Working with others seems odd at times. Those of us who have experienced the removal of the desire to drink - recovery - as the result of the Twelve Steps get a little excited about it all. Already we get VERY excited! What we have tried and tried and tried to do ourselves again and again and again for so many years just ‘happens’ one day without us even trying to make it happen.No fighting. No running from temptation. It is just gone . . . kapoot . . . . and it happens fast and it happens as the consequence of an even more astounding spiritual awakening.This is not some generalized fuzzy feeling of well-being like what comes from a great ice-cream cone or a “good share” in an AA meeting. Hell no. It is so much more than that. It is rapid, powerful and enduring and so when we can tell someone that we can show them how this happened a
nd that if they want it all they have to do is what we did - it stands to logic that the person being presented with this solution ought to have dropped the phone receiver already and the sound of screeching rubber coming to an abrupt stop out to be the next sound we hear before we even hit the “off” button on the phone.When this does not happen it seems very odd. Man, they should have been begging to have the solution NOW and be willing to do anything to get it! And it is common that it does not happen.
I called Dave today to set up the time for our first 'session'. I was hoping to change our plan from this afternoon to this evening or tomorrow since I had forgotten when we spoke last night that I was committed to a BBQ at my son's Boy Scout summer camp. Today is the first day and parents are invited.
He didn't pick up the phone. A voice mail message was left. I told him that I we were going to a an AA meeting - a literature based meeting in Brewster,
MA where there are enough Twelve Step proponents and the folks are not so long on fellowship and as short on the steps as many of the other Groups are in the area.Cape Cod is not exactly a bastion of Twelve Step recovery. It is very heavy on watered down bullshit lead by the usual proliferation of the worst kind of meeting to ever hit our Fellowship - the Open Discussion Meeting. WHURP. . . . I think I just puked in my mouth.
If it weren't for the inordinately high percentage of drunks on this peninsula it would hardly pay to even go to meetings once recovered. But fresh meat can be had there - as long as the "just show up and don't drink one day and try to make it till midnight" folks don't pollute him first with the "meeting makers make it" routine that I have witnessed to be so harmful to so many real alcoholics.
He never returned the call and it is now 10:30 in the evening. Not looking real good right now - but we'll try him again tomorrow - see if he is "one of us" an dif he is - if he is as desperate as he will need to be to take the actions necessary to experience a full recovery.
Maybe he read yesterdays article and saw that he was going to take the first threee Steps today? NAH. If he's a real alcoholic his head is stuck way too far up his own ass to be Googling for and actually reading Recovery Blogs.
Peace,
Danny S - RLRA
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
