Since July, my wife and I have been residents of a full-blown medical assisted living facility. Like similar operations, various programs and events are published monthly by management and include such regulars as bingo, Bible study, assembling 2000-piece jigsaw puzzles and socializers featuring of course a selection of fine alcohol as the top attraction. For August’s calendar, I noted the above simultaneous sessions of AA and booze. But which to attend? Maybe I could attend both and pick the one with the brightest picture of life. I thought it would be interesting for those in the Pub Group to occasionally listen to conversations of the Friends of Bill, then the following week, vice-versa.

Isn’t there is a synergism between the Pub and Friends? Could one really exist without the other? Some of us have done that very thing. We spent a lot of time in the pub but ultimately found friends of Bill’s. Does life tell me the two are co-dependent?

In “Three Hots and a Cot”*, I wrote about the threats of recidivism by recovering alcoholics, this “going back out” in spite of earnest time working the Program. The reality is that our ego, dressed as Demon Rum, is always trying to pull us back. My first reaction was perhaps the assisted living facility might be facilitating this fallback activity. But no, I think, perhaps, I am not certain about this, but maybe the facility is just using this simulcast of Chapel or Pub as a reminder that this Chapel or Pub choice is before us every day that we’re alcoholics, for in a sense, we must recover each day, a commitment to work the Program in some way each day.

Maybe some say, “Do I ever drop this burden of our addiction?” No, but we receive merely by asking for the armor of our Higher Power to provide the grace of Bill’s and Dr. Bob’s discovery of a way to blunt our ego, despite this co-existence.

Remember, as humans we are bound to our egos. That force is always there -- always telling us we don’t have an alcohol problem, that we have licked it so we can take it easy. All to haul us back to those “good old” days of three hots and a cot.

Bill stood in that foyer of the hotel in Akron and heard the happy crowd down the hall finding companionship and release. He had a choice and found his Higher Power with its always-present Grace, the beauty of the Program.  

So, for me, which is it - Chapel or Pub? A happy crowd? No thanks, been there done that. I’ll take the honesty of the high road of the Chapel and treat “recidivism” for me merely as another fancy 50 fifty cent word, my ego once again run amuck.

Jim A, Traditions, Lebanon, OH

* See meditation, “Three Hots and a Cot,” Red Door, August 17, supra.