“Bitterly discouraged, he found himself in a strange place, discredited and almost broke. Still physically weak, and sober but a few months, he saw that his predicament was dangerous. He wanted so much to talk with someone, but whom?”
-Alcoholics Anonymous p. 154 (“A Vision for You”)
Yesterday I drove back from my Thanksgiving trip very early in the morning. So early, in fact, that I knew I could get on my favorite 7am meeting from the car. I am lucky that this meeting, which meets live three days a week at a club near my home, has a Zoom option. It is a hybrid meeting. Sometimes I get on Zoom if I am home sick from work. I go live to this meeting every possible day during all of my breaks. This meeting is my true home group. I have been able to be more honest in this group than anywhere else, aside from working with my sponsor and sponsees.
I pulled into my suburb at just the time they were ending with the Lord’s Prayer. I drove to the club instead of to my house. I got to go in and say hello and get hugs. It was just what I needed after an emotionally draining trip. It was so great to see everyone!
As a recovering person, it is so important that I have people to talk to. To be with. To share this experience of life in sobriety with. I live alone, but I am not lonely. I choose not to be lonely. I have been attending 4-6 meetings a week since early October and it has been exactly what I needed. But I have found by scrolling through social media a whole lot of loneliness. It is palpable. People feel so isolated. That is why I decided to write on YANA today: Because YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
A good friend of mine does the posters for our Saturday night open speaker meeting. In October, when I was at my lowest, she had created a special poster with a ghost that said YANA. I had never before heard of this acronym, so I looked more closely. And then I got it: Yes! YANA! It was like God reminding me once again that I wasn’t really alone. I was here at the meeting with people who loved me. Fellowship with other recovering people is an important way to feel a part of instead of a part from. And if I take a chance to get to know others and allow them to get to know me, then I have created a bond that will be there whenever I show up—just as it did yesterday morning after my long drive.
This is such a great reminder about the importance of showing up. Showing up—and therefore not being alone—is a choice. We are not hapless victims of our circumstances. Circumstances are never hopeless. Sometimes we are hopeless, as I was reminded of in the Al-Anon reader Hope for Today this week, but our circumstances never are. I have the incredible ability to change my attitude from one of hopelessness to hopefulness—but it is going to take some footwork. First, I have to leave my house and go to a meeting. Yes. It is that simple. Get up. Get dressed. Get out the damn door.
Why do we resist doing this? It is more than just self-pity. It is more than just isolation. It is alcoholism. Alcoholism wants me back. Alcoholism wants me alone. Alcoholism wants me so full of fear that all I think about is my -ism: I, Self, Me. The book describes the jumping-off point so well:
“He will presently try the old game again, for he isn’t happy about his sobriety. He cannot picture his life without alcohol. 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 don’t know about you, but I am powerless over alcohol, even in sobriety. That first drink will always call me back, especially when I am left by myself for too long. However, the fellowship of AA is just the beginning. I was alone a lot for the past couple of days, but I now have a resource to battle against the -ism that is my mind. That resource is God. Several pages later the book describes this Power:
“You are saying to yourself: ‘I’m jittery and alone. I couldn’t do that.’ You forget that you have just now tapped a source of power much greater than yourself” (Alcoholics Anonymous p. 163).
If I am still blocked from God, accessing His power may be more difficult, because I may not be willing to pray. Or I may be so blocked that I cannot possibly surrender and accept the help of a power greater than myself. This is why those early steps are so important. In Step Two I realize my way just doesn’t work, and honestly it hasn’t for years. In Step Three I make a decision—I surrender my old ideas to the new ideas of the AA program. In Step Four I clear away the wreckage by listing all resentments, fears, sex conduct, and harms. In Step Five I rid myself of isolation by sharing all of this garbage with someone else—and I get to know myself better in the process. Steps Two-Five are critical in these times of loneliness. These Steps enable me to change my attitude—from hopelessness to hope in God.
YANA is just the reminder that there is work to be done. And that work is done by being willing to show up for my own recovery.