Carrying the message

Recently an old friend of mine reached out for help, he was trying to stop drinking and wanted to attend an AA meeting. This brings the count of people that I grew up and drank with who have at least attempted sobriety, into the double digits.

There was a point in time where I was very concerned that my friends would look upon me as weak-willed for joining AA and getting sober. I tried very hard to keep my anonymity protected for fear of judgment. However, rumors being what they are, word got out there pretty quickly anyway. The list of friends who were willing to talk to me dropped off precipitously during my first year of sobriety. At the time I was so scared of drinking I just dealt with it by doing step work and complaining to my sponsor, but I stayed the path of sobriety.

After a year or two the feelings of shame and loneliness began to lift and I was more open with my friends about what I had done. Some seemed genuinely happy for me, some were still cool to the idea. I never pushed my beliefs on anyone, and said thing like "I have nothing against drinking, I just can't do it anymore."

Then came the day when I started getting requests for help from the very people who had distanced themselves from me. It seemed I had been living a life that showed them that AA worked, and that I had changed. There was a life after alcohol.

As far as I am concerned, this form of "carrying the message" was something I never planned, or even knew I was doing. It has also been the most fulfilling. To be of service to old friends like this can not be measured in words. I am truly blessed to be of service.

Of course, it also says that I hung out with a lot of drunks... but there you have it.

Anonymity and shame

Maggie Lamond Simone recently published a column on the Huffington Post suggesting that AA drop the 12th Tradition, anonymity, and rename ourselves something like Alcoholics In Recovery.

Some thoughts on Anonymity

A recent discussion and some reading in Kevin Griffin's A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery got me to thinking about Anonymity.

Anonymity is not just about concealment and protection, either of the group or the individual.  Protection from exposure of the individual as an alcoholic and protection from opening the fellowship up to negative publicity are certainly important.  Few newcomers would feel comfortable coming into the fellowship if they thought it meant publicly declaring they were alcoholics.  Admittedly, this worry about exposure very often diminishes or even goes away completely over time.  Similarly, protecting AA from the negative publicity of an openly declared member relapsing is also important.

I think the real core of Anonymity as the spiritual foundation of our traditions lies in its link to Humility.  When I walk into an AA meeting I am Brian M, with no family name, no profession, no title, no social status, no political or religious affiliation.  I have let go of all the 'identifiers' our society puts on us and I have come to a place where I can safely open up (and discover) who I really am, my real place in the world.  This search for who and what I am should not end with the 'right sizing' we so often hear about in meetings.   I have to admit that I find that phrase pretty troubling.  I can't help but hear an implicit comparison in the phrase 'right sized'.  It sounds to me like we are looking for our proper size in relation to others, and that is not true humility, although it may be a step toward humility.