Category: Lifeline

When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was completely naive to the ways of the program and was very broken by alcohol. I knew of AA and thought, I have no where else to go, these folks know more than I do about Alcohol…it’s in the name. I attended my first Quarterly business meeting after being in and out of the program for 6 months. During that 6 months, I heard about service and I was ready to listen. I took up a coffee position and was so nervous I was going to screw it up, I barely slept the night before. I was taking the whole thing very seriously. So at the first business meeting, I wanted to observe and find out how the “real” business of how the group functioned and how it worked was important to me. I also wanted to figure out who was “in charge”. Like I said, I was still new. I watched, I listened, I learned and found out slowly about the different long-term service positions and how they worked together. I continued to do coffee and eventually was brave enough to step up to a chairperson position. Again, no sleep the night before and worried I would make a mistake. People are counting on me and this is life or death…very serious. After awhile, I settled down and the man who kept the group phone list named Ed, was moving away. I offered to help maintain the list. Turns out the man was the secretary of the group and I got elected to secretary of the Wake Up Call in Park City the very next business meeting. People actually voted me in! I was happy to be of service and yet, had no clue what I was doing. “Don’t they have training for this sort of thing – I’m totally unqualified!!!” My next thought was at the other end of the spectrum: “Stand back and let me show you all how this meeting should be run!”. Yes, I know…keep coming back. After many reassurances from my sponsor and the elder statesman, I’ve relaxed A LOT. I turned to the tribal knowledge of the group, explored AA literature on how to run a group and approached the task with a heightened sense of responsibility – instead of panic or pride. Today, I’ve been conducting and chairing the quarterly business meetings, spontaneous group conscious meetings and documenting the Wake Up Call business for almost two years. I had come from a place of no knowledge, fear, more fear and it’s good friend, anxiety… to one of curiosity, willingness and openness to suggestion. The group consciousness is a powerful force and one I am proud and honored to call to order as often as needed with the bang of a gavel.  

-Anne A

-The following is taken from a recorded conversation with Pine J about his volunteer work out at the Utah State Prison.

“In volunteering at the Utah State Prison, the reason that it’s been so rewarding to my sobriety is because men that are in prison now are coming into our classes, into our AA class, and not only reading the big book, but they read the big book on a daily and on a weekly basis. Because of our meetings, we have explained to them that all it takes, when they go back to their pods, is for them and a couple more guys to start sharing with each other about their experience, strengths and hopes. Once the prisoners started doing that, in our classes we would give them the choice to either share as they read or at the end of class. The AA program out there is…grows every week, as prisoners find out about it, it has become something that they even miss their softball practice to come and do, and in my own recovery it is very important to me that I have obligated myself to these men, and to that system out there because the only difference between myself and ninety percent of those prisoners that are out there…I never ran over anybody, I never got that DUI, never went to prison. But I know how those men feel at that Utah State Prison because in my alcoholism I was trapped in a prison inside myself, and those prisoners can all relate to that. Those prisoners can relate to being confined 24 hours a day, seven days a week inside yourself. Being able to express my experience, my strength and my hope to the prisoners out there…they all say, cause they all hug me and treat me like their brother…that it’s helping every one of them, but I know for a fact what it’s done for me. I didn’t chose it, my higher power did, and I can actually speak to those prisoners through my higher power.”

-Pine J

Carrying the Message: My name is Sean H. and I’m an inmate at Utah State Prison. I’m an alcoholic/ addict. I’m a resident of the conquest program in the prison due to my charges which are possession of heroin and attempted possession of heroin. I have served in other parts of the prison and in most places in prison you are lucky to get 1 or 2 twelve step meetings a month. Where I am, I’m blessed to get 14 twelve-step meetings per week. The folks who bring the meetings to us are absolute heroes. They bring us the hope & strength I needed. When I got back to prison a year ago, I was in the worst shape of my using life. This relapse was my worst. Slowly as each meeting passed I started to find hope. After a few months my great friend Pine started coming in and words cannot express all I have learned from him. Somehow what he said clicked and everything changed. I went from not having hope for a sober future, to having solid plans and a way to achieve these goals sober, one step at a time. Thanks to Pine and Kristin with the Bridging the Gap Program, I can and will make it to an AA meeting the day I go home, and when I leave this place this time, I can make it my last. One step at a time, one day at a time. Respectfully Sean H.

For a time I worked over on the Big Island of Hawaii. At the time I was not active in the program, after some time out I decided I needed a meeting.   After calling a local AA number I was told to drive out to Old Airport Park in Kona.  The directions from there were unique, park where you see some other cars, kick off your shoes and head to the beach!  Our noon meeting was located on a beautiful beach in paradise. One thing right off the bat that I noticed, my higher power seemed much closer than usual.  

-Trip

A person who performs a service willingly, especially helping other people and without pay. Salt Lake City AA Central Office is open 6 days a week – Monday thru Saturday. Each day a Volunteer Coordinator arrives at 10:00am to open the door and turn on the lights. At this time, there is a different Coordinator for each day – no one person is doing double duty. On most days additional volunteers offer their time in hour by hour increments, for example, 10:00am to noon, 3:00pm to 5:00pm, etc. As the volunteers gather, an informal AA meeting inevitably takes place. If you are in the neighborhood, please join us. Each of the Volunteer Coordinators is responsible for assuring the normal office tasks (general cleaning, trash removal, etc., etc.) are attended to. We want our group members who visit us to feel welcome and comfortable….. As …contributions are received from our groups, the coordinators enter them into our accounting system. The most important tasks facing the Volunteer Coordinators and the many part-time volunteers are the sales of literature published by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc. and AA Grapevine Inc., and the sale of coins/tokens celebrating significant periods of sobriety. As we do with our contributions, when a sale is made the volunteers enter the transaction into our accounting system. When the inventory gets low on any of the items mentioned above, the Volunteer Coordinator(s) notify the appropriate Committee Chairperson, for example our Salt Lake AA Central Office Literature Chairperson, of the shortage. Of equal value, or even more important, is answering the telephone calls made to Salt Lake City AA Central Office. A majority of the calls are from members of the many anonymous groups seeking information concerning meeting times and meeting locations. Occasionally we get that life changing call from the still suffering person that just needs to talk to someone willing to listen. Thank God we have volunteers willing to take the time to perform this life saving service. If you are reading this and you would like to become a volunteer, have we got a deal for you!!! Please call our Volunteer Chairperson (Tuesday, 10:00am to 5:00pm at 801-484-7671) or e-mail volunteer@saltlakeaa.org.

Thank You – Jim C., Chris, Mel, Rusty, Bob, Kristen, Mike, Sandy, John, KB, Clark, Hank, Willy, Jim S., Joel, Charlie, Ben, Lorraine, Tripp, Shurone and Frances.

My name is Jacob, and I’m an alcoholic. I am 22 years old and this is my second time in prison. I get back out in a few days, and at this time in my life I can’t even express how grateful I am that there will be an AA meeting to go to when I get out. Drugs are a hug part of my story. I started using marijuana when I was 12 and alcohol followed soon after. Since that time, I have tried every drug I can think of and done just about everything you can think of. I caught my first felony at 15, my first charge ever at 12. I was put in States Custody as a kid. I’ve been in proctor homes, sober livings, and half way houses, on parole and probation. When they say jails, institutions and death, I pull 2 out of 3 of those. I say this because I want people to know that they are not alone. I always thought I was alone and this disease will allow me to feel alone in a room full of people. Alcohol and drugs used to make me feel like I wasn’t alone. Today it does not and I am grateful for that. My sobriety date is June 1st, 2017. My release date is August 1st, 2017. You are not alone! -Jacob

When I was ten years of age, I was given a glass of whiskey and drank it straight down. It burnt and took my breath. Throughout my drinking years I did not touch whiskey again. At sixteen, I had my first experience of getting drunk. I used to work for a bottling company where my job was to put labels on bottles. I knocked off work one lunch time and proceeded to join next door’s bottle department for drinks. To this day, I cannot remember getting home. From the age of seventeen, when I met the man of my dreams (or so I thought), until I was twenty five, a night life of social drinking and the birth of my daughter in kept me out of danger of alcoholic drinking. At the age of twenty five, we moved and I got a job as a barmaid full time. Work was hard and drinks were free behind the bar providing you didn’t get caught. I then started to show the consequences of my heavy drinking, the work, my housework, being a mother, my social life. I was admitted to the Melbourne Clinic with the DTs (delirium tremens) and hallucinations. I spent two weeks there and was discharged on medication. Back at my doctor’s I was told to go to AA, I said, “No, I’m not an alcoholic”. I then spent from the next seven years being a top-up drunk, bender drinker, social drinker, drying-out on the wagon, then back to alcohol. I introduced myself to the morning drink. Beautiful food was bought for the fridge and my daughter and I ended up eating baked beans. Housework was neglected, I decided all my friends were “full of bullshit”. I was stealing money from the hotel when working part-time to support my drinking habit. My great aunt had died and an inheritance from her of $20,000, was blown in six months on so-called friends, alcohol and good times. Blackouts were now coming, thick and fast. and my girlfriend, suggested I do something so I said, “I will try AA”. Eventually, I walked alone into an AA meeting. “Keep an open mind” said one member to me. I saw the word “God” up on the Serenity Prayer and freaked. I had been brought up with a God of fear. I read the First Step and I couldn’t accept it. I paraded around the floor when it was my turn to speak, hammed up my story, lied, and all that time I was hurting inside. I still had one foot in AA and one in the pub. So I chose the pub. I only lasted three months. I ended up in a psychiatric home again with the DTs and hallucinations. My hair looked like straw, my teeth became yellow, my eyes were bloodshot and yellow, there was weight gain, no changing clothes for days, neglecting my daughter. I was always the last to arrive at the school with my daughter, always the last to collect her after school. Then I discovered the yellow wallet that AA had given me with their telephone number in it, I rang the office. I gave the woman who answered a cock and bull story then broke down over a wine and soda beside me. She said those magic words “Come on Friday to the meeting”. I sweated, shook for two days and then walked through the AA doors. My hand was shaken, there were no fingers pointed at me. I “shared my experiences” with a twisted mouth and bent arms which have all now gone. After nine months of sobriety I found spirituality and my Higher Power whom I choose to call God. I have been three years sober now. I read the Big Book and the 24 Hour a Day book, pray every night for the sick alcoholic friends in the fellowship and family. I love the Steps and Traditions. I thank the founders of AA, Dr Bob and Bill W., for my life and the most important of all: meetings, meetings, meetings. My primary purpose is to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. I thank God for my life today. I am marrying a ten-year sober, beautiful man whom I love dearly. Thank you AA. Without you none of this would have been possible.

–Anonymous, Australia

http://www.aa.org.au/new-to-aa/personal-stories-started-at-ten.php

Traditions often get overlooked by sponsors who tend to focus on the steps, which are the core of the program. But the traditions are what keep the core going. The steps saved alcoholics from alcohol; the traditions saved AA from the alcoholics. Grandfather Bear, Vancouver, WA, Circa 2007. Tradition 5 states that “Each Group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” The steps kept me from committing suicide; the traditions kept me from committing homicide. Grandfather Bear, Vancouver, WA, Circa 2008. There are two main reasons that we spend time reinforcing primary purpose: 1. History has shown us that when a group’s purpose gets diluted by outside interests, the fulfillment of the group’s mission suffers and often becomes lost, and the group can falter or fail. 2. Carrying the message is the biggest thing that keeps us sober, and in turn helps others to become sober. And then they go out and carry the message and help others to become sober. There are a lot of ways to carry the message: -Being a member of a home group and talking to others after the meeting, doing service tasks for the home group -Talking to wet drunks in bars -Being involved in service work such as a Bridge the Gap committee -Being a greeter at a meeting -Washing coffee cups and ashtrays after a meeting (ok, that’s an old one) I was 33 years old when I got sober, a relatively young man compared to many in AA. I farted around on the outside of the program for two years before I got serious about getting sober. I stopped hanging with the guys I’d spent years drinking and drugging with and got involved with a home group, attending it five days a week. I also attended other meetings and started going to AA social functions. And my sobriety began building in time and quality. One of the things I realized in sobriety is that nature will not tolerate a vacuum. If you take something out of your life, you have to replace it with something or nature will choose for you. At first I replaced drinking with a lot of AA meetings; sometimes three or four a day, and occasionally, five. After a few months I was able to cut down on meetings when I returned to school and started reinventing myself. After I finished a two-year program I got back into the workforce. But through all of that, I kept going to meetings and being involved with a home group. I became more involved with service work as my meeting attendance lessened. I used to be chair of the Activities Committee for the district Central Office. That was a way to carry the message by making social gatherings available for our members or prospective members. I still attend my home group and when I go home to Washington, I stop by my home group there. Saturday, May 18, 2017, I hit 33 years clean and sober. I’m a person who couldn’t put together 33 hours when I got started so I do consider myself an AA success story. I’m 66 years old now so I’ve been in recovery half of my life. That would have sounded like purgatory to me as a young stoner/drinker. But now, I find that living sober is a blast. I have fun and don’t feel like I have anything to hide. I can act just as crazy as I like and I don’t have to figure out why everyone is looking at me and laughing the morning after a night I don’t remember. Best of all, following the creed given us in Tradition 5, I can share this feeling with other members, beginners, or prospects of AA.

-Joel