Through the Red Door Blog

My daughter was two when I got sober. I went away for a week to visit my sister who was sober, and she took me to many meetings. It was my ‘treatment center’. Those first six months were not terrible, but I knew I had to get to meetings. A few meetings had childcare, and my then husband watched her often. I went to as many meetings as I could during the day when she was in daycare. I was working really hard to connect with the program. It never occurred to me that my daughter had any awareness of something being different. I believed I had been able to be just as attentive and loving as I had ever been. I was, what most people called a high bottom drunk, so I also believed that my drinking had never really affected her.

One day when she was three, she was playing and got out the play purse that she had. She asked me if I knew where her ‘keys’ were. She had a set of old keys that we had given her so she could pretend to lock the door or drive a car. She went to the closet where her coats hung on hooks low enough for her to get to them. She got out a coat, sort of put in on (it may have been upside down) and marched out of the kitchen/playroom towards the front door. “Where are you going?” I asked. “I’m going to a meeting,” she said brightly. I chuckled and was so surprised to hear her say that. I had no idea that she tracked my going to meetings. She couldn’t get out the front door, so I stayed in the kitchen making dinner. I could hear her in the living room talking but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After ten minutes or so, she marched into the kitchen and said: “Oh, I feel so much better!”. She knew! She knew that when I got home from a meeting, that I felt better and was BETTER. She knew I was in a better mood and perhaps kinder and more loving with her. She KNEW!

Years later at a meeting, I told this story after we were reading from The Family Afterwards in the Big Book. In that moment I realized that my behavior BEFORE I got sober had affected her and I was clueless. I felt some shame but also knew that my behavior changed rather quickly after I got sober, enough for her to recognize that Mommy felt better and that something called ‘meetings’ helped, and it helped her as well. Meetings make all the difference!

In Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill wrote: “Almost without exception Alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and the people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn’t quiet belong.”

It took me a while to acknowledge the depth of loneliness I experienced throughout my life. I was in denial of it because I had to be, after I got to college, the center of much of what was going on. For this reason, for the most part, I thought I was integrating really well with my fellow students. But I wasn’t.

When I got into sobriety and truly began to work the steps and live the program, I realized just how lonely my life had been. As I reviewed my life I can remember being with local boys and girls at a football game, enjoying the game, but not really part of the group.

I’ll admit, my mother kept a tight leash, and a short one, on me throughout my teenage years. Looking back on it, she had a good right to do what she did. She knew me better than I knew myself.

When I was in seminary, right after Vatican II, it was like I had escaped something. I began to drink—most of my drinking was blackout. I was over involved in the city of Dublin in all kinds of charitable works, youth clubs, etc. All of this was wonderful. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I wasn’t there, I was missing in action. My “self” was hiding deep inside of me.

I participated in class in the morning, taught in a local high school in the afternoon, attended meetings, studied, and drank. At that time, I drank with friends who lived nearby. I did not drink on my own because I believed that’s how one becomes an alcoholic.

My sense of loneliness hit me the night of my thirtieth birthday. A priest friend and I pub-crawled across San Francisco all night. I don’t remember much of that day and night, but I do remember at one point crying and telling him that I was a failure, I was not married, had no children, and didn’t own my own home. I felt miserable, alone, and lonely. Not only had I lost appreciation for my vocation as a priest but also I was isolated and isolating emotionally. My awareness of that caused me to drink more instead of getting help.

My Higher Power pushed me into my boss’s office one Friday afternoon and ruined a weekend of blackout drinking (a whole other story). Dutifully I went into treatment followed by lots of therapy and aftercare. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had this glass wall around me, and knew enough of the counseling language to “put on a good show” except for those who saw through me, and I felt uncomfortable in their company.

My first four years of the Fellowship were those of a dry-drunk. That was even more miserable but, fortunately, going to lots of AA meetings (for show), my employment as a counselor, leadership in a couple of organizations, and being a single dad, kept me busy. Finally, doing an honest step four and five, and making amends, opened my eyes to my behavior in my blackout drinking. I had enough glimpses into those blackouts—which I thought were signs of being tired—that helped me come to grips with my past. I needed people. I used people. I was addicted to being busy in case I’d have to be alone with myself.

My Higher Power kicked me again and this time I laughed. I had just declared bankruptcy, went home, and realized I had one thing no one could take from me—I was sober. I laughed, and I laughed. That was the beginning of my journey to peace and serenity through the program of honesty, not baloney.

Today, I am responsible for my emotional life. I enjoy meetings whether I share or just listen. I can come early, stay afterward, or leave. I have permission to be who I am. I have learned to like my Self.

 “Life takes on a new meaning in AA.” Bill writes. “To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have hosts of friends—this is an experience not to be missed.” That’s for sure.

I became alive. The Promises were fulfilled. Loneliness vanished and, while not perfect, I have continued to enjoy a wonder full life in my own company and with that of others.

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

Last week, Libbie S told us of her experiences finding AA and its warmth, fellowship, and support at meetings across the land she encountered in her many travels. I had the same experience, only mine took place when my wife and I had to move to an assisted living facility.  When we were deciding on the move to our new home, I asked if an AA group met regularly there but, alas, there was no such regular meeting. Later, after we moved in, we were socializing before dinner with a large group when someone behind me tapped me on the shoulder, I looked. Someone had placed an AA coin on my shoulder and disappeared. Grabbing the coin, I looked around and across the room and spotted a smiling vigorously waving gentleman. From that moment, every time our paths crossed each day, we ‘held” an AA meeting. What joy we experienced.

The Program brought us a release from our addiction, but it also brought us a way to live life with serenity, a way to reach out when the road suddenly takes an unpleasant turn. Oh, I suppose there are others like us living here perhaps still walking the path of the addict, but I now know the Program reminds us to accept people as they are with the joys of life itself.

That smiling face across the room was David D. During the year and a half we were both residents of Traditions of Lebanon, the time we spent focused on laughing, verbally poking each other, tracing our own paths to and into and now living with the Program, and the self-inflicted messes of our Country. As his wife continued her decline, we spent time sharing our personal feelings. When he left, he gave me a couple of “AA books” I did not have, including “As Bill Sees it.” But what made the gift even more meaningful and personal was the fact that this was the book he carried when he first came to the Program and carried it to those early meetings. But the wonderfulness of it all is that he had recorded in that book statements made by the “old-timers,” which as you probably will recall were usually uttered in a stolid voice. The sayings he noted in the book are ones which struck a note with him as something to remember. Apart from family gifts, it’s about as personal a gift as I have received.

…………………

With this meditation, I bid Red Door adieu. I’ve written enough. That door of red is always open so please join in carrying the good news of the Program’s easier softer way of dealing with our addiction.

Jim A. St. X Noon.

To paraphrase a thought that comes to me whenever I am at a meeting:

“For where two or three are gathered together for recovery, Higher Power is there among them.”

I have recently moved to a new town and a new state. I often feel adrift. I don’t know how to get places without google maps. I don’t know where things are in the new grocery store. Most everyone is a stranger to me. Friendly, but a stranger.

The first AA meeting I went to away from my home group occurred when I was 7 months sober and driving across Canada with a non-AA friend. I had made a commitment to attend at least one meeting while on our trip. I was the only woman at the meeting I found by calling the AA office (no apps then). It was in a church basement, and I walked into roomful of only men. Most of them were smoking (tells you how long ago that was) and a few were smoking cigars! Trying to breathe in that room was awful and I thought about leaving but I was welcomed without question, listened too, and supported in my newfound sobriety, so I stayed.

Since that day, I have been welcomed in many different rooms. I have gone to meetings in Mexico and others in Canada. One year I drove across the US twice and went to meetings in many states. During the pandemic I was on meetings with people from other countries. I even have found a way to stay in a virtual meeting that has been my home group even though the meeting is located far from me. On vacations I like to go to local meetings as I know I will be received with a “Hi Libbie” when I say my name and that I am an alcoholic. I also will most likely find out about great places to see and restaurants to go to and sometimes even offers to take me places to see. Going to a meeting has always been a way to easily get to know a place with REAL people who live and work and stay sober there.

So here I am in a new place. It is a big change for me, moving 1500 miles from where I have lived for over 40 years.  I feel insecure and lost a bit of the time. Will I make friends? Will I be happy here? And then I got the list of meetings in the area.  There is a women’s meeting walking distance from my new home!

I started crying when I got to the church where the woman’s AA meeting was about to start.  I was home, not a stranger, just a fellow sufferer who knew hope and sobriety and welcome were just moments away for me. We are a WE program and I am happy for it.

Libbie S.

Awareness. I use a lot of guided meditations as part of my daily spiritual practice. One that I found supremely helpful during the early days of my widowhood was “Yoga Nidra for Grief” with Scott Moore on the app “Insight Timer.” Moore suggests that grief is an opportunity for deep awareness, and that we don’t try to deny or minimize grief, but rather welcome, recognize, and witness it as an experience that can lead to a deeper awareness of our individual self and also of life itself.

There is a part of ourselves, Moore teaches, that can witness both our grieving and our not-grieving simultaneously and see them both co-existing within our own selves. That part is Awareness.

In Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr links “consciousness” with AA’s Step Ten, “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” Consciousness is the awareness, the ability to step outside ourselves and look at our own behavior. We monitor our own actions impartially as we develop the perspective of being onlookers of our own lives. By gaining that distance and developing that viewpoint, we can see how we actually do affect others, and we can make decisions about taking responsibility for the consequences of our choices and actions.

When I was new to the Twelve Steps, I went to a meeting and the topic was Step Ten. I wasn’t at all familiar with the steps or the program—I was just grateful that I had found a community which welcomed me and whose members understood and talked about what I was going through. The woman who was speaking about Step Ten said it was her “most favorite step of all” because it recognized the humanness of those who choose 12-Step recovery as a way of life. “I don’t have to pretend to be perfect or to get things right,” she said about the Step. “Step Ten acknowledges that even when I’m doing the best I can do and trying to live a responsible, moral life, I will mess up. Step Ten leads me back to behaving the way I want to.”  Being ready, willing, and able to recognize and admit to wrong-doing means being relieved of the burden of attempting to be perfect.

Before I came into recovery—and believe me, I was a churchgoing, choir-singing, self-satisfied sort of person—I would tell myself that what I did, how I behaved, didn’t negatively affect other people. “It doesn’t matter” was a mantra I used back then. I would say, in the adolescent voice coming out of my 37-year-old head, “Hey, I’m doing the best I can,” if my performance on any task didn’t measure up to expectations. Or “Hey, I’m only being honest,” when I said something rude or intrusive to someone who had irked me or whose life I imagined I could improve with my observations and advice.

The Program taught me—gently, kindly—not only how to stay sober (one minute at a time) but also (to paraphrase Step 5 from the 12 & 12) how to recognize “what and who I really was” and follow that “by a sincere attempt to become what I could be.”

The Program (i.e. the Twelve Steps) and the Fellowship (i.e. meetings and sponsorship) did not say to my confused, terrified, self-deprecating newly-sober self that I was bad or stupid. I was told that I was a “sick person getting well” and that as long as I stayed sober, I could learn how to live the moral, helpful, responsible life I had always wanted to live.

Recovery has taught me how to be awake and aware in my own life. Recovery has taught me to be conscious of my words, choices, and actions. Recovery has taught me how to make healthy choices so I can be a healthy person striving to live a sober life and forgiving myself when my humanness messes things up for a while. I have the steps to lead me back to my center where I can welcome, recognize, and witness the astonishing beauty of my sober life.

-Christine H.

In the July 1965 GRAPEVINE, Bill W wrote, “The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.” *

“All you need to do right now to become willing to do what is necessary for sobriety.” I was not exactly sure what that meant. It sounded good. All I had to do was to “become willing.” The problem was that what I thought was needed for sobriety was not what they [A A members] thought.

In treatment, I encouraged other patients to be willing to go to any length for sobriety- even if that meant going to a half-way house someplace in Minnesota. I knew the lingo. A nurse broke protocol and told me, “Seamus, if you don’t shape up, the staff are considering sending you to Nebraska to a half-way house.” At this point, I became willing to do anything to keep me from going there. I completed steps one through three and completed a very shallow fourth step to be shared with the treatment chaplain.

I was willing to go to Aftercare on a Friday night. I was willing to go to as many A.A. meetings as I could in order to brag to my counselor and my boss about the number of meetings I was attending. I was not willing to listen to what people said. I heard their stories. I heard their difficulties. But I was not like “them.” I was different. In my mind, I was someone special, different.

“No pain, no gain.” Growing is something of a painful experience. I had to change a lot of my thinking. I had to develop an attitude of gratitude. I had to admit to and examine my prejudices. I loved change when what was being changed suited my needs and wants. But this kind of change was such that I was being confronted by my humanity, my pride, my (God-forbid) Character Defects.

As I began to change, there were days when I felt jealous of those individuals both young and old who came into the program and “got it.” Unlike my journey, they did not spend their first few years on a dry-drunk. Instead, they got a sponsor, read the Big Book and applied it to themselves. They came to meetings and listened to what was being shared. They were ready and willing to do what was necessary.

When I “came to,” having had a spiritual awakening that gave me a completely new insight into the program, I was then willing to change, willing to learn, and willing to do what I should have done four years earlier.

“The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entail.” Change for the better. Not just change for the sake of change. Not change in order to look good. But change that makes a real difference on the inside and creates a whole new outlook on life.

Change brought a new insight which brough about the “unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entail.” The first responsibility being to not only work the steps but also live them, make them a way of life, a second nature. That is my responsibility to me and to others in my life.

From the moment I came to grips that I am an alcoholic and accepted that I have this disease, then the responsibility of sobriety was on my shoulders and the path ahead had already been prepared by millions of others who had gone before me. All I had to do was follow them- read the Big Book and apply it to myself; go to meetings and listen and, where possible, identify with others, talk to my sponsor, and live the program.

Growth came with the willingness to promptly make amends when I was wrong. This became easier as I learned to think before I spoke or did something. Growth came as I became willing to redo all the steps honestly with an open mind and heart.

Growth came as I became willing to make amends and to listen and hear from others who shared with me about my past actions.

Growth came as I became willing to shed my superficial self and allow others to love me into health. As Skin Horse told the Velveteen Rabbit, “you will know you are loved, when all your hair has been rubbed off.” Yes. “Those people” loved me enough to walk with me through my darkness and brought me into a light I did not know existed as well as a freedom and happiness I had always wanted but went looking for it in all the wrong places.

Séamus P D.
Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

*AS BILL SEES IT. 115.

For an alcoholic, a “to do” list provides the perfect “hide-behind” excuse to drink. We’d say, “You’d drink too if you had the to do list I do.”  

I understand the importance of a continual contact with the Program. After over 50 years of the practice of law and 13 years of retirement and now living in an assisted living facility, I’ve discovered my “to-do habit” has found a new way to sometimes disrupt my serenity but, thanks to the Program, not my sobriety.

At 85, those “do lists” might seem to be merely a nightmare. Sometimes those dreams emit a flavor of authenticity and I get up, hit my computer, pound out a few notes but soon discover a new level of lunacy, sheepishly crawling back to bed, mumbling to the cat that I don’t even have a to do list.

Mr. ToDo appeared once again last week. This time, I took the trouble to ask “why” this was happening—why after 13 years of retirement has he reappeared? I asked but frankly feared his answer would be a snippety, “Well what do you want the answer to be?” Silence. Then I redoubled my search for any possible good. And I think I found it.

Mr. ToDo is here to remind me to keep in touch with my Higher Power as I walk life’s varied paths. He also reminds me that I must stay in touch with the Program, to work the Steps, to carry the message.

Morn comes in due course, we recall those night-time tensions of anxiety, that old invitation to reach for our addiction and instead we recall the pains it brought to ourselves and others. Oh, what a friend we have in the Program—if we but reach out, away from our selfish “human-beingness.”

So, a “To Do List.” A bane? Sure, if we let our addictive orientations of the past re-enter our lives. “To Do,” is this list really a aid? I think so. It’s our Higher Power’s way of calling us to the Program and its serenity.

Indeed, the words of that old hymn come to the fore, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer.”

–Jim A/St X Noon, written at 5:45 A.M, after discussion with Mr. Todo.

I come from a family of all girls—4 of us.  Our given names are Evelyn, Barbara, Elizabeth (that’s me) and Jessica.  Connie Francis was very big when my oldest sister was born and even though she was named for my paternal grandmother, Evelyn became Evie from an early age. So started the tradition - Barbara became Barbie, Jessica become Jessie and I became Libbie. All ‘ie” never “y”. My sisters called my Bibbie because Ls are hard to pronounce but Libbie was who I knew myself to be then.

I almost never used my given name. Not through elementary or middle or high school or college. Not even when I went to Divinity School. When I talked to myself, I always thought of myself as ‘Libbie.’  After college I taught in an all-girls Catholic high school. I was 22 years old but looked 15. I was and still am barely five feet tall. There were only three girls in the whole school who were taller than me. So, to feel and look like I should be taken seriously I was Miss (no Ms. then) Stellas. I wore a lot of makeup and very high, high heels. I think I fooled the students but inside I was Libbie—insecure, anxious, and drinking a bit more on the weekends than was good for me.

After seminary I took a job in Seattle with the Catholic Archdiocese. I moved across the country and knew I was going to work with many priests. I wanted to be taken seriously!  So, I changed my name—I would use my given name Elizabeth. It was a big name for a serious job. It took some time to get used to being called Elizabeth. For over ten years I was Elizabeth. I changed jobs and worked with many leaders in most every Christian denomination as well as those in the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and even New Age congregations. Elizabeth seemed to suit me in these situations.

At the same time, I was drinking more and more. I had married, had a child, was heading toward divorced, and lost my childhood friend to cancer.

In Seattle, at AA meetings, people sign in with their first name and then contact info (if they want). I remember distinctly looking at the sheet at my first meeting and pausing - Who was I? Was I Elizabeth, Libbie, or something else? I only really knew that my life was totally unmanageable and that my drinking had something to do with that. I knew I needed help and I wanted to believe I had found the place and the people that would help me.

And so, I wrote my name: Libbie. It was the name that I used for myself, the name that was the real me, and I wanted the real me to get the help I needed to be sober.  Naming myself was important. It was a way to claim myself and own that I was an alcoholic. I have the disease of alcoholism. Diabetics know they have the disease of diabetes. There is little shame in the knowledge that their bodies don’t metabolize sugar correctly.  I am an alcoholic. I do not metabolize alcohol correctly; it is a poison to my system. The only “cure” is to not drink it.

Who I am is more than an alcoholic but when I wanted to be sober it was the only thing I connected with, and I wanted others to know me as I really am. I am Libbie, and I am an alcoholic.  They said to me “HI Libbie.” I knew I was in the right place, with my right name.

Libbie S.

“A man who persists in prayer finds himself in possession of great gifts. When he has to deal with hard circumstances, he finds he can face them. He can accept himself and the world around him.” As Bill Sees it 293.

Not too long ago I was asked: “Where are the A.A. principles. I never saw them in the Big Book?” I remember in my early days in the program hearing folks say, “We place principles before personalities.” I had no idea what these principles were or where to find them. My self-esteem was such that I could not bring myself to ask for fear of being laughed at.

I had always grown up with prayers being said in our home and, periodically, I would say prayers on my own. Prayers were the answer, but to what? Prayers were what we said in church and before bedtime and in a crisis situation.

The Roman Catholic catechism taught that “Prayer is the lifting of the mind and heart to god.” In my formative years there was no one doing Yoga, or Meditation. There were no Gurus. In seminary, meditation was a time to shut down the brain and be quiet and it was done in church.

As my addiction to alcohol increased my spiritual life and spiritual practices decreased. I talked about a loving God but the God in my head was going to send me to hell. My conscious awareness of god was that of a ring master with a whip and I was running round in circles like a clown with a smile and tears no one could see.

Working the steps and learning to live the program opened my heart and mind to the eleventh step; Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood Him, praying only for god’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

Somewhere on my journey I came across the Principles of A.A. and realized they were a one word summary for each of the steps: Honesty, Hope, Surrender, Courage, Integrity, Willingness, Humility, Love, Responsibility, Discipline, Awareness and Service. Prayer—lifting the mind and heart to God, meditating, asking only what is God’s will for me and the power to carry that out—was a new way to look at the world around me. Doors opened. I felt free of the guilt and shame that had been eating me alive. The principles and prayer began to knit together.

Bill Wilson found an answer for difficult times—prayer. My solution had been alcohol. Now, thanks to the Fellowship and the program I could face the worst day and still remain at peace with myself. I was “in possession of great gifts,” the AA principles which had restored me to life. I had learned to “accept myself and the world around me.”

Prayer is my conscious contact with God who is within and all around me. Thanks to my new life in the Fellowship, I learned to be Honest with self and others. And, thanks to ACOA, I learned how my family of origin survival methods impacted my life. Working both of these programs increased my Honesty with myself and gave me Hope for a better future. It took a few years to Surrender and, when I did, I felt the new peace and the new happiness of the promises.

False Courage changed into an inner strength I did not know I had and with it I became whole, at one with self, others and God. My willingness to do anything but the steps changed into a Willingness to work all the steps and learn to put principles before personalities.

My extremes of either being the best or being the worst found a balance in the true meaning of Humility. My God-given gifts and talents were given to me, as St. Paul says, “for the good of the community.”

Selfishness gave way to love of others, respect for others. I learned that helping others was and is a Responsibility. The discipline of taking a daily personal inventory curtailed many of my character defects.

As my conscious awareness of God’s presence increased, my mind and heart were opened in ways I would never have considered. I joined a different denomination, continued with my priesthood, and respected the teachings of other Faith communities.

I learned about Service by watching and listening to my parents. However, in my active addiction, service became something of “look at me.” Recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous and ACOA, the steps. and the principles have given me back the true meaning of service and the understanding of doing God’s will not mine.

Séamus P Doyle.

Séamus is a retired Episcopal priest in the greater New Orleans area.

“We”—the first word of the first of the twelve steps and the prerequisite to recovery from substance use disorders characterized by selfishness, self-centeredness, and isolation. Groping, lurching ahead on the “road to happy destiny,” we face an array of “we” encounters: our own tormented Jekyll and Hyde selves; our sponsors and companions in recovery; the elders, counselors, and clinical specialists who nurture us; the employers, creditors, and institutions we have shortchanged or bilked; and fatefully, the intimates and bystanders we have harmed and whose forgiveness and support we now solicit.  We, the lonely, now rely upon the universal “we” for healing and hope.

“But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find him now!” Whether our God, our primary “we,” be a He or a She, an Essence or a Presence, their cardinal trait is not likely to be some sovereign superpower that overwhelms our addictions. Raw strength does not elicit our trust or entice our surrender. The Samaritan woman at the well, a notorious outcast, knew that Jesus saw through her and read her soul, and that he offered her relief, release, and redeeming love. This shunned woman’s transformation drew the entire village to Jesus, and he stayed among them for two days (for we who are counting one day at a time, that is, all of us).

No other “we” but Thee, O Jesus. An anthem for recovery by grace, in faith—

We Cannot Measure How You Heal

We cannot measure how You heal or answer every sufferer’s prayer,
yet we believe your grace responds where faith and doubt unite to care.
Your hands, though bloodied on the cross, survive to hold and heal and warn,
to carry all through death to life and cradle children yet unborn.

The pain that will not go away, the guilt that clings from things long past,
the fear of what the future holds, are present as if meant to last.
But present too is love which tends the hurt we never hoped to find,
the private agonies inside, the memories that haunt the mind.

So, some have come who need Your help and some have come to make amends,
as hands which shaped and saved the world are present in the touch of friends.
Lord, let Your Spirit meet us here to mend the body, mind and soul,
to disentangle peace from pain and make Your broken people whole.

John L. Bell, Copyright 1989 by the Iona Community, CIA Publications, Inc. Agent