Back to the Roots

Last week I went to an AA meeting for the first time in many, many years. I went because I really needed to shake a bad feeling of being let down. I had gone to Al-Anon meetings for quite a few years due to the presence in my life of a severe, terminal alcoholic which affected me more than I realized. I knew then that I needed help, but needing help as an alcoholic eluded me until this past week when it suddenly hit me—I needed help.

One of the main reasons that we recovering drunks "go back out there" is from pinning our hopes on another person, or persons, or situations in any one of a number of ways. One of those ways is expectation. I was the guy who used to pipe up in Al-Anon meetings and say I had no expectations of anyone. Ergo, if I had no expectations, people and/or events couldn't let me down.

Well, that was then. It seems that just recently, from talking to a dear friend of mine in the program, I made an assumption that showed me how had I fallen into setting up expectations without actually knowing all the facts first.

That wouldn't have been so bad in itself, but I made the "mistake" (guided by God no doubt) of picking up and actually reading the Big Book of AA. As I went throught the stories of all those early recovering drunks, I began to see myself in there in a new way. I have known for years about the fact of my alcoholism, but what I wasn't aware of is how much I had back-slidden into bad attitudes.

Now I can form an expectation that's based on fact, not on conjecture or other fantasy. In the past I would do the latter and set myself up for disappointment time after time. The end result would be to nurse my sorrows with plenty of TLC from the nearest bottle of Vodka or cold beer, or both.

My, how times have changed.