How big a part of my life is A.A.?

Mediocre sobriety is not the answer

“We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start.”

-Alcoholics Anonymous p. 58 (“How It Works”)

I got the opportunity to go to my favorite 7am meeting last Monday when I was off work. I remember specifically the reading from the Twenty-Four Hour book that day, because I was the one who read it. It asked: “How big a part of my life is A.A.?” That is actually a very good question. To someone like me and most of the people in my life, AA is a huge part of our lives. We are very involved in practicing the Disciplines of Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. All of us do service. All of us sponsor. All of us practice a morning time of prayer and meditation. And I know that I also do a nightly review. Watching where we have been wrong and then making amends becomes second-nature to most of us.

The daily reader continues by asking: “Is it just one of my activities and a small one at that? Do I only go to A.A. meetings now and then and sometimes never go at all?” I pray that we all really consider this point. Is AA a part of my life just in theory or is it everything to me? Am I living with just one foot in AA and the rest of my body and life in the world apart from the program? This is the time for some good old-fashioned self-honesty. I often hear people say that they really need to re-double their efforts and start taking AA more seriously—that they don’t want to drink again. And then it almost never happens—and eventually they leave AA altogether. Many of them do drink again. Others just persist in a sorta-sobriety that leaves them asleep in the delusion that everything is just fine. As the book says, “We smile at such a sally…Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end” (Alcoholics Anonymous p. 152). I say this out of experience and a spirit of love and compassion. Alcoholics of my type need Alcoholics Anonymous—and not just a little bit of AA.

There are four types of Alcoholics described in “To Wives,” one of the lost chapters of the Big Book. A full description of these four alcoholic types can be found on pages 108-110. I am definitely a type 4: “You may have a husband of whom you completely despair. He has been placed in one institution after another. He is violent, or appears definitely insane when drunk. Doctors may shake their heads and advice you to have him committed…” (p. 110). Now, of course I am not a husband. But I was a wife. And a mom. I was an insane alcoholic who could no longer differentiate the true from the false. Now how much do I want to go back to that life? Was it even living? Or was I just existing—the tornado harming everyone else in my path? Doing wide swaths of destruction along the way.

Since I am a Type 4 Alcoholic, I require a Type 4 Program of Action. It’s actually quite simple. I cannot do a Type 1’s program and expect to stay sober, sane, and gain the entire psychic change necessary to never have to do that kind of destruction ever again. And yet we see Type 4 Alcoholics try to run Type 1 programs all the time. A meeting here and there, a sponsor in name only (if there is even a sponsor). Some of the Steps, but certainly not the amends steps. Most of these Type 4’s who run a Type 1 program never really recover. They do not change permanently—and they keep existing in the same pattern over and over.

Those who do manage to stay sober for a few years have what I heard Sandy Beach refer to as “mediocre sobriety.” He claims that many alcoholics can stay sober by just going to meetings. But they have not sufficiently changed. Their whole lives are rooted in selfishness and self-centeredness. And eventually the self-centeredness will destroy them. It takes time, but it happens. For those of us who have stayed and given all to our program, we see it time and time again. It is a Shakespearean tragedy in five acts—and very difficult to watch. The tragic hero submits once again to his fatal flaw—alcoholism.

There is hope. There is good news to any of us who are experiencing a half-measures and half-hearted approach to sobriety. The answer is simply a one day at a time consistency. Having a sponsor who holds us accountable really helps. I know I get lost in my program sometimes and need that guidance, even today. The routine of AA is powerful. So is saying “Yes.” I have recently had to find five different speakers for the November Saturday Night Open Speaker meeting at my AA club. When I asked a good friend of mine who just turned six months sober, he said “Yes.” And then he shared with me that he is not allowed to say no. Willingness to follow those who have come before him is keeping him sober.

So what if you literally can’t get to a meeting every day? Well, first, meetings are not a permanent solution to sobriety anyway—working the Steps with a sponsor is. Maybe a daily call to a sponsor and then some AA in terms of literature, speaker tapes, and other outreach calls with good conversation with other members can fill in those gaps on a daily basis. Eventually, if we go to enough meetings and immerse ourselves in the AA experience through these other methods, we are going to believe that working the Steps is in fact a good idea. It is kind of magical this way. We will be so immersed on a daily basis that AA becomes a working part of our mind.

If sobriety as you are currently practicing it is not really working for you every single day, then I beg of you—get more involved with your AA program. Those of us you see and love in the program have all surrendered to AA. It is a way of life that actually works for alcoholics of our type.