Step Eleven: How do we maintain our “conscious contact” with our Higher Power? As with all the Program, it’s a simple Program for complicated people. Paraphrasing the Big Book, we’re told that each night we are to stop and review our days’ encounters with family, friends, and enemies. Were we angry about something, did we treat someone unfairly, is there anything that occurred which will chew on us for days, or an amend you still need to make? Perhaps the main question might be to ask yourself, “Is this a difficulty I really can do anything about?”

A spiritual life isn’t an event, but rather an association with your Higher Power. There we recall that He’s at your side for in the words of that old hymn, “He walks and talks with us and tells us we are His own.” Cultivate that contact, talk to Him, listen. A thought about the day may come to mind, “out of the blue” so to speak, a thought which suggests a resolution.

Step Twelve: How do we carry the good news of the AA message? Your attitude. Remember, you are not a salesman but a drunk who, with His Higher Power and the Program, found an easier softer way. You’re not a “Big-book-Thumper!” Remember, however, the way you handled life before your surrender, got you into trouble, and you became a “drunk”. You cannot be judgmental, no “shame-on-you” stuff. You’re not their father or their priest... just a person who found a way out.

Speaking with a parent, spouse, brother/sister, employer. Listen, let them talk. What’s on his or her mind? Why were they even talking to you? Don’t forget Al-Anon for often/usually families are troubled also. Al-Anon provides a way a non-alcoholic can learn to live with the alcoholic whether practicing or in recovery. Al-Anon can be a tough gathering for often this person faces an alcoholic who just won’t quit, perhaps calling for the cutting of the relationship.

“First meeting” with practicing alcoholic. Again, let him or her talk, there will be openings for you to briefly tell your story: “It worked for me, perhaps for you too.” She may be fragile, perhaps beaten down by courts, family, bosses, friends, children. It’s a quiet invitation “Just come with us to a Noon Meeting at St X”. There folks will greet you and introduce themselves for they know how you feel and will assist you just as folks did when they were newbies. Treat it as a happy moment, the start for her of a new life. There is a laughter at AA meetings, and she may be surprised when folks cry out, “I’m just glad I found all you alcoholics!” A general thought: when approached to talk with a practicing alcoholic, talk with your sponsor or friends in the Program and solicit their ideas of how to approach the person.

Your conversation with the practicing alcoholic may call you to end your session with this question, “Well, your story is sad, familiar. I’ve been there. But I ask you, ‘What are you going to do about it’?”

Addresses to groups. I spent years speaking to all manner of groups... teens, church people, alcoholic and mentally incarcerated folks, prisoners working the system to reduce their jail time, and lawyers who had to sit and listen to hear someone tell them about alcoholism, seemingly a serious problem among lawyers. I approached it this this way: Lawyers generally aren’t stupid; they know the facts. I slanted my thoughts to their clients, families, kids, fellow partners, and for lawyers, there can be no greater devastation for a client to come to you and tell you that whenever they are seeking his or her legal counsel, one of your partners is always close to inebriation and that he wishes to work with a different attorney in your office.

I stress how the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous might be of service. After sessions, folks sometimes quietly approach and say, “Thanks.”

Yes, my friends, it is just another disease, not a stigma of some sort and the Program is Bill’s and Dr. Bob’s gift to us through their Higher Power.

Jim A St X Noon Cincinnati

April 3, 2024