A Million Miracles

I feel kind of petty for making a fuss over my upcoming AA birthday.  Two years is nothing.  I went Saturday to the celebration of someone’s quinquagenary in recovery.  Fifty years is a whole lot of “one day at a time”.  If you’ve eveer been afraid that no one will show up at your funeral, stick around and stay active in 12 step recovery for awhile.

If you’ve never been to a big conference or convention or a big sobriety anniversary celebration then you may have never experienced participating in a “sobriety countdown.”  Typically everyone already knows who has been sober the longest in the crowd.  Easily the case at this party as, to my knowledge, no one in Boise, Idaho has been sober longer than “Big” Barry W.  So the countdown starts at 50.  Then they ask for anyone who has been sober 49 years to stand.  48?  47?  Someone stood at 46 years and was counted. 45? 44? For every year 43 and lower at least one person, and usually more, stood up.  As the years got lower more people stood and more people stood till they had to start asking people to stay standing so they could get them counted. 

3 years?  2 years?  I sat on my hands.  With only a couple of days left till I had two years (but!  but!  but!) I waited. One year?  Quite a number of us stood.  And then they count the 9 months, 6 months, 90 days, 60 days, 30 days. 29. 28. 27.  The two newest members in the room had been sober 8 days each.

It is easy to think that the huge drop off in numbers as you get to the bigger years is an indication that the program doesn’t really work all that well.  That is a terribly easy way to justify a lack of faith in an infinite Power or to justify a lack of willingness to do what is important.  The truth of the matter is that 40 years ago Alcoholics Anonymous was barely established in southern Idaho.  There were maybe 10 meetings a week around here, and yet here were people who had gotten sober then, that are still sober today, and who still make recovery and participation in the fellowship a priority.  The increase in numbers as the years get lower shows that every year more people are recovering.

Recovery and continued participation over any stretch of time is far from the norm.  I know that.  I was in and out enough times and in for periods of time that were long enough to see that most people just don’t dedicate some part of their lives to living in the program and to showing up so that those coming in can see it at work.  Most people return to their old way of living, and huge numbers of those who recover permanently choose to live away from the wellspring of the origin of their recovery, and that kind of makes me sad.  Those who have gotten sober for longer periods of time have so much to teach those of us who are newer.  At some point in recovery, usually sooner, I think, than later, one needs to be showing up to help others.

So here is how half a century of dedication to recovery works.  Person after person after person, iconic figures in the local recovery community, got up and shared how important Barry W. had been in their own recovery; how he had driven them to their first meeting or cornered them at a coffee shop and shared something that they’ve carried with them ever since.  Shared how he had been there when they had really needed someone sober to lean on or called them on their denial when it was critical that someone love them enough to do that.

If everyone in that room had been sober for 50 years, like Barry, there would have been 56 guests.  But nobody around here has that many years of recovery.  There were many more people than that.  Whether we had 46 years or 1 year (11 months and 25 days) or 8 days, the combined recovery in that room was two thousand seven hundred seventy nine years.

That’s right.  2,779 years.  Over 1 million days, one day at a time.

Someone very kindly reminded me last night how important people celebrating 2 years or even 6 months were to him when he first got sober.  He was sure that anyone claiming 5 years sober was a liar.  And I really identify with that.  It was quite awhile before I even believed in permanent recovery.

When Barry finally spoke himself he said that he understands how people put together years and years sober, but what he didn’t understand is how people put together 60 days or 30 days or 8 days.  Or 1 day.

I couldn’t stay sober 1 day.  One day was a miracle.

I loved being at that celebration with my own little string of miracles in a room with a million of them.