That We Might Solve Our Common Problem

Whatever 12 step program (or programs) we come from, we are a fellowship; “an elite group of experienced people who work together as peers”*, sharing our experience, strength, and hope with each other in the pursuit of a solution to our common problem and to help others to recover.

My sponsor/mentor/adviser/friend, a man who has been sober for 38 years, told me that there have been times when he’s shared at meeting level something painful he’s going through that other people have told him that he must not share things like that at meetings because he’ll scare off newcomers.  They’ll think this thing doesn’t work.  The fact that he’s managed to go through life sober for decades won’t speak for itself.

I couldn’t disagree more.  One of the reasons that I chose Joe as my sponsor is the fact that he talks about what is really going on in his life, how difficult it is sometimes to pick up the tools, how practicing this program works, both in terms of how we practice it and in terms of the results we get.  By sharing more than just his drunk-o-logue and letting people know what’s really going on with him, I was able to see that at the level of recovery we are peers.  None of us are better or worse.  Some of us just have more experience staying sober.

I also saw the power that sharing our experience has to help others step out of our personal dungeons of despair and into the solution.

I started keeping this blog on January 9, 2007.  It was my 5th day clean.  I relapsed 6 days later, right before I got on a bus to go to treatment. Through all of that and since then I have used this blog as a means to share my experience, as a meditation, as a prayer, as an inventory, all with the secondary objective of showing others that people like me do recover, if only for today.

I don’t spout too much 12 step history here.  It’s not my history.  I haven’t found that I need to rewrite my story or to deny what I’m experiencing in life in order to show that we recover.  I share my story because I’ve learned that when I do, when I write about what’s really going on in my life, I get the support I need to make it through another day sober, I get closer to being the person my Creator intends me to become, and sometimes, someone says, “I wanted to thank you so much for posting about [that]. It’s given me the courage to finally start posting about [my] issues. And that has been good for me. Not only that, but other people have been reaching out to me [for help].”

And isn’t that our primary purpose?

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow