ease his breathing, his mouth was quite dry. A visitor asked him, “Would you like something to drink?” Even comatose and near death, the old alcoholic’s mouth tightened shut! That’s a hard-nose!



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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Hard-Noses (#2)
You an always tell the hard-noses – they’re the sober ones!

When you walk into an A.A. meeting you’ve never been to, there are always some people there who stand out. There is a look about them; they stand a little bit straighter; they smile; they look good. These are the hard-noses, and they are the sober ones. They take time to greet the newcomer. They don’t merely look at you, they see you. One feels less shaky around them.

I used to go to A.A. meetings in a nearby tow, and I always saw another recovering alcoholic, Leo, at the literature table. Leo fit all the attributes of a hard-nose. He died a few mounts ago, at his desk, with the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book open in front of him. No one who knew him was surprised; it was so characteristic of this beloved hard-nose.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Thirteenth Stepping

It’s rough enough getting sober without complicating it with sex; both of you are at risk of losing it –your sobriety, I mean!

A Thirteenth Stepper is a person who acts as a sponsor for a person of the opposite sex. This is considered a bad practice by many A.A. members because the wisdom of A.A. is that in his or her life for the first year. Nothing must be allowed to supplant sobriety as the number one priority and having a love affair with another recovering alcoholic has a way of becoming all-important.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Two-Steppers

Two-Steppers often wind up not only getting themselves drunk,

but their pigeons, too – that’s a double waste!

A Two-Stepper is a person who jumps right into helping a newcomer, or pigeon, without working the Twelve Steps of A.A. Double relapses have followed these dangerous arrangements. There is a double message here: it’s dangerous to anyone’s sobriety not to work the Twelve Steps; and it’s dangerous to anyone’s sobriety to have a sponsor who is not stable in recover and is not following a solid A.A. program.

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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.
ABOUT THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

On Working the Steps
Hard-noses speak of “working” the Steps.

If one thinks following the Twelve Steps is anything but hard work, one’s chances for recovery are not good. To take each Step, to think about it over and over again, to extract the last bit of learning out of it, to stay with one Step until you are sure you understand it well—this is work. This is how hard-noses come to understand the fellowship of A.A. This is how they learn to live sober.

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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On the Need for Working the Steps

If you take the booze away from a drunken S.O.B., what’s left is an S.O.B. Unless something is done about it, you’ll have a drunken S.OB. again, you can count on it—that’s what the Steps are all about, changing the S.O.B.

The Twelve Steps confront one’s self-righteous pride. We see language in the Twelve Steps—words such as “wrongs,” “defects of character,” “shortcomings,” and “harmed” –aimed at producing humility and at pricking our sense of our own importance. We are advised to do things that at first may embarrass us, such as making direct amends, and admitting to another person exactly what kind of S.O.B.’s we were during our during days. The miracle is that we are promised there will be positive changes happening to us as we continue working the Steps.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Working the Steps in Order
The Steps are in the order for the best of all possible reasons—they work that way!

There is a divine logic in the order of the Twelve Steps. As we work each Step, we look deeper and deeper into ourselves. It’s not possible to work Steps One through Twelve without experiencing a profound, positive change. This is why the hard-noses insist on “working,” not “doing” the Steps.

To try to work the Steps out of order is to fail. One cannot make a list of those one has harmed, for example, if one has not first taken a moral inventory. How can we do anything in a “searching and fearless” way until we have abandoned fear by turning our will and our lives over to the care of a Higher Power? The process can’t be hurried; there aren’t any shortcuts. Step Two follows Step One, and Step Tree follows Step Two, in a natural and important progression.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

Understanding Step Two
A good way to understand Step Two is to read it like this: “Came, came to, came to believe.”

Recovery is complicated when the alcohol fumes have barely left the brain. Hence, my sponsors’ use of the first there words of Step Two: “Came to believe.” Another way they made things clear was to say, “Take the body to a meeting. Eventually the brain will come along, too.”

In addressing belief in a Higher Power, Step Two is difficult for many alcoholics to grasp. Some have lost their faith, some never had any, and some cannot accept that a Higher Power would take direct, personal interest in their recovery.

The language of the Step does not include the work “God.” Each alcoholic can have many Higher Powers. A recovering alcoholic might understand and use the A.A. group as a Higher Power.

This point is, no matter how we understand a Higher Power, it takes time for some of us to gain enough spiritual understanding to accept that God, by whatever name we choose to use, does intervene for us individually and personally.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Summarizing the First Three Steps

A simplified summary of the first three Steps is:
I can’t, He can, I’m going to let Him.

This quote puts the first three Steps in a simple perspective that even a new A.A. recruit can understand. The first three Steps have to do with a personal statement of powerlessness, a belief that a Higher Power can and will intervene in our behalf, and a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to this Higher Power. They are often called entry Steps or beginning Steps (beginners’ meetings usually concentrate on them). Newcomers often have difficulty adjusting to the ego-shattering concepts contained in them. Some of us old-timers do, too!

Powerlessness and unmanageability men that we need to admit we can’t hold our liquor, as well as confess our entire lives are like a runaway steamroller.

Many of us saw ourselves as invincible, invulnerable, ad omniscient while under the influence of alcohol. Now we are asked to see that we are something a whole lot less than heroic.

Admitting we need to be restored to sanity is a bitter pill to swallow. The more sober we get, however, the less a problem this is for us to accept.

In order to get sober, we must turn ourselves over to a power greater than ourselves. A.A.’s slogan is: “Get out of the driver’s seat.”

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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


ABOUT BEING SICK, AND ABOUT RECOVERY

On the Disease Concept of Alcoholism

I don’t know whether it’s a moral weakness or
a disease. All I know is that for me it’s a FACT!

A.A. accepts the disease concept; most medical authorities accept it, too. But some alcoholics, because of their behavior and actions during their drinking days, see their condition as having moral overtones.

The quote was not made by a sponsor, but by close A.A. friend. We were at an A.A. meeting and the question of moral failing versus disease was being discussed. The debate was getting more and more heated until my friend made his statement. It ended the controversy. We all realized that what we do about our drinking is a paramount importance.

My sponsors told me not to ask “Why?” I learned that the cause of my alcoholism isn’t as important as its existence. I still don’t know for sure why I became an alcoholic, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sober, thanks to God and the fellowship, and that does matter.

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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


On Anonymity

I don’t care who knows I’m an alcoholic, so long as I don’t ever forget it!

A.A.’s tradition of anonymity is often misunderstood. And this quote is an attempt to set the record straight. What my sponsors understood is that, at the level of the media, anonymity is a cornerstone of the fellowship of A.A. But for some alcoholics, anonymity can be used as a hiding place—a way to deny alcoholism.

My sponsor taught me to let every person I meet know quickly and very clearly that I don’t drink. “The idea is it’ll make it that much more difficult for you to belly up to the bar again,” they said. And they were right once again.


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From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Controlled Drinking

For an alcoholic? Don’t make me laugh!

Every few years, someone comes up with a magic system by which alcoholics can be taught to drink again. Statistics are cited that “prove” a certain percentage of alcoholics can be taught to drink “responsibly” again. A.A. absolutely denies this, using the premise that if a person really can be taught to drink responsibly, he or she wasn’t an alcoholic in the first place. This makes good sense to recovering alcoholics, but some people don’t think it’s a very strong argument.

Every one of the studies on controlled drinking I’ve examined has two failings. First, the samples are very small, meaning the sample of alcoholics who returned to responsible drinking is very small. Second, the studies do not keep track of the alcoholics in the sample for very long. The best single study I have seen tracked, for a period of five years, consisted of 100 alcoholics who had returned to drinking. At the end of five years, every alcoholic in the sample had either died, was institutionalized, or had attained sobriety. This is conclusive for me. Abstinence is the best way to prevent alcoholism from progressing to its natural termination—which could be your termination.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.
On Recovery

You didn’t get that sick overnight, and it’s going to take awhile to get well. Relax and work today’s program today.

Once the alcohol fumes are out of our heads, we see life can be beautiful, and we may find we want it all now. We don’t yet have the long-term sobriety to see that we need a careful foundation of recovery to withstand the bad experiences that happen in life. If we build a hasty, sloppy foundation, that’s the sort of recovery program we’ll have. If we try to jump into Twelfth Step work too soon, we’re going to make a mess of it. But if we keep on working today’s program today, we’ll establish a good, strong recovery. Then we’ll be able to help ourselves. Then we’ll be able to help others. The things we should do today may not always seem important to recovery, but each Step in our recovery program is important.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Being Recovered

The only difference between a recovered and a recovering alcoholic is that the recovering alcoholic is still breathing.

For as long as we live, recovery is a process which can be stopped anytime by picking up a drink; hence, the hard-nosed insistence on the word “recovering.” It may seem picky, but to the hard-noses in A.A., the bottom line is that, for as long as we live, recovery is not certain. I had a friend who recovered after he died. He’s still helping me with my recovery, because I remember him each time I pass his grave. Some alcoholics call themselves “recovered” and it doesn’t seem to hurt them any; but I’m not going to take any chances with my recovery. I am a “recovering” alcoholic, and I hope it’s a long time before I’m “recovered.”

Please share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.
ABOUT SOBRIETY

On the Proper Place for Sobriety

If your sobriety isn’t your absolute top priority, the most important thing in your life, you’re going to get drunk again.

This may seem too harsh, but it’s actually kindness in disguise. The natural and immediate reaction is to reject the idea that your sobriety must outweigh everything else in your life. The fact of the matter is that wives, husbands, jobs, faith, family, health, and wealth all dissolve in alcohol. At whatever stage in recovery, an alcoholic owes it all to sobriety.

There are dangers of coming to A.A. for any reason other than a desire to stop drinking. That’s why A.A. counsels against radical changes in one’s life for at least the first year of recovery.

A nonalcoholic whom I highly respect has complained to me that much of A.A.’s teaching has a sort of “or else” flavor about it, and he finds this to be a negative thing. My answer is that it isn’t negative and it isn’t intended to frighten. It’s realistic.


Please share your Experience, Strength, and Hope