Why I won’t go back…

to AA

In the words of a fellow Substacker:

Quote:

“For those of you who voted for Trump, I’d just say, in the most loving way: Friends, you’re on the hook.

It's your movement now.

It's on us too, of course, on those of us who were and are against what he stands for – but you have a special role in whatever happens next. No excuses: he made it very clear what he intended, and you gave him a mandate to do it.

So, when and if the rounding up of undocumented immigrants begins, and it’s brutal, that’s on you. When and if he comes for those “enemies from within,” that’s on you. When and if people on the periphery (gay people, trans people) suffer, when the economy tanks, because tariffs are a terrible idea, when we jettison even our currently ineffective attempts to reverse climate change, when women’s reproductive healthcare continues to degrade…well, I’m sorry to say so, but you voted for all of that.

You did.” ~ George Sanders from Substack.

End Quote.

And, I might add, “Obama Care” and the “Affordable Care Act” are the same thing. And no, it’s too late for you to change your vote.

I got my 29 year Sobriety medallion on July 11th this year. Someone I was becoming close to gave it to me in the daily morning meeting I was attending, along with a signed card from all the other members. I really liked that meeting…

I learned shortly after the election, that this person who’d given me my medallion, a man I thought I knew, had voted for *rump. As did another man I had become friends with which made me start looking around the room at everyone else present and wonder…(Most AA meetings are predominantly made up of men.) But in today’s world of trying to remain PC (Politically Correct) it’s not for me to say who identifies as male, female or whether someone is LGBTQ. I don’t care what a person identifies as or what color your skin is. Our hearts all beat the same in our chests and we all bleed the same color.

Three days later I stopped going to AA.

There was a lengthy period of time I had stopped going to meetings prior. Probably about twelve to fifteen years in. I was getting disillusioned. Not with the message, but with some of the people. I would hear the same stories from these same people over and over again. Even the ones with long term sobriety. I would hear the same rhetoric of fear—“If I stop coming to meetings, I know my disease is outside in the parking lot doing push-ups.” Was one of the most common refrains. Or the constant fear that if they missed a meeting, they were so glad to get back (to a meeting) the next day for fear they may pick up again.

And then there were the chronic “relapsers”. Of course you can always come back to AA. They will never kick you out, and they will always welcome you back no matter what your transgression. “Just keep coming until the miracle happens”. They’d say.

I had heard and met people who had been in AA long term who went back out after many years of sobriety.

I just couldn’t fathom that. Maybe they felt they were no longer alcoholic and could “drink like a normal person”.

Who knows what their reason, sometime it wouldn’t take much for someone to pick up again, some call it the “broken shoelace” theory.

I did go along however, with the platitude, Once a pickle, always a pickle. I knew I was an alcoholic, and could not go back to being a cucumber.

Around three or so months after getting sober, I literally had a “Spiritual Awakening” in the wee hours of the morning. A blinding flash of light in the bedroom, the whole nine yards! I sat bolt up in bed and had an instant knowing of what God wasn’t. “It” is not a white haired old man sitting on a cloud, where one hands in their prerequisite prayers, pulls a lever and presto, all your answers to life are revealed. (That’s what I always thought anyway, being raised Roman Catholic ‘n’ all…)

No. For me it was much more subtle but no less powerful. And yet, when I say what it was that was revealed to me, the word sounds so mundane. Overused, and to some may even be blasphemous.

“Energy”.

No, I didn’t get Einstein’s equation all lit up in front of my face in the darkened bedroom, or anything like that. Just a subtle permeating essence within my whole being—a singular knowing in a blinding flash—God. Is. Energy.

So then I came to know that if God is Energy, then everything is energy.

I’m not that technical, nor scientifically inclined, but if and I am energy, and everything around me is energy, then I am God Sourced Energy and so are you. “Goo-goo ga’joob”. (Borrowed from John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

See, I told ya it would sound rather ho-hum. But also in that instant, the desire for alcohol was lifted from me. Whenever I even think about drinking, (rare), or see someone in a video having a glass of wine, I feel physically ill, nauseous. GAH!

So I may be God, but I’m here on this Earth School planet of Energy to learn, and even though I may be unique like everyone else, I am still in human form and yet to get my wings or halo.

OK, all that being said, getting back to why I quit AA…

In a world so divided right now, sitting in a room full of people not knowing who voted for ‘he who shall remain nameless’, I made a decision that I was not going to spill out my insides to those who’s values don’t align with mine.

If you, man, woman or other, voted for a racist, misogynistic, felon, with 34 convictions, and is a known convicted rapist, who thinks that because he’s well known, and “grabbing women by the pussy” is to be laughed off as locker room talk—well, you don’t get to share my space, let alone sit next to me and breathe the same air.

This part I own. It’s on me.

I love—myself too much today, to put myself in situations where I do not feel comfortable. I spent too many years getting myself in harms way by abusing myself with alcohol, drugs, and men. And these addictions took me to places that I will leave to the readers imagination, and yes, some of them were ‘that’ bad. Don’t minimize.

Kamala Harris may not have made it to be our next president, but her words “We will not go back!” Are still holding up over MORE than half this country.

Today, I align with that credo, and that is why I am not going back…

Author’s Note:

(Anyone who is newly trying to get sober, AA and the 12-Steps are a great primer, and an awesome path to follow. Even though Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, I did not get sober to make AA my life. It is a tool that I keep in my tool belt—it is there if I need it. For that I am eternally grateful.

I had started going back to meetings when my youngest son was staying on my property and trying to get sober last spring. I would take him to meetings, and when he left after three months for more “research and developement”—in other words he wasn’t ready to embrace sobriety— I stayed going to that particular meeting.

Will I never go back to AA? I don’t know. But for now, I am happy and grateful to have what I have—Today.)