Through the Red Door Blog

My early days of “working the Program” brought changes to my life, some perhaps mundane—like my eating habits, being on time for dinner or picking up the kids, assisting with chores. You’ll know what I am talking about if you’ve really decided to quit drinking and work your way to that alcohol-free life.  

My appearance changed: I lost 40 or 50 pounds in my first six months in the Program. I could remember the events of the night before or remember to pick up that half-gallon of milk. My evening handwriting improved a bit but, alas, I never did have handwriting that pleased my 4th grade schoolteacher mother. Add some of your own “inebriate-trademarks.”

Thinking back to my alcoholic actions is painful but frankly I don’t want to forget them ‘cause I don’t want to repeat them. Come on, be honest—think of some of your gala flip-flops. But if you can’t recall any, listen to that next “drunk-a-log” lead for that’ll bring back your own days of rage. (I like a drunk-a-log occasionally to remind me of those days, I grimace and recall my own episodes, and recall when the Higher Power reached out His arms for me took me to the Beginners’ Meeting at Oak Street.)

I changed habits with friends—people I’d come to know and socialize with. Take dinner parties: now we ask when dinner is being served and arrive no more than 20 minutes 30 max prior to that time. We leave shortly after dessert. Early on, I’d simply decline an invitation since I was “sick” (which was true, “sick of my alcoholism”). I stopped all “after work” gatherings, club activities, stuff like that, any activities where alcohol was a featured part of the event.

I was focused on dealing with my disease and ridding myself of its harm and these changes enabled me to come to understand and work the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I suppose occasionally I wondered if friends noticed, but soon I realized they were busy with their own lives. But there was a Saturday morning, when, in my front yard a friend, a good friend, a neighbor, Howard, said to me,” I know you don’t drink. I didn’t know you were that bad.” I looked him in the eye, and I said, “Well, Howard, how bad does it have to get before one does something about his drinking?”

Yes, the damage we cause to others and ourselves can be deep and dark, but always remember that through the gift of Christ our Higher Power, the Program gives us a way to make life “happy, joyous and free.”

–Jim A, St. X Noon, Cincinnati, Springboro / Franklin Noon

My daughter and I were as close as any mother and daughter could be.  Therapists would say we were co-dependent. We probably were. I was a single mother for most of her growing up and sober since she was 2 ½. Her dad was a good father and we shared custody well.

In my early sobriety, Rachel taught me many things that I needed to learn to stay sober. Some included not worrying so much (she thought that was silly) and asking for help easily whenever she needed help. I often thought she was teaching me more than I was teaching her. I even wrote a book about what she taught me – God Shots: Memories and Lessons, A life in Recovery.

Our perhaps too close relationship continued though her college years and beyond. She married and had a great job and I noticed that she needed to be separate more and more. That is totally understandable and yet I was not prepared to let go. I wanted to cling to the way we were. When the grandbaby came, I thought I would be there and help daily but that’s not what she wanted. She set boundaries I didn’t like. I thought and kept saying - “I ‘m just trying to help”. Really, I wasn’t listening to her and how she wanted to be a parent.

In my home, two gifts from Rachel were very special to me. One was a ceramic leaf plate that she had made in grade school, and one was an icon of Mary that she brought me from a trip to Turkey she had taken.  One month both of those gifts fell and broke within weeks of each other. I was heartbroken and it seemed that they were saying to me that our relationship was broken for good. I kept the pieces that broke and tried not to think about them.

While doing a tenth step sometime later I had to admit that I owed my daughter an amends. I needed to apologize for the intrusive ways I had been acting and for not respecting her boundaries. Slowly, we have forged a new relationship. Not all of it is to my liking but I have learned that I want to know and love my daughter for who she is now, not for the little girl who needed my help so often.

I learned about the Japanese technique Kintsugi, where broken porcelain is visibly repaired with gold. The repair is a symbol and showed that the brokenness was still there, but it had been repaired with gold so that the break would be honored and acknowledge.

I bought a kit to learn Kintsugi. I used it to repair the gifts my daughter had given me, and I had broken. They remind me of the healing that has happened through my willingness to admit may part, make amends, and change my behavior as a living amends. The pieces are more beautiful to me now than they were before. That which was broken can be healed and remembered without forgetting.

Libbie S.

This invitation is repeated at every AA meeting I’ve attended. I find it as important as “Work the Steps” for it is a sharp reminder to all of us whether you’re a 30-day person or the 30-year person: our sobriety is dependent on the quality of the way we “work the Program” and central to that admonishment is to “keep coming back.”

We’d moved to an assisted living facility, and I was looking for a nearby meeting and found one. The first time I walked in, struggling with my walker to cross unfamiliar bumps in the sidewalk and doorway, those already there greeted me as a friend, a friend. No questions, just “Welcome, git ya some coffee? Where ya from?” No hesitation, just smiles, handshakes. A warmth filled that room. I practically cried.  They had their own program format, easy to follow for after enough meetings at various places you sorta get a feel of what’s up next.  After the meeting I shook hands with a guy also from Cincinnati where we had lived for over 60 years. We exchanged which meetings we’d frequented and names of folks we’d run into, we both knew one of the granddads of Cincinnati AA. As we said goodbye, he said, guess what, “Come on back next week!” He wasn’t just being polite. He simply said what most of us hear when leaving an AA meeting, “Come on back!”

New in the Program we may have been rather relaxed about a regular attendance, sorta like “Not tonight, I went last night, don’t feel like it tonight,” or “No way...got a lot on my mind.” Then one night, you hear a lead of someone who “didn’t” keep coming back and she slipped back to “them old sick days” followed with guilt and sadness of her failure ... but she soon returned and was of course, welcomed.

The very words of the Steps tell us why to keep coming back: “Continue to take...” (#10); “Seek through prayer...” (#11); and “Practice these principles...” (#12).

We must always remember our ego is watching for a chance to drag us back, telling us “You’re fine, all that time at meetings, you don’t need to go any more.” Our ego never leaves us and seeks to take advantage of missteps by us.

And that brings us to the second part of “why “we need to keep coming back: because one of our charges in recovery is to carry the message to others who still suffer. And where else other than at a beginners AA meeting are you going to have the opportunity to do that. And if you have only a short period of sobriety and are a “newbie” yourself, what better place can you find folks trying to do the same thing.

So, keep coming back, it works if you continue to work it and as you carry this message of hope to others still suffering.

-Jim A., St X Noon Cincinnati and Springboro/Franklyn Wednesday, Noon

In the November GRAPEVINE of 1961, Bill W. wrote: “We did not always come closer to our wisdom by reason of our virtues; our better understanding is often rooted in the pains of our former follies. Because this has been the essence of our individual experience, it is also the essence of our experience as a fellowship.”

“I wish I had never…” “If only I could go back and do it again I would.” “I don’t know if I can trust myself because I…” I can’t believe that I used to…” “I have no idea why I did what I was told I did. I have no memory of it but the knowledge of it just pains me.”

Our past can be a weight that will one day be the death of us, or we can use our past experiences to help ourselves and others because we have learned from our past mistakes, our past failures, our past guilt and shame.

My first moral inventory of myself was as shallow as a pancake. I wrote what I thought the Unit Chaplain would expect and I could get away with. He accepted it and I got away with it—for a short time.

As time passed, I knew I had not done a “fearless and moral inventory of myself” and, to be honest, I didn’t want to do one. First of all, much of my drinking was blackout drinking and so I had only a few—but serious—memories of my drinking life. What I did remember were the so called “good times.”

Once I began to make amends and to ask classmates and some friends about my drinking in their presence I got a shock. I didn’t want to hear what I was being told. Me? Me, a priest? I did that? I said that? Yes. That was me under the influence of alcohol.

There was no way I was going to share with anyone what I was hearing about myself. If I felt guilty and ashamed while I was drinking, I was doubly guilty and ashamed now that I was not drinking and not yet sober.

For almost the first five years in the fellowship I did everything right for all the wrong reasons. I read the Big Book so I could quote it at meetings; I went to meetings, quoted the Big Book, and talked, and talked. Then, one day, someone loved me enough to tell me publicly: “Séamus, shut your mouth, take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth. God gave you two ears to listen twice as much as you talk.”

I listened. I listened and realized that being a priest had nothing to do with my addiction. I was as human as every other person in the rooms of A.A. I made similar mistakes, lost my values, wasted my money, went “looking for love in all the wrong places.” “Oh, Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you [think} you’re perfect in every way.”

This humpy dumpy fell off the wall and cracked. I began to see myself through the eyes of others, which was different from the manner in which I saw myself. I was not “that bad.” Then “I’m not bad.’ ‘I am a good person who made some terrible mistakes.” What I am guilty of I did under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. I used, misused, and abused and became addicted to alcohol to hide from myself and thought I was also hiding from others.

“We did not always come closer to our wisdom by reason of our virtues; our better understanding is often rooted in the pains of our former follies.” Today, my wisdom comes from “Let me share this with you…” “I remember when…” “I was told that I…” “If it were not for my past, I could not make sense out of what you are sharing with me.”

My past has become a foundation stone. I started on shaky ground and almost every step I took was a minor earthquake. As the aftershocks stop, flowers, grass, trees, grow through the asphalt and Nature takes back her life. As I listened to the rumbles of my life, I learned to embrace the shaking of my foundation and appreciate that these rumblings would help to keep me in check and grow as long as I shared them with others.

I listened, learned, reviewed, learned to work the Steps and Live the program and, in so doing, I gained the knowledge to ask God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the Wisdom to know the difference.   

Séamus D.

Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New Orleans.

In long-term recovery we often lean back into moments from our early recovery that help and sustain us. In my book, “Out of the Woods,” I write about some of these experiences. Here is one of mine:

When I was very new to the rooms of recovery I heard a woman share in a meeting in a way that made me truly want to be deeply in recovery. The woman was telling the group that the day before her daughter had been hurt—hit by a car in front of their home. The woman said that she got into the ambulance with her daughter and she began to pray that her daughter would be okay and she was praying that God would fix this situation.

And then, she said, she stopped and she changed her prayer. Instead she began to pray, “God help me to get out of your way.”

I was stunned by her words. Just stunned that anyone could have that prayer come to mind in such a scary situation. I knew in that moment that it was recovery working in that woman’s life. And I knew then that I wanted what she and those Twelve-Step people had. I understood that what this woman did came from being in this program.

That was more than 30 years ago and that moment of realization and revelation has stayed with me. I still want that. It’s why I continue my recovery.

God help me to get out of your way.

Diane C.

The May 18 reading in Karen Casey’s classic meditation book Each Day a New Beginning includes this line, “We are offered, moment by moment, opportunities to experience the rapture of life.”

Rapture? Ecstasy? Delight? Joy?

But this rapture does not always equal pleasure. The “rapture of life” promised to us in recovery is the ineffable glory of being alive. The “rapture of life” is the intense experience of living life awake, alert, and head-on.

This has been a difficult couple of weeks. I’ve had some health issues to deal with. My best friend fell, broke her ankle, and had to be pinned-and-plated back together. Another friend has a grandchild who is grievously ill. Another couldn’t find affordable housing locally and has had to move out of town. Oh, and then there’s the state of the world, the state of the nation, and the bewildering climate.

“We are offered, moment by moment, opportunities to experience the rapture of life.”

The promise of sobriety, the promise of living life in the fellowship of AA, using the Twelve Steps as a guide for personal behavior, is the promise of not only enduring the difficult times, but of finding the joy in those times. We are promised the ability to live life moment-by-moment. We are taught how to bring ourselves away from the shame of the past or fear of the future by focusing on right here, right now, this breath, this blink, this chiming of the clock. This is joy. This is rapture: being present for our own lives.

Every moment of our lives is an opportunity to be grateful. That is hard to believe in the midst of pain, loss, fear, and frustration. It can seem callous, numb, and unrealistic to say that. But grace is found in the wee pockets of time, in the fleeting thoughts of  “I need to call my friend” or the silent presence of the mourner with the bereaved. It’s in helping make new pillow shams for the apartment that’s too far away.

Yesterday morning I was taking my Golden Retriever BridgetAdams for a walk. She smiles at every single neighbor and each neighbor smiles back. Some give her pats and belly rubs and some even give her biscuits. She is equally glad to see them all. The shining sun makes her fur glitter and sparkle. I am glad to be alive now, right here, walking the dog.

And then we come to a little field and there is a bluebird, hopping on the ground, grubbing for breakfast. It’s years since I’ve been this close to a bluebird. The little bird looks up at me and then at Bridgie, acknowledges our presence with a little nod, and calmly takes off and flies to a nearby tree. I am grateful to be alive now, right here, nodding back at that beautiful bird.

“The opposite of addiction is not abstinence: the opposite of addiction is community.”

I’m not sure where I first heard that statement, but I believe it’s true. I’m not relying on my own strength alone to endure or enjoy a day. I can reach out. I am sober. I am alert. I can make choices. I can pick up the phone or walk the dog.

These beliefs, this “alone-no-more” and this “moment-by-moment rapture of life” bring with them some obligations. The Fellowship and Program of AA made the principles I had wanted to live by possible for me to live by. Because I was able to admit my own weakness and neediness, I was able to reach out and find the hand of AA there for me. That sure support gave me the courage to let go of the crutch I had been using—alcohol—and stand up. I am able to open my eyes and look around and experience the tiny, beautiful details of the present moment. My strength regained and increased; I can reach out. I can be present with those who are sick and suffering. I can look people in the eye, and I can promise, “You are not alone.”

And I can witness others as they live life one day at a time, one rapturous moment at a time.

-Christine H.

Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I was never going to take the first step if the second step wasn’t there to give me hope. My life was such a mess and I felt very insane. The promise and hope allowed me to take a chance…

And then there was that third step:Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the CARE of God as I understood God.

I was stumped—I knew I had some idea of God, but it wasn’t a very good one. I had a secret when I got sober. I worked for the church; I didn’t really have any connection with God by the time I stopped drinking. I hit my bottom after my dearest friend died when she was only 33 years old. Between 12 and 21 years old, 20 relatives died including my father when I was 12. My God was gone from me with all that grief and pain.

My sponsor suggested that I do a sort of 4^th step on my spiritually. My first memory of an insight, or the experience of God, or a higher power, was when my grandfather died. I could see myself sitting on the screen porch tying my shoes. My grandfather had taught me how to tie my shoes just a year before. In those days you had to be able to tie your shoes to show that you were mature enough to go to kindergarten. Everyone was so sad, but I knew he was still with me. Then the gentle sense of a grandfatherly God left me.  I got busy with life and school and drinking and lost any real connection to God. I studied theology in the hopes of finding God again. 

Raised a Roman Catholic, the church either boggled me or I found hypocrisy in every area of the church. As a child I rushed through confession making up sins, didn’t understand the Latin mass, and was freaked out by the corpus on the crucifix. That God was a punishing one—no thanks.

I spent time trying to know God. I walked a lot and I often noticed that the wind was the only thing that I could feel as a power greater than me. I couldn’t turn my will and my life over to the care of the wind! I searched back into my life to see what I could connect with.

I remembered that as a kid we had a babysitter named Miss Connie. She was British and had a big lap and gave big hugs. As I remembered her in early sobriety, I used her as my image of a loving power greater than me. She had looked a lot like Queen Elizabeth II’s mother. I cut out a picture of the woman and had it on my bureau.

My daughter was almost three when I got sober. She loved Mr. Rogers. As I cleaned up the kitchen, I often stopped to watch with her and felt such love and support from Fred Rogers that I thought I’d use him as a higher power. It was a bit odd since he was a living person but what he said and how I felt gave me such peace. I knew a God like Mr. Rogers was a God I could depend on to care for me. I had a picture of him on my bureau as well.

As time and sober years passed, I have found comfort in other images—Mary the mother of Jesus and Quan Yin, the goddess of holding sorrows in the Buddhist tradition. I watched songbirds at my feeder and saw that they soared on the wind and trusted the wind to help them find food and water. Maybe I could do that too. Each image or experience of something greater and deeper than me has helped me find a way to hold that true connection that I am loved, and that I could turn over to the care of God all my life and will. When friends say, “I can take care of that for you” I trust it more and more. I know God will do the same. I don’t second guess the people closest in my life that answer my request for help—so I have learned not to question that God would be there if I asked. The challenge is to ASK and then turn it over to God’s care. God could and would if sought.

“I finally surrendered” but not until the passage of six weeks of the Program...

...when I came to believe, I was living in a dark tunnel, one which never seemed to end. It was sucking me into times of pain, loss of much, and shame. I finally admitted it, on my knees. I admitted it to someone, and I guess I have to say I admitted this to something greater than myself not knowing what or who it was.  I knew this was the only option I had... one night at home, on my knees, silent, begging for help to find light, a way out of this darkness I had fallen into.

As I rose from my knees, I felt something lift me by my shoulders, I sensed a newness, a hope. Sounds too simplistic and superhuman, but don’t tell me this couldn’t have happened to me. It did. Later that day, at my meeting, I relayed what had happened. The reading that night was about Bill W’s encounter with his Higher Power.  People reached for me, smiling, tears in our eyes, others saying, “Just like me.” A brighter path seemed to open for there was more than just those in that room, a power greater than us was there. Believe it!

It was a loving something whose aim seemed only to provide a way to help me. I realized that night that I’d tried all my life to “run the show,” I knew it all, and could manage my life without assistance following what I felt was the right path. That path brought me deep into that tunnel and its pain and harm to others and myself.  I came to believe there had to be a better way. The people with me that evening told me of their experiences finding this greater help, this “Higher Power” they kept calling it. I heard their stories—some stories of their travels were deeper than I had fallen, and I was reminded that that option was available if I went back out. But I heard they had found light, a way to live life without alcohol, lives of happiness, of joy, free of that tunnel.

When I went home that night, I finally realized what was happening for I had to admit to myself that “I gave up. I handed my life over to this Higher Power.” As I did so, I again felt His hand reaching for me, showing me the way.  I knew each person at the meeting that evening was doing the same. It was a way I could walk with help from my higher Power.

Now I am taking steps to strengthen my surrender, building on it, and finding an alcohol-free life based on love, honesty, and reliance on our Higher Power. This takes effort and time.  Yes, I was told that I would find a spiritual life, one which reveals the next right thing when caught in a jam. They told me and I believed them that this was a daily effort, to build on the very things I was learning those first nights. And they told me that I had an obligation to carry the message of these early meetings to those who still suffered.  

This is how the Program came to my rescue at my early AA meetings.

Jim A, St X Noon & Springboro/Franklin, Wednesday Noon

In his review of Kenneth Branagh’s movie  “A Haunting in Venice,” in PARABOLA  Summer 2024 , Jame Tynen writes, “it deserves  more recognition for its powerful picture of what happens when a committed rationalist encounters the supernatural” At the end of the review he writes, “A Haunting in Venice reminds us that to take a step into the supernatural is to risk being swept into powers that can’t be described as facts , clues and deductions. It is a journey into a reality that can’t be measured or rationalized yet nevertheless has the power to change us.

Over the span of my time in the Fellowship I have come across many agnostics, atheists, and rationalists who, like the rest of us, had some problem with the idea of God since we had prayed to God for help, cursed God for not helping, abandoned god.

When I first heard that all I had to do was “Read the Big Book, talk to my sponsor, and go to meetings” I was more than skeptical. I had difficulty in acknowledging that I was powerless. Coming to believe in a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity was laughable. I could stop drinking anytime I wanted, I was not insane. My boss sent me for treatment not to a Psych ward.  

“Turned our will and our life over the care of God as we understood Him.” I was a good catholic, of course God was in charge of my life. I had no control over anything, except that I acted like I had control over everything.

“What happens when a committed rationalist encounters the supernatural?” Miracles happen sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly but they will always materialize if we work [look] for them.

“To take a step into the supernatural is to risk being swept into powers that can’t be described as facts, clues, and deductions.” Having read the Big Book, the Twelve and Twelve, The Little Red Book, and the history of A.A., I knew it all except this part that few really discussed—the supernatural, the Spiritual.

The Spiritual cannot be discussed in terms of facts, clues, and deductions. It is to be experienced and once experienced it leaves us speechless. As Bill reported, “Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a freeman. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, “So this is the god of the preachers!””

Bill had experienced a “presence,” a “wind,” saw himself on a mountain. But there are those for whom this may be the result of medication, medication withdrawn. And yet, for Bill, it was an experience , a spiritual awakening, that changed his life and the lives of millions of others over the years.

“It is a journey into a reality that can’t be measured or rationalized yet nevertheless has the power to change us.” I never expected the changes that I have experienced since I finally acknowledged I am powerless over alcohol and other drugs, that my life had become unmanageable. In the process of making Amends, I learned just how unmanageable my life had been. I thought I knew about God—so much for a degree in theology (attained under the influence of spirits). I had to come to grips that I had to relearn all I thought I knew and see it in a totally different light. It wasn’t about positions to be taken; it was about being open to the Spirit as I came to understand god. The journey was from the head to the heart, from rigidity in thinking and expectations to finding fluidity in life; it was a journey from arrogance to kneeling in respect with humility; a journey from being under the influence of spirits to being led by the Spirit, a power greater than me, that restored me to sanity.

This was a new reality that could not “be measured or rationalized.”  Somewhere in reading the Big Book, talking to sponsors and members of the fellowship, listening and sharing at meetings, a Spirit, a Power greater than myself, crept into my heart and mind and changed me. Recovery is not “to risk being swept into powers that cannot be described” but rather experienced as life giving.

• Alcoholics Anonymous p 100

Séamus D
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans Diocese.

...that new person, or is it the old timer? Make no mistake about it. Everyone in that AA Room is important!  Each is present at an AA meeting to reap the harvest of the teachings of Alcoholics Anonymous. But the new person? He or she may be plain scared, maybe angry, but not likely to be glad to be there. His attendance may be “court or spousal-directed.” Deep inside herself, she recognizes she may be embarking on making serious changes in her life. Ask yourself how you felt at your first AA meeting? Remember, Step 12 calls us to reach out to these new folks, to carry the message to them.

What’d’ I see that first day: A “lead meeting,” at East One, basement of a branch bank, Tuesday night at 8, smoking and coffee encouraged.  Walking in I saw only strangers. I of course sat in back. People were laughing, welcoming each other. A guy leaned across chairs, asked my name, shook hands, said “I’m George, welcome.” Others followed, I guess it was apparent I was there for the first time, ...strange, no one had a last name. I met Art, Sally, and others before the meeting started. Did I feel “important?” No way. That was the last thing I wanted. Just let me sit in this corner!

We started. Seemed strange. They read some sentences from a book and Art handed me what I later learned was the Twelve Steps and some other stuff and asked me to read a paragraph.  People read from what I came to know as “the Big Book” and it was indeed “big”. A basket was passed, announcements, then the Chair said, “Anyone here for the first time, just tell us your name so we can greet you”. I froze. A guy stood up (must have been sixty or so) and said, “Charlie, I’m an alcoholic”. A couple others followed. People sorta looked at me, so I stood, “Jim,” and sat down.  No way I was going to tell them I was an alcoholic. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself, and I wasn’t going to admit it to a group of people I’d never seen before. What if I ran into them at Kroger’s and a guy said, “Hi, good to see you at the AA meeting Tuesday, next week I’m givin’ the lead.”

Then the evening’s speaker, Bill, gave the lead I’ll never forget, ever. For 45 minutes he told his story. I was torn. Much of what he said was the same path I’d traveled… razz-ma-tazz at college and into my 20s, early 30s, but bumps started appearing, difficulties at home, and more, lots of laughter from others, nodding of heads of agreement, “Yeah, I did that!” We clapped for the speaker and with a prayer, and (imagine) holding hands, said something about, “...it works if you work it”, and off I went to ponder all I’d heard and seen.

To be Continued on May 8^. At Red Door.

Jim A, St X Noon & Franklin/Springboro, Wednesday Noon