doing what I said I wouldn't do

I went to an NA meeting the other day; it was held at a treatment center.

Sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for the meeting to start, I started reading the lecture notes which had been left on a blackboard.  It was a bunch of theorizing about addiction.

Reading it, I realized that I've heard more theory and self-help rhetoric out of new folks than anybody else.

I used to have to understand things in recovery.  That changed one evening, after a meeting at the 7th Day Adventist hospital in Taipei.

There was this guy from Canada who occasionally came into town on business.  I'd just started coming back to meetings, and probably had my head so square up my butt that cleaning my bellybutton would've improved my vision.  I must have sounded that way.

This guy had listened to me talk at the meeting.  Afterwards, he took me aside and told me something to the effect that, "if you don't work the steps - soon - you're going to die."

He went on to explain that, listening to my story, he wouldn't bet on my living really long if I relapsed.  Oh yeah, and that I sounded like a relapse waiting to happen.

That shook me to the core.  In the first nine months, when I was back in Seattle, there'd been a couple of guys who hadn't made it.  They both died by their own hand.  I figured that if I'd seen two guys buy the farm in less than a year, this guy (who'd been sober for twelve years) had probably seen more funerals than I'd had hot meals.

I'd been yapping on about being in the third step for most of the time I'd been sober.  Well, in retrospect, I was nowhere near that point.  I still hadn't really believed exactly how royally screwed I was.  I just thought I did. 

However, at that time, I felt - on a cellular level - that it was 'do or die'.  I went home from the meeting and thought about what I'd heard.  I had no more reservations about being able to use socially.  I'd known that was gone for quite some time.  But, now I knew... no make that knew... that I was going to have to work the steps, or face the consequences of a relapse.

I was willing to set aside disbelief, and accept the idea that there was a Higher Power - a God, Supreme Being, what the hell ever - who could help me out.  And that I'd better get willing to let him (or her, for all I know) lend a hand; I was in over my head here.

By saying, "get willing" to let God help, I decided I would do what was necessary to allow my H.P. to help.  This meant doing the rest of the steps.  And, if I wasn't working on 'em, then all my talk of willingness was just that: talk.

That night, I stayed up late, and wrote a fourth step.  Since I didn't have a sponsor to guide me with some helpful tips (such as doing one whole column first, before moving to the next, for instance), it was pretty disorganized.  But, it was from the heart; I didn't leave any cards tucked in my boot.

The next day, I got a hold of the Canadian fellow; he was gracious enough to hear my fifth step before leaving town.

I got a sponsor shortly after that.

So, I ended up doing the things that I'd originally told people I wouldn't:  write a list of things which could incriminate me, and have someone mentor me.

But, I came back from Asia with about two years' recovery.  And a totally different outlook on stepwork.

-M