Surrendering step by step to the miracle of sobriety

By Ms. Anonymous

My journey of recovery, like the one of a thousand miles, began in 1979 with the first step . . . surrenndderrrr. The phone call with trembling hand. The distant voice, yet my own, speaking the words: “I need help. I can’t stop drinking . . .” The beginning of the miracle. In my mid twenties, I was reaching out to receive the help that always had been near.

I cannot say exactly why the miracle happened. Was it the pain and desperation that urged me to make that first phone call? The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) member who drove me to a meeting and gave me a “Big Book,” the AA guide? Was it new friends in the rooms who were clean and sober, telling their stories, offering their “experience, strength and hope?” Why did I get sober, while my sister is daily boozing her life away? Who can explain how I got here? It was not by my own merit, good deeds or virtue. It was my powerlessness that made me willing to listen – to become “teachable,” they call it.

Some have said, “The wound is the hole where God comes in.” And so, there are rooms where wounded people go to quit addiction and find something better to take its place. It’s where they meet the Higher Power of their own understanding and experience – personal – yet greater than themselves. It’s where they discover the Almighty finds good company in a room full of self-proclaimed drunks meeting through AA.

While closed AA meetings are only for alcoholics, anyone can attend an open AA meeting. Those who never have attended an AA meeting have missed out on the experience of a lifetime. In meetings, you hear story after story of women and men who “hit bottom” with their lives and then were, amazingly, wrenched from the jaws of self-destruction and early death. You hear talk about spiritual experiences and incomprehensible mystery.

If you come to a meeting, here’s a sampling of what you will hear: “I was able to make amends to my mother before she died. Our relationship was stormy for many years and we could not be friends. I hated her until I stopped drinking. Then one day, I saw her suffering and I forgave her.” “I was suffering from mental illness and my counselors were running out of options. Finally one said to me: Why don’t you try AA? It can help anybody!”

“I never lost a job; I never got arrested. I managed to quit drinking on my own. But still I was miserable. I started going to AA meetings and learned I was a low-bottom dry-drunk!” “I was afraid of God all my life because I knew I’d done wrong. Then I worked the fourth and fifth steps and found a loving God. AA has taught me that “God is love. That’s all I need to know.” “Sobriety is about saying ‘hello’ to the real me. It’s a process of daily surrendering my ‘alcohol-isms’ or ‘character defects’ – those wounded, addicted parts of myself – and embracing and loving my true self.”

Recovery is a life-long journey. With each new day, I am coming to believe in a power greater than myself that is restoring me to sanity. Today, I will not drink or drug, “one day at a time.” Today, I trust I will be given what I need to choose right over wrong, and I will “do the next right thing.”

I have discovered the still, small voice within, and I listen to that voice. I breathe softly on that candle, my inner light. “God’s will, not mine, be done,” I pray. Today, I replace self-pity with gratitude, resentment with forgiveness, and despair with optimism. Today I am healing and learning to have loving relationships in the mainstream of life. Today, I am living the miracle, one day at a time – one step at a time.

The writer is a Tallahassee resident, wife and mother who will celebrate her twenty-third year of sobriety in January. Following the AA guidelines of anonymity, she chose to remain anonymous here. Much of her article reflects the 12 Steps of AA and the ideas in the book, “The Spirituality of Imperfection” by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham. For information on AA, including meeting locations, visit www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.