From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

MORE ABOUT MEETINGS

On going to Beginners’ Meetings

We’re all beginners, we begin anew every morning. If you think you’re too old or senior in the program for a beginners’ meeting, you’re in BIG trouble!

We must realize today is all we have. Yesterday is over and we may not see tomorrow. So we are all beginners. We do start again each day.

The beginners’ meeting format is a four-week rotation: one meeting each on Step One, Two, and Three, with a fourth meeting on the history of A.A. The meetings are simple, direct, and comfortable; they help ease the entry of the often shaky newcomer into the fellowship.

For these meetings to be most helpful for the newcomer, it is essential that some older members also be present to lend their experience and help.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Open Meetings

Open meeting are great, but if they make up more than half of the meetings you go to, you’re not working your program.

Open meetings, where outsiders are also welcome, are good meeting for new A.A. members to attend. They’re a good way to meet other people, hear speakers, buy literature, and more. But because outsiders are present, open meetings tend not to be as instructive in emphasizing the meaning of the Twelve Steps and the Traditions of A.A. as closed meetings often are.

In closed meetings, newcomers who are skirting disaster are confronted with their actions and the potential consequences. Confidential experiences, which are most helpful to the newer member, are shared in closed meetings, but never in open meetings.

If one is still playing around with the idea of drinking, one is less likely to stand out at an open meeting which tends to have a larger number of people attending. Attitudes which lead to relapse may not be so obvious at an open meeting and thus not confronted until these attitudes have already done damage to one’s sobriety.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Fears of Meeting Someone You Know at an A.A. Meeting

What do you think they’re there for? Ingrown toenails?

A common fear of newcomers is they will be identified as alcoholics by someone from their “real” life. A.A. respects the confidentiality of its members. A.A. is not a breeding ground for gossip, nor is it a news service. This is one of the attributes of the fellowship that can be believed only with experience.

A friend who is an attorney had finally decided to do something about his drinking and come to A.A. When he walked into his first home group meeting, there were two attorney acquaintances in the group who greeted him. “Hi there. We’ve been waiting for you.” Before he came to A.A. their anonymity, and his, had been respected.

A.A. life is the real life. Until the lessons and principles we learn in A.A. become part of our outside lives, we can’t claim to be truly working the program. Twelfth Step say it all: “practice these principles in all our affairs.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Not Wanting to Go to a Meeting

The more certain you are that you don’t need or want to go to a meeting,

the more certain I am that you do.

Don’t think denial of your alcoholism goes away with the first A.A. meeting. If you feel you don’t have to go to a meeting, denial is often behind the feeling. Granted, not every alcoholic returned to drinking because he or she missed a single meeting, nor did every alcoholic permanently lose his or her sobriety because of a single drink. It’s that very fact that makes skipping meetings or taking occasional single drinks so terrible dangerous. The natural thought to an alcoholic is, “I got away with missing a meeting, and I got way with having one drink. I’ll bet I can handle two or three drinks.” Where that type of thinking leads is obvious.

There are going to be times when you don’t feel good or the boss has dumped a short deadline on you or your family is having a special occasion, and you need to skip a meeting. Always test the feeling to assure yourself there really is a need for missing a meeting, making sure it’s not a sign of denial.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On the Home Group
One of your regular meetings should be you’re A. A. home,
no matter where it meets.

In the part of the world where I got sober, we met in each other’s homes, keeping our groups limited to ten to twelve people. I can’t overstate the importance this had for me in my recovery, this is, to have had ten or a dozen people who really knew me and who really cared whether or not I showed up the next week. These were people I could trust with any information, no matter how personal, knowing it would never be repeated.

A.A. home groups need not be located in living rooms to be effective. For example, they can be in church basements, storefronts, or hospital cafeterias. What makes a home group to me, “A home group is a place where, if you break both your legs, you crawl to get to. It is a bunch of people who, when you arrive from California after a week away, you go to before you go home.” A friend once came to our home group on his way home from the hospital after the death of his infant daughter. He only said, “I can’t talk, but I have to be here.” He made it through the tragedy in a sober state, and he still is sober.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


ABOUT SPEAKERS

On the Quality of a Speaker

Any alcoholic who has been sober all day

today has something of value to tell you—all you

have to do is open your ears.

This is another way of saying your troubles with A.A. are often, if not always, revealed in the mirror. When a speaker has taken 45 minutes to tell history his or her story, and he or she isn’t yet up to the year 1937, it’s only human to wonder if the end of the talk will ever come. My sponsors reminded me it’s important for a speaker to share, and giving a talk is a part of recovery that should not be denied.

They also reminded me that any drunk who is free of John Barleycorn for this day does in fact have something to tell me about how this was accomplished. That’s the foundation of A.A. – shared experience. The gift is there for the taking, but you have to reach out to get it.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Speaking at a Meeting

Something in what you have to say may make all the difference in whether some poor drunk lives or dies – and you never know.

The “pass it on” theme occurs again and again in A.A. The reverse of the quoted statement is also potentially true: something we may want to say, but don’t, might make the difference.

In one of my early home groups there was a person whom we thought was drinking again, but we didn’t confront her. She was faced with the loss of sight in one eye; since I am one-eyed, I was asked to talk to her. I did talk to her for a long time about how to live with one eye, but I didn’t mention how to live without drinking. Shorty thereafter, she committed suicide. The thought of what might have been comes back to me from time to time, even now, some twelve years too late.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

ABOUT THE PEOPLE IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

On Kind of A.A. Members

There are two kinds of people in A.A. –

hard-noses and others. Hard-noses get well.

The implication is that “others” don’t get well. For alcoholics, not getting well probably means a shortened life.

A “hard-nose,” according to my sponsor, is someone who “sticks with the winners.” Hard-noses go to meetings, stay in touch with sponsors, and take their programs very seriously. They place their sobriety ahead of everything else. They know there are no shortcuts, and no easier, softer ways to maintain sobriety.

The others, on the contrary, miss meetings, are “too busy” to make Twelfth Step calls, and are too embarrassed to speak in public. They don’t’ take their programs seriously. This is a big mistake because they probably will never get well.



Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Hard-Noses (#1)

Every hard – nose I’ve ever seen is still sober,

and those who are dead died sober.

Others just died.

It is realistic to think that any alcoholic who returns to drinking is not a hard-nose. Hard-noses don’t relapse.

I have never seen this fail: an alcoholic who relapse after spending a year or so in the fellowship has, for several weeks or months, been skipping meeting r not keeping in touch with his or her sponsors.

My sponsor told me of an A.A. friend who was dying in an intensive care unit at a local hospital. Because he was being given oxygen to ease his breathing, his mouth was quite dry. A visitor asked him, “Would you like something to drink?” Even comatose and near death, the old alcoholic’s mouth tightened shut! That’s a hard-nose!



Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Hard-Noses (#2)
You an always tell the hard-noses – they’re the sober ones!

When you walk into an A.A. meeting you’ve never been to, there are always some people there who stand out. There is a look about them; they stand a little bit straighter; they smile; they look good. These are the hard-noses, and they are the sober ones. They take time to greet the newcomer. They don’t merely look at you, they see you. One feels less shaky around them.

I used to go to A.A. meetings in a nearby tow, and I always saw another recovering alcoholic, Leo, at the literature table. Leo fit all the attributes of a hard-nose. He died a few mounts ago, at his desk, with the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book open in front of him. No one who knew him was surprised; it was so characteristic of this beloved hard-nose.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Thirteenth Stepping

It’s rough enough getting sober without complicating it with sex; both of you are at risk of losing it –your sobriety, I mean!

A Thirteenth Stepper is a person who acts as a sponsor for a person of the opposite sex. This is considered a bad practice by many A.A. members because the wisdom of A.A. is that in his or her life for the first year. Nothing must be allowed to supplant sobriety as the number one priority and having a love affair with another recovering alcoholic has a way of becoming all-important.


Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Two-Steppers

Two-Steppers often wind up not only getting themselves drunk,

but their pigeons, too – that’s a double waste!

A Two-Stepper is a person who jumps right into helping a newcomer, or pigeon, without working the Twelve Steps of A.A. Double relapses have followed these dangerous arrangements. There is a double message here: it’s dangerous to anyone’s sobriety not to work the Twelve Steps; and it’s dangerous to anyone’s sobriety to have a sponsor who is not stable in recover and is not following a solid A.A. program.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

From the Book

Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.
ABOUT THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

On Working the Steps
Hard-noses speak of “working” the Steps.

If one thinks following the Twelve Steps is anything but hard work, one’s chances for recovery are not good. To take each Step, to think about it over and over again, to extract the last bit of learning out of it, to stay with one Step until you are sure you understand it well—this is work. This is how hard-noses come to understand the fellowship of A.A. This is how they learn to live sober.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope