Meeting 8: Secrets

Meeting 8

 

 

Tonight's Topic - Secrets

AL stands for Alcoholics' Loved Ones and is a meeting for anyone who is, or has been, affected by someone else's drinking, regardless of whether the person is still drinking or not.

MACK says,

"Good Evening everybody, shall we make a start with tonight's meeting ?"

Everyone quietens down.

"For any newcomers here this evening, my name is Mack and I am a very grateful member of AL. I am chairing this meeting tonight.

Tonight's meeting is a Top Table meeting, which for any newcomers here simply means we have 2 main speakers, Olga and Eddie, who have volunteered to share their story on tonight's topic.

So I will read the suggested opening:

We would like to welcome you to this AL Top Table meeting.

The AL meeting is a group of relatives and friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength and hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is an illness which affects the whole family and that changed attitudes can aid recovery for everyone.

Can I remind everyone that this is an anonymous group and we use first names only. Anonymity is one of the key principles we adhere to in the group. You need not tell us who you are, where you live, where you work, what you do - absolutely nothing about your personal details at all if you don't want to.

There are 15 of us here tonight but the numbers vary each week and sometimes there are more of us and sometimes less. You don't have to come every meeting but we do suggest you attend as regularly as you can if you want to benefit from what is on offer in this room. Our only purpose is to share our experiences, strength and hope to help ourselves and each other to gain some serenity because our lives have been negatively affected by an alcoholic dependent person.

So, without further ado I will pass you all over to Alice who has volunteered to read out the 12 Steps of our Programme for us."

 

ALICE

"Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over the problem drinker and that our own lives had become unmanageable.

Step 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to serenity.

Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of a power greater than ourselves (HP).

Step 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step 5: We admitted to our HP, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6: We were entirely ready to have our HP remove all these defects of character.

Step 7: We humbly asked our HP to remove our shortcomings.

Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9: We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong we promptly admitted it.

Step 11: We sought through reflection and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our HP, seeking only knowledge of our HP's will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step 12: Having had an emotional or spiritual awakening as the result of applying these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

 

MACK

"Thank You Alice.
Can I just say to any newcomers here tonight that you probably didn't understand a word of the 12 Steps which Alice has just read out but if you keep coming back you will soon start to feel the benefit of  working this 12 Step programme the same as we all have who are here tonight.
So ,I will now ask Eddie to share his experience, strength and hope with us" -

Eddie is both a recovering alcoholic himself (sober for over 20 years) and a member of AL because he is married to Sarah who is also a recovering alcoholic but who doesn't attend AL meetings herself.

EDDIE

"Thanks Mack, and thanks everyone for being here tonight, it's lovely to see you all.
Well ! the dreaded topic of Secrets which is probably an alcoholic's worst nightmare. There is a saying that 'we are only as sick as our secrets' and I can certainly relate to that. I know that secrets were one of my worst nightmares when I was drinking and I would say it contributed significantly to driving my drinking even harder than it would have been because my secrets  kept coming back to haunt me.

For me a secret is something I know but I don't want you to know. As far as I'm concerned there are things that I know about me and my behaviours that I do not want you to know and there are things that I know about other people which it's not my business to tell you about. If they want to tell you then that is up to them.

In my drinking days I was not in charge of my thinking at all and I found myself behaving in ways which I would not normally have behaved. I was a liar, a cheat and an emotional thief. I can now admit that I did dispicable, dark and awful things and many of these things, even in my alcoholic drinking days made me feel deeply ashamed and very guilty. It was the shame and guilt which fuelled my drinking even further because I needed to have something to take these horrible feelings away.

Looking back I would say my drinking started because my life was so unbearabe for me and if I had to say why it was so unbearable, I can only say I think it was because I simply didn't know how to do Life! I felt I could never get it right. Life and how to live it was a complete mystery to me. I would look around at the rest of the world going by and in my distorted thinking I believed that everyone else had sussed the magical formula that leads to a happy life and I had somehow missed the class where this magic formula had been given out. The result was I felt as if everyone else had left me behind years ago and I felt stupid and inept and left to float on a sinking raft in deep water alone! It was an intensely lonely feeling but I also felt enormous shame and guilt about being bottom of the 'Life class' so to speak and just ended up mimicing other people in order to fit in but the whole time I knew I was just being a big fake and that at any moment my secret could be discovered and I would be a laughing stock. So that was my first terrible secret, acting as if I was larger than life because I was just a cardboard cut-out of the best bits of others I had learned to mimic, how mad is that ! I felt I had no life of my own and nothing to contribute to the world which would be of any use to anyone. I would have rather died than admit any of this to anyone. I especially couldn't reveal my secret fake existence to my nearest and dearest because I felt they expected so much from me and I could never match up to what I perceived as their enormous expectations of me. I now know most of that perfectionism was really only in my own head and others had no idea that I felt they were causing me so much pressure and pain.

As the years rolled by my secret mimicing and pretence became such a heavy burden to me I started drinking more and more to drowned out my horrible feelings. But it became a vicious circle because I drank to get rid of the awful feelings of being a fake and not fitting in but then my behaviour when drunk got me into another set of problems which brought their own shame and this stacked up with my original source of shame. As they say 'It was heavy man'!

So you can see how my thinking had become ridiculously chaotic because I was living Life the wrong way but I didn't know the magical formula of the right way and so I was again lost and didn't have the foggiest idea of how to get out of it. So hey! I just drank another bottle of vodka and that took all the unsolvable problems whirling around in my head away but only for a while and as I started to sober up the problems would come back and because they were problems I could never work out an answer to I just continued on the Merry Go Round of chaotic thinking and drinking.

Did anyone understand any of that because I'm not sure I even did !

He laughs and the audience laugh along with him.

Wow, I'm starting to feel dizzy even talking about it to you !

Thankfully, because I got myself into AA and was given a magic formula for Living, so to speak, I can sit here now, 20 years sober and tell you all about it and we can laugh about it together. But it was certainly no laughing matter for anybody when it was all going on.

Now I have come through the other side of the mess I can't believe how tightly I had clung on to my distorted thinking before I found the help of the heroes who had walked this journey before me. In AA they didn't ask me what I thought in fact they knew only too well about my crazy thinking because they had all had it themselves before they had found help in AA. It was a great relief to me not to have to explain anything to them - they already knew it all. As they say 'They had been there, done that, got the tee-shirt...' I could just sit quietly and listen and learn and that's when my life started turning around for the better.

In AA I got to grips with the 12 Step programme and members used to talk in hushed tones about Step 4 and more particularly about Step 5 because it requires us to do a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and then admit it to someone else, that was like a hammer-blow to my head. It was then that I became aware that all of this secretive stuff had to come out and an all consuming fear gripped me. Thankfully however, I stuck with it and didn't let it stop me from plodding on with my journey to sobriety but I did keep putting it off. It was a case of yes I will do it - but not YET !
When I finally did get around to reaching my Step 5 and admitted everything to myself, my HP and my sponsor I had to trust that everything I revealed would never be divulged to anyone else and so far I haven't had reason to regret it.

All the secrets, the lies, the half-truths I had carried around with me came out and afterwards I could feel a huge burden just drifting away from me. One of my hurdles was I did believe in a Higher Power and I knew 'it' knew all about this stuff  that I had said and done and that's why I felt so guilty. It was admitting it all to myself which was the big breakthrough because for a very long time I didn't want to admit it to myself. It took me years to build up the confidence and courage to look at all this stuff about myself and when I finally did I realised it wasn't so bad anyway. It was a mountain but I had made it into a huge mountain but by following the 12 Steps I was able to look at it all with a different perspective and it became more manageable for me to cope with. So I feel as if I was given the opportunity to wipe my slate clean and I took that opportunity.

Today, I know that if I slip back into secrets and lies it can only be my own fault because I am not working my programme in an honest and truthful way. Step 10 tells me to wipe my slate clean on a continuous basis and I do that every night before going to sleep because I strongly believe that secrets, deception and lies are the alcoholics biggest enemy and if I fall back into that way of life I know it will probably lead to me 'picking up again' and returning to the bottle to escape the shame and bad feelings. I don't want secrets to keep me sick today so make sure I don't carry any around with me. Even my wife knows everything that I shared with my sponsor when I did my Step 5 and I wanted her to know about it. So that was another great doorway I walked through because now I never have to keep things from her and I can be totally relaxed and open with her. Was I wise to tell her my secrets ? well yes because it's certainly made my life a lot easier because keeping secrets is such hard work because I had to be constantly thinking who I had told what to and so it went on until it just became too difficult and I wanted to escape into oblivion using booze.

Now what you see is very much what you get. The fakery and pretense has gone and I now know I'm an OK person just as I am. I'm not exceptional or special but neither as I the pits of humanity. I am just an ordinary bloke trying to do the best I can and that's Okay today. I can just be me, for better or worse. I accept myself now and if others don't well that's their problem not mine. On the whole I don't tell lies and on the few occasions when my wife tells me not to divulge something I tell her plainly, I won't lie, and I won't because I want my life to be straight and honest today. So I will just leave it at that thank you .

GROUP TOGETHER

"Thanks Eddie".

 

MACK

Thanks very much for you share Eddie, I'm sure it will help to give those of us in the room an insight into how at least one alcoholic thinks and how 'Changed attitudes can aid recovery'and they certainly have in your case.
So now I will hand you over to Olga for her share.

 

Olga is a regular attender of  AL meetings. She is now a single-parent and is bringing up her two daughters alone since her and her alcoholic husband divorced.

 

OLGA

"Thanks Mack, and can I just say what a privilege it is to be asked to share at a Top Table meeting so I only hope it will be of benefit to some of you. I never prepare any written notes or  aide memoir when I do my shares because I want to speak from my heart and speak my truth about how I have experienced alcoholism in my married life and how it has impacted on my whole family. I may even repeat myself a few times but this is just because the intensity of the emotions surrounding some events are so overwhelming that I need to get them out again and again  for as long as it takes and sometimes it can take me a long, long time to let go of things.

If anyone had said to me when I was with my ex that I kept secrets I would have denied it and said NO absolutely not, I am not that kind of person because I always saw myself as being a really upfront and straightforward person but now looking back on things with the benefit of hindsight  I realise I might have started off having very few secrets, in fact, I was quite an open-book but the longer I spent in the alcoholic environment the more secretive I gradually became and this was brought about because of my growing shame about the turn my life had taken.

I was terrified that people were going to find out that my husband was an alcoholic and there would be this terrible stigma against not only him but the rest of the family too. I also thought it was going to be a short-term thing and he was going to get over it and I was probably thinking it would be less baggage for him or us to have when this blip passed.

I'm ashamed to say that as the time went on and the drinking showed no signs of abating I said some very nasty and hurtful things to my husband which I now realise I had no right to say at all. I didn't understand the illness of alcoholism at that time and I blamed him for it. I couldn't empathise with his battle against the bottle because I didn't have that problem myself. Thankfully, coming along to these meetings has brought me back to my own sanity and I am a much more informed person now. But in the early days my emotions towards him just spiralled out of control and I only had one hat - an angry hat- which I wore for most of the day. I treated him like dirt on my shoe and for a long time I kept up my own atrocious behaviour towards him a secret because I had huge regrets about it further down the line.

I became so ashamed of the alcoholic's behaviour and found most social interactions with him very embarrassing. However, after any upsetting behaviour I would rant and rave and he would 'go out for a walk' come back and act as if nothing had happened.

No amount of questioning on my part could engage him in any sort of discussion and he controlled by remaining silent, disregarding any of my demands to talk about the situation. I had no idea how to resolve his adamant  refusal to verbally communicate. I now know this was passive-aggressive behaviour and he left me no where to go with his refusal to discuss anything. My way of coping with his stony silences was just to  brush any unpleasant event under the carpet and sort of pretend it had never happened because I didn't want to live in a constantly hostile home.  I was really just putting up with unacceptable behaviour to keep the peace. However, any serenity lasted just long enough for me to gain enough strength to deal with the next catastrophe he caused. This addictive urge for alcohol had hold of him and I became addicted to trying to stop him from drinking. So we both ended up being addicts really.

I thought I was being very successful in 'keeping up appearances' but really I can see now that  I was really just trying to hide it from myself and convince myself that things weren't as bad as they actually were. I justified my lies by telling myself it was all for the best. So needless to say nothing ever improved. I also found myself becoming much more isolated because I was adapting to that chaotic lifestyle and it made me avoid well functioning people. I managed one catastrophe at a time and just got through each day.

Now of course, only years later, I can stand back and see the whole recurring pattern of decline and how I was heading down a steep cliff at gathering speed almost from the very beginning but I had got myself so drawn into that 'alcoholic drama' that it was very difficult to find my way out of it once I had gone past a certain point of normality. I became a very plausible liar because I got lots of practise at it. The amount of times I rang his job and told them he wasn't going in because he had flu or stomach problems or headaches, anything you can think of just to cover for his absences. He did end up getting sacked in the end regardless of all my lying.

Anyway, after living such a secretive life for so long I got to the stage where I just didn't mix with anyone and the few acquaintances I knew I kept very much at arm's length. I wasn't close to anyone and felt very lonely which made me want to stay in the marriage because it was all I had left in my life.

The only people who knew the truth really were my children and that was an awful burden for them to carry. They were drawn into that secrecy and it badly affected their ability to form any genuine friendships outside of the home. They were forever covering up the family's secrets with lies and more lies. They didn't want to talk to their friends about what was going on in the house and I suppose  it just became too much of an ordeal for them to keep up the sham so everyone eventually drifted away and the family isolation became even worse. No one was invited into the house and it seemed to have a dark cloud all of it's own. The very walls seemed to have soaked up the misery of us all. Secrets can really tear a family apart. Although we all lived in the same house we seemed to all live separate lives. We avoided each other as much as we could.

It was not a healthy way for children to live and the ramifications are still impacting on them today in a  number of painful ways.

How long it will take for my daughters to blossom into the happy and fulfilled people they deserve to be  I don't know but I do know I will never burden them with my responsibilities again because I just ended up causing them even more pain to deal with.

There are still things I would never tell anyone about what my husband has done because I don't want to lower his reputation any further than it already is. Also I don't want my children to be hurt any more than they already have been.

So I am trying to live my life now without having any secrets, especially between my self and my daughters.

I am trying to change those habits I practised for so many years and I am trying to live a more honest life, honest with both myself and with other people because it really was a toxic and unhappy way to live. On a positive note, I feel now that I have been through it, I can share my experiences and help others to come through it as well. I've learned only too well how living with alcoholism can steal not only the alcoholic's life away but it also steal's away the life of partners, children and anyone around them who cares for the alcoholic. I feel I have been strengthened by this experience but it has taken me a long time to reach this point of gaining back control of my life.

Today I feel a 'healthy me' is the best gift I can give to my family and friends -it's also the best gift I can give to myself ! When I talk about health, I'm not just talking about physical health which of course is of major importance but I am also talking about emotional, mental and spiritual health. My ex was so insecure and constantly needed pats on the back to just make it through the day and it gradually eroded my own emotional stability. Having to constantly guess what kind of mood he was going to be on 'walking on egg-shells' so as not to set him off again. The stress and anxiety was too, too much for all of us living under the same roof. I feel so many things were lost, for instance, my children's childhoods were lost. I feel my daughter's largely missed out on a childhood because they had to worry as children, they had to be afraid as children and they didn't get to have the emotional stability that other children had and so they didn't learn the normal lessons they needed to grow-up into well-rounded young adults. Their emotional and spiritual development was interrupted so I worry that they will not know how to go out into the world with their heads held high and know who they are and have the best life I know they deserve. I don't want them to live a life of feeling as if they are just making it through everyday. I don't want them to be petrified and afraid of life. My kids have always been and still are a blessing to me and I am trying to live the very best life I can live now for them and for me. We have 'risen from the flames' and we will continue to do so by following the 12 Step programme.

It's funny really because my dad used to say I was so gullible people could 'see me coming'! I was such a candid, straight talking person, probably too straight-forward actually but I really hadn't realised that some people can be very manipulative and my ex was certainly a master manipulator and I was just drawn into that in a very gullible and ignorant way. But now I am being restored back to being the person I was before alcoholism up-ended my life and when tough times do come along I put my trust in the group and the programme to help me through.

So my time in AL has really all been about learning how to get out of that tangled web of secrets and lies which I had got  into and thankfully with the help and support I get from you all I've managed to make tremendous progress and I'd just like to thank you all for that.

Thank you.

 

MACK

"Thank You both Eddie and Olga for your very honest shares of your experiences.

So it just remains for me to say that there are no dues for membership but we do ask you to make a contribution of whatever you can afford to cover our costs for tea, coffee and rent. If you cannot afford anything that is Okay too.

Josh, can I ask you to read the suggested closing to close our meeting please ?"

 

JOSH

 

"In closing, I would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you liked and leave the rest. A few words to those of you who haven't been with us long: whatever your problems, there are those amongst us who have had them too. If you try to keep an open mind, you will find help. You will come to realise that there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.
Will all those who care to join me in closing our meeting?"

 

Everyone stands and joins hands in a circle.

 

GROUP TOGETHER

"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.

 

Same time, Same Place, Keep coming back, it works if you work it"
 

 

Meeting 7: Reacting

The Meeting

Tonight’s Topic – Reacting

JEFF says,

“Ok everybody, can we have a few moments of silence to remember why we are here tonight and to remember those people who haven’t yet found help.

One of the disciplines in AL is we start on time and we finish on time, regardless.

I would like to welcome you all to this AL meeting. Although we have no newcomers tonight, we do have some members who have not been for a while who may not have met recent newcomers to the group. So I would like us to go round the room and introduce ourselves, using first names only.”

Meet the Group

JEFF

“My name is Jeff and I am chairing the meeting tonight. The person with the drink problem in my life is my son. My wife Alice is also here tonight and our son is still an active alcoholic and is drunk most days. We live in hope of him finding his way to Alcoholics Anonymous or to some other organisation that can help him.”

FADIA

“Hello, I’m Fadia and I’m the adult child, well adult grandchild really, of an alcoholic.”

VICKY

“Hello, I’m Vicky and the problem drinker in my life is my daughter.”

ADELE

“Hello, I’m Adele and I’m pleased to be back tonight. A lot has happened to me since I was last here”.

JOSH

“Hello, my name’s Josh and I’m very pleased to be here tonight”

INGRID

“I’m Ingrid and I’m a very grateful member of AL.”

PIPPA

“Hello, I’m Pippa and I am back tonight because I desperately need the support I get from this group.”

MACK

“Hi, I’m Mack and it’s my son who is addicted to alcohol”.

ELSA

“Hello I’m Elsa and I am a long time member of the group and it is my father who is the alcoholic in my life, which makes me an Adult Child of an alcoholic (ACOA).”

ALICE

“Hello, my name is Alice and as Jeff has just said, it is our son who has a problem with alcohol.”

OLIVER

“Hi, I’m Oliver and it’s a while since I’ve been but I’m glad to be here again tonight.”

TIM

“Hello, my name is Tim and like Oliver I haven’t been for a while.”

STAVROS

“Hello, my name is Stavros and the person with the alcohol problem in my life was my ex-wife.”

EDDIE

“Hello, I’m Eddie and I’m a recovering alcoholic but I am here tonight because I am also married to a recovering alcoholic”.

OLGA

“Hello, I’m Olga it was my ex-husband who was the alcoholic in my life”.

*          *         *

JEFF

“Can I remind everyone that this is an anonymous group and we use first names only.

Anonymity is one of the key principles we adhere to in the group. You do not need to tell us who you are, where you live, where you work, what you do – absolutely nothing about your personal details at all if you don’t want to.

There are 15 of us here tonight but the numbers vary each week and sometimes there are more of us and sometimes less.

You don’t have to come every week but we do suggest you attend as regularly as you can if you want to benefit from what’s on offer here. Our only purpose is to share our experience, strength and hope to help ourselves and each other to gain some peace of mind because our lives have been affected by an alcohol dependent person. Anything else about your life is no concern of ours unless you choose to share it with us.

So, as I’ve said my name is Jeff and although I am chairing the meeting tonight, next time someone else will be chairing because we practice the principle of rotation of leadership in the group.

A special word for our recent members, it may all still seem strange and you will probably go away not understanding much about what you hear tonight but if you feel something that brings you back then that is enough to be going on with. Just keep coming back and it will eventually start to become much clearer about what support you can gain from the group.

Also, although we meet up in a church hall this programme is not religious and has no connection to any church. The only reason we meet here is because of low costs.

 

So on with the meeting.

Every week we have a different theme and tonight’s theme is:

Reacting

I will read the suggested opening.

We would like to welcome you to this AL meeting - The AL group is a group of relatives and friends of problem drinkers who share their experience, strength and hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is a family illness and that changed attitudes can aid recovery.

Tim can you start us off with the 12 steps please?”

TIM

“Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over the problem drinker and that our lives had become unmanageable.”

STAVROS

“Step 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to serenity.”

EDDIE

“Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our higher power (HP).”

OLGA

“Step 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

JEFF

“Step 5: We admitted to our HP, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

FADIA

“Step 6: We were entirely ready to have our HP remove all these defects of character.”

VICKY

“Step 7: We humbly asked our HP to remove our shortcomings.”

ADELE

“Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”

JOSH

“Step 9: We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

INGRID

“Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

PIPPA

“Step 11: We sought through reflection and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our HP, seeking only knowledge of our HP’s will for us and the power to carry that out.”

 

MACK

“Step 12: Having had an emotional and spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

                                                                          

*          *         *

JEFF

“Clarissa had agreed to be our main sharer for tonight but due to childcare commitments she is unable to be here. Oliver has very kindly stepped into the breach and agreed, at very short notice, to share for us about his experiences on Reacting.

Also can I just remind you there is no obligation for anyone to share, you can remain silent and just listen if you prefer but those who do decide to share are allowed to do so without interruption – so without further ado I will hand you over to Oliver.”

Oliver is a man in his early 30’s and is the adult child of an alcoholic. He has recently split from his long-term alcoholic girlfriend but he is finding it hard to detach and move on with his life.

OLIVER

“Thank you Jeff.

Well, on the theme of reacting, I can’t believe how difficult I’m still finding this issue in my Step work. However, I’m here tonight after some weeks of not attending and boy, did I need to get back here tonight. So where should I even start? I have no idea what I am going to say. I suppose one of the things I really appreciate about my lack of any preparation of what I am going to say is that I don’t worry about these things anymore. I actually choose not to worry about them and that’s a huge change from when I first became a member of this group.

It just so happens that I have had a recent dilemma about not reacting and my sponsor pointed out to me that although I am making great progress in not reacting, I am having problems with practising the behaviour which I am trying to replace it with.

I am trying to respond to things instead of reacting but I’m finding it hard work to know how to do that. Yes, I can stop myself from reacting to the alcoholic’s outbursts, but after that I can sit on my hands for a long while just because I don’t know what else to do. Sometimes I just don’t know how to respond and I need to get help from others about how to do it.

Last week a repetitive event came up again where my ex-girlfriend was making demands on me which I didn’t want to fulfil but eventually I ended up doing what she wanted. My sponsor pointed out to me that I was in exactly the same position as I was the week before when I ended up fixing problems for her and it didn’t make me happy then either. He tried to explain to me that I had a choice about what I was doing. I could choose not to put myself in the same situation again but the penny just takes so long to drop with me.

One of the things I really can appreciate is that I am at least trying to make better choices now. I don’t always get them right and that doesn’t bother me either, because there are ways of sorting that out but not reacting anymore is fantastic - it’s really helping me.

Sadly my alcoholic is still an active alcoholic and despite all of my reacting and all of my efforts over all of this time she remains who she is. The big difference is that all those old triggers that used to set me off don’t work anymore.

Over the weekend I opened up what I suspected were a bunch of vitriolic emails from her and sure enough they were. I’m glad I didn’t open them during the week when I received them. There was a lot of aggravation and hostility in them and as I’ve said, sometimes I don’t know how to respond to things - so now I do ask for help. My sponsor helped me to choose my responses carefully and it worked because it just took so much energy out of the situation and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to be learning how to do that.

I grew up solving problems and fixing problems because I came from an alcoholic home so when my ex came along she was looking for someone to fix things for her and I liked fixing things so on a superficial level we seemed to fit but I wasn’t questioning what I was doing - and that’s OK. I can choose to dwell on that or I can choose not to.

So now it’s good to be able to protect myself and ask myself do I really want to get into the same old situation again? The answer is no I don’t. Do I want to continue feeding the pain by just repeating my same old patterns? No I don’t.

I’m surprised how simple it is and how amazingly difficult it is at the same time, getting rid of all those knee-jerk reactions and choosing instead - to take care of myself. I’m learning to trust my instincts rather than doing what I think is ‘right’, out of a distorted sense of duty or something like that.

When I moved out, part of taking care of myself included making a decision to get a flat that was a little bit more than I wanted to pay, but it’s got everything I need in it. It’s fully kitted out, it’s a comfortable, safe place for me and it’s a little bit of a treat but I am enjoying that treat. It means I have a few hundred pounds less to spend every month but I’m choosing my comfort over some trivial passing thing. It was all about making a decision about what was in front of me because to be truthful I am always afraid that I am going to dive back into the crap again. It’s not easy but knowing I have choices and the tools of the programme to help me just makes it all bearable and reasonable, which helps me to separate out the insanity of it all. I suppose it’s really all about learning how to have a more pragmatic response and to ditch the automatic reactions which were keeping me trapped.

It’s bizarre how I’ve only just got around to realising how uncomfortable and how frustrating life was when I was living with my ex. It was not a fun situation and once is definitely enough for me. I can choose to indulge in thinking I’ve got to rescue her or I can just accept that she’s got her own HP to help and guide her and I can free myself up to get on with the responsibility of my own life. Choosing to focus on my own life is certainly a lot better than the alternative of living with her and her active alcoholism which she refuses to get help for and just keeps both of us unhinged.

I hope some of that made sense to some of you. It felt like a bit of a ramble, I think I need to anchor myself in the group a bit more often and get to meetings on a more regular basis while all of these big changes are going on in my life.  Thanks for listening. I think I would just like to leave it there for now. Thanks everyone.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Oliver.”

  

TIM

“Can I come in Jeff?”

Tim is a man in his late 30’s and is the adult child of an alcoholic. He feels his alcoholic upbringing is responsible for his inability to maintain any long-term relationships and he is currently at logger-heads with his present on-off girlfriend.

“Thank you Oliver for your share. I really appreciate your presence at this meeting.

I liked what you had to say about learning not to react. I wish I could do that. I was speaking to my sponsor today and he’s asked me to do a Step 1, around something that happened yesterday. I am an adult child of an alcoholic and that’s why I’m here and I realise the issues I have are really, really deep and they have been recurring again and again throughout my life.

Anyway, there was a situation yesterday where I just reacted big time and I’m sorry to say this reaction seems to happen a lot with me, particularly with women. When I feel they are trying to control me in anyway whatsoever it just triggers something in me and I go berserk. Yes, I can be tranquil now and I can know all the right things to do. I know when something happens I should take ‘space’ and not react but it’s just something that happens to me. Somebody presses a button and I react -I go beserk. I went beserk last night and it really scared the hell out of me. I didn’t hurt anyone or anything like that but I did make an absolute idiot of myself. What particularly scared me about the outburst was that it was completely out of my control. Somebody just pressed my buttons and I reacted and the rage just came out. I just turned into a raving lunatic, it was ridiculous. It was a huge lesson for me because it really showed me what my crap really is, how it manifests and how it’s been manifesting through my life over and over again.

I’ve also made much more of a meal of all of the unpleasant things that have happened to me in my life and I’m sure all of this comes from being brought up around dysfunction and alcoholism. I just can’t let people tell me what to do, I haven’t worked for about 3 years, you know, and a lot of that is to do with the fact that I just can’t do what someone else tells me to do. I have this deep, deep issue with that and I would rather jump out of the window of my flat than let anybody tell me what to do. So this is really deep stuff that needs to be sorted out and I need to work on it.

I was a fairly wealthy, self-made businessman at one point and I was always in charge of myself. I did it because I thought money would fix me. I think it is a great opiate of most people - it used to be religion - but now I think its money. People think the only problem they’ve got is that they haven’t got any money but when I got money I realised I still had all my frigging problems and more besides.

In fact, I had lots of other people after me - the taxman for instance, was never off my back. So now I don’t have that illusion anymore, I don’t have the illusion that making money will fix me and it’s bringing up all this other crap.

I’m very glad to be here, you know, it’s quite a huge asset for me. I was in the middle of the street today crying my eyes out. A grown man crying in the street, it’s really not very British is it?  But it does tell me I need to keep coming here and I need to deal with these issues that are holding be back and get my life sorted. Thank you.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Tim.”

PIPPA

“I will come in here Jeff.”

Pippa attended AL for a few meetings last year but decided it was not for her. She came back recently because of a current crisis she feels she needs support with.

“I liked what you said Oliver about protecting yourself and not repeatedly putting yourself in the line of fire. Just the idea of not reacting and finding ‘a space’ is so important. I just keep trying to zip my lips and say nothing to my partner when he’s drunk or in a foul mood. The ultimate goal is to try to change my behaviour from just a knee-jerk reaction to the more thoughtful process of responding. I think this process takes a long time because my reacting behaviour has become so ingrained because I have practised it so much. I try to remind myself that it’s like stopping at a traffic light and giving myself that space to think of which direction I want to go in instead of just speeding through a red light every time without any thought for the consequences.

I like the idea that there is no need for me to suffer because of the behaviour of others. If I feel myself getting into a reaction, I need to stop and start changing my own expectations for a different outcome. I can see now that my contribution to the problem has been my own continuous hoping that his behaviour would stop or change for the better. Yet, how many times have I thought that and nothing changes, the outcome has always been the same - he continues to drink. So I can see all I have been doing is harbouring unrealistic expectations.

Usually the pattern for me is my alcoholic will say something horrible to me and I am so busy reacting to what he’s said that I don’t see how he’s manipulating me. I suppose the fact that he can even get a reaction out of me probably just spurs him on to bait me even more. Then I end up feeling ashamed and guilty for my reaction and so this emotional pendulum keeps swinging backwards and forwards between an angry reaction from me to guilt and remorse. At the end of it all I’m left feeling emotionally exhausted and my Will is weakened so next time I am more likely to cave in to avoid a repetition of the unpleasant consequences I’ve suffered so many times before. It’s an awful mess to get into and I know deep down that I’m just deluding myself that I‘ve escaped the nasty consequences because the scenario is always repeated time and time again. In fact, it gets progressively worse because the more worn down I get by all of this, the less able I am able to stand my ground the next time around.

However, what I heard from Oliver was a plan, not just a reaction. He has decided to let his alcoholic take responsibility for her own behaviour and he’s moved out and left her to it. That gives me inspiration, that I can make changes too that are good for me. I want to get to that point where I can change the script. I can’t sit around waiting for the alcoholic to change it, I have to change it myself if I want to get my life back.

I’ll just leave it there at the moment. Thanks everyone.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Pippa.”

INGRID

“I’ll come in if I may, Jeff?”

Ingrid has been in the group a short time but is very committed to the programme. She is married to an alcoholic and is concerned about the impact this is having both on her children and herself.

“Thanks for your share Oliver, I can really empathise with you about reacting because I had no context about choices or about making decisions. I had no idea but then before AL I didn’t have much idea about anything because I was living unconsciously. I wasn’t aware of what I was doing and I just went through life, as I’ve heard others share tonight, knee-jerk reacting to everything. So everything was a reaction and I never actually thought of looking at consequences because there was no self-awareness. Coming to AL was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life and even that wasn’t a decision - I just simply had nowhere else to go. It was only when I started to listen to others in here that I started to wake up.

When I got to Step 4, I really started to do the work required to get to know myself because I didn’t have a clue and I think that is true of many people out there who just walk through life without knowing much about themselves at all. They are just living unconsciously and I thank heavens I got the opportunity to come here and change that.

One of my biggest problems at the moment is I don’t like making decisions because it means I could make a mistake and I don’t like making mistakes. It was one of those things growing up in my childhood home - making mistakes was a hanging offence. So now I am learning to make choices with the help of my sponsor who encourages me to do it, and a HP that I have found here. As it has already been said it is not easy to change because it is so ingrained and what I have learned is they are so ingrained because I have repeated them so many times again and again. So why would they be difficult to change? Because I have neuro-pathways in my brain and I have grooves there because I have used it so much. It’s like new shoes I have to wear them in - so it’s about practising and practising a new behaviour. I’m making different grooves now but it is a process, it’s not an overnight thing - it takes a lot of practice. Finding out I had choices was just astonishing and with that came responsibility. I’m sure that deep down in my denial, I pushed the responsibility to someone else to make me happy and now it’s about sitting up and taking responsibility for myself.

Nobody else is going to make me happy. Only I can do that and this programme has taught me all of that, the wisdom of it, it’s astonishing.

So, to make a choice today is risking it going wrong. Taking the risk to step out there and make a decision and living with it. I have had to change my attitude towards making mistakes and that’s tough for me, but well worth it I think. Thanks.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Ingrid”

  

ELSA

“I’ll share Jeff.”

Elsa is in her mid-50’s and is a long time member. She has progressed through most of the stages of recovery and can now speak about her experiences with an air of confidence and emotional detachment which the newer members are unable to do. She is the adult child of an alcoholic father.

“Like a lot of people have already shared tonight, I too was a big reactor. I came from an alcoholic home where my parents were drinking constantly day and night. All they did was drink, they hardly ever ate. So my head was going round and round all the time, worrying about what they were going to do next - I lived in absolute fear. The whole family situation was crazy and I reacted to their alcoholism. As a child my reaction was absolute rage and anger at the way I was treated and because I wasn’t allowed to express my anger it just got stuffed inside of me - I never had a voice.

I think children who live in an alcoholic home don’t have a voice. So it’s only when we find a safe place like this that we experience having a voice for the first time.  I’ve also noticed that some adult children of alcoholics (ACOA’s) repeat themselves a lot and I think it’s possibly because for the first time in their lives they’ve got a voice and feel someone is actually listening to them and trying to understand them. Until I got that understanding and awareness of myself, a greater understanding of alcoholism, a greater understanding of my parents and a greater understanding of my own life - I wasn’t able to make choices as to whether I lived in a constant state of reaction or not.

What used to happen was I would be very hurt by something and I would try to hide the fact but then I would just start to seethe and it would come out in my body language and then I would start to react. So when I became aware of that cycle I made efforts to change it. I don’t have to accept unreasonable behaviour from anybody but also it doesn’t mean I have to try and sort people out either. I can still get hurt by things today but I don’t have to say or take any immediate action. I don’t have to react whereas at one time I could just get raging mad and go absolutely off the wall about a perceived hurt. Today I can feel hurt but I don’t have to react to my hurt feelings so my behaviour has changed because I now think about things and give myself the opportunity to choose my response to any situation. I like to use the London Underground saying ‘Mind the Gap’, I find this can remind me that I can create ‘a Gap’, a gap which empowers me by giving me the freedom to make a choice. My general philosophy is I’m happy as long as I’m not behaving in a way that brings chaos into my life or anybody else’s life and my distorted knee-jerk reactions were lethal for me. I don’t feel resentment anymore but a few years ago any hurt was transformed into resentment but  now I can think things through and Let Go of it, so resentment doesn’t build up anymore and poison me.

If something happens out of the blue, I can still snap and then I think ‘Oh, maybe I could have handled that better’ but that’s the way I think today. I know I could have taken a deep breath and tried to understand that somebody is agitated about something. I can use the programme just to keep things in the day. If I thought I had to put up with things for a long time then the fear would start to come back so I get back into the now because my mind can take me on a different journey, it can complicate things. I can mess things up with my thinking so I try to keep my thinking clear today. I think that’s all I want to share on reacting for the moment thanks."

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Elsa.”

OLGA

“I’ll come in Jeff.”

Olga is Russian and it was her ex-husband who was the alcoholic in her life.

"I’ve heard the expression in AL if I am always reacting I am never free and I think this very much applied to me when I was living with the alcoholic because I was reacting again and again to the same behaviour - I just kept doing the same thing because I didn’t know what else to do. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel a bit stupid really because I just never questioned it, I was just absolutely adamant I was right in reacting. So now it’s easy to blame myself and feel like a bit of a twit but I couldn’t know what I didn’t know.

Looking back on those days now, I can’t believe I would make the same mistakes again today. When I first came here, I was still in a reaction because I sat here for months just criticising  the alcoholic about how he caused my life to be horrible and I was just a victim. I thought I had no part in it. Now I just wonder at how I could have been so immature.

I don’t react so much now. I don’t allow other people to push my emotional buttons like that anymore. I think by practising this programme for so long, some of it has seeped into me. So even if I do start having a reaction I can stop myself in my tracks very quickly. But I do know exactly where my habit of reacting comes from, my parents were reactors too.  If they had any problems with people they would just shout, they were very good at raising their voices, everything was just confrontational and combatative and I think I was a shy child so that was very hard on me to witness all of this out-of-control emotion battleground.

So reacting is something I try not to do so much now and some people in my life don’t like that, they want a reaction. They try to manipulate me by saying I’m not friendly enough because I don’t react but my experience is whenever I have reacted it has just brought chaos into my life and it has been very difficult to cope with the consequences of it. I don’t want to live like that anymore. I want to try something different because the old ways didn’t work for me.

I’ve noticed responding is something I tend to see in more mature people, they rarely react.  As I’ve said I used to be a major reactor and now I’m not and some people perceive that as me being a bit arrogant. It’s almost like they think I have some inside information so I don’t need to react but the truth is I prefer not to react because it brings peace into my life. I have found that very few situations in life are emergency situations that demand a reaction. I don’t have to do that now I usually have time to deal with things. At least I know the difference between reacting and responding and I can make a choice at the time which one I want to choose. For instance today I received a bill through the post and they had overcharged my account by £50 and for a few moments I dived into a reaction and ran to the phone to call them up immediately and complain about it. Luckily the line was busy and I couldn’t get through because it gave me time to see myself in the situation and I thought Olga you have a month to sort this out before your next bill comes in so why have you dropped everything you were doing and prioritised this task that must be sorted in the next 30 seconds! I laughed about it because I could see my almost obsessive thinking coming back. I had to get this dealt with immediately when the truth was very different. I got out of my reaction and into a response and decided to schedule it for 3 days hence by which time I will be in a much better frame of mind to deal with my complaint in a mature, civilised way and hopefully bring about a better outcome. I know it’s just a trivial example but it did highlight to me the nature of an obsessive thought when I get one in my head and how I usually deal with them.

It’s great having a choice now because I suppose when I just used to react to the alcoholic I was unwittingly giving him the upper hand because he knew he just had to wave some red flag and I would be off in a reaction and I can laugh about it now because he must have been sitting there grinning behind my back. He must have been thinking ‘oh, I want a drink tonight. How am I going to wind her up so I can get a reaction out of her and then I can happily drink because I can blame her reaction for me needing a drink?’ Because obviously all of this is just about learning about what alcoholism is and some of the tricks of it and seeing it for what it is. Seeing myself in it and standing back and seeing the big picture and seeing what was going on instead of me just standing so close to the alcoholic - I didn’t see what he was doing.

So yes reacting. I don’t react very much anymore and when I do start to get into a reaction I notice it very quickly and get out of it and it’s brilliant because this tool has brought me so much happiness."

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Olga.”

STAVROS

“I will come in Jeff, if I may?”

The alcoholic in Stavros’ life was his wife. He does not know whether she is still alive or not. The last time he heard any news of her, she was spotted living rough on the streets but he has never been able to track her down.

“I was being controlled by my alcoholic wife because I was reacting not acting and it was only when I came into AL that I was given the opportunity to change that.

The term major reactor has been used but I think I was more of a nuclear reactor. So there are days when I have got it and there are days when I haven’t - it’s a tough call and there are lots of emotions involved particularly with family and I do forget that I can take time. That’s what I forget.

It’s interesting Olga what you said about that phone call you had to make and how it became almost an obsessive thought. And my reactions are almost obsessive thoughts – ‘I must do this now, I must give this priority’ and it occupies my time and most things don’t need that type of obsessive thought. I can take time. This affects me a lot at work as well. People can really pull my chain and some people can use it as a manipulative technique. The alcoholic often does, mine did and I used to fall for it every time. Well not every time but it felt that way. So I find myself saying I could have done that better. Sometimes I suppose the emotional investment I give the situation is really disproportionate to what is necessary. I am passionate about my work that’s why it’s the last place where I’m able to respond and instead I react. I suppose I have Mediterranean and Celtic ancestory thrown in and for the last 15 years I have lived in a culture of yes you yell at the taxi driver, yes you berate the waiter because they won’t listen to you otherwise. So it can be a cultural thing as well and it’s tough to live this bit of the programme for me. It’s one I wish I could live better. It’s tough to separate out a positive pattern that will work from one that will get me into trouble.

Sometimes I confess, I don’t mind reacting and getting into trouble if I can get someone to listen to me. If I can get someone to take my call and that’s why I struggle with this as well because I suppose I am being very manipulative when I am using it to get things done. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I am struggling with this peaceful thing sometimes because it can feel devoid of passion. I suppose part of that was when I was in my alcoholic marriage there was so much passion involved and it seemed so exciting and so exhausting and that’s what would hook me in. I can see my pattern of just repeating that and I think this meeting has highlighted to me that I may have something new to work on in my Step work - something to think about more deeply. I hadn’t seen the need to protect myself from the consequences so maybe I was kind of self-sabotaging without realising it. I think I need to give this theme some more thought. There have been many interesting points made tonight which have given me much food for thought. So I will just leave it there thanks everyone.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Stavros.”

EDDIE

“I will come in here Jeff?”

Eddie is an alcoholic and has been a member of AA for 20 years. He’s been sober for 18 years. He is a semi-retired university lecturer and joined AL almost 2 years ago.

“I think it is a major thing in my life - reactions. I think it’s about mature people and immature people and the reason why I react so badly at certain times and at certain things in my life is because there are certain areas in my life that I recognise I am very immature and I find it difficult to cope with if things don’t go the way I think they should or people don’t behave the way I think they should. I can at certain points in time react and I know that about myself and it is something that I have been quite aware of for some time. I’m having difficulty working it out because I know it is not that other person’s fault, that I react. It’s my immaturity driving me, wanting my own way, that’s what drives me to react. So I know when I find myself reacting that I have got to do something about my attitude rather than the other person or situation. So it has become very apparent to me and somebody mentioned serenity and passion - I can go for some time without reacting it’s getting better. I’ve learned a great deal about myself in the last few years. What I have learned is not to react immediately because that’s when I start pointing the finger at people and telling them their fortune because of this immaturity within me I don’t like being told what to do. I react very badly to people telling me what to do. The way to get me to listen is to just share with me your experiences, tell me how you see it, if you just say this is how I see it and leave it at that I am relatively OK with that but the reaction part of me is walking away and saying OK that is what you think end of story it does not permeate me at all.

However, nowadays things have changed and I can go away and think about it and I’m getting better and I sometimes feel a bit silly - a man of my age talking about being immature in certain parts of my life, in certain thought processes but I have got to be honest about it because if I’m not I am putting on a front. I’m putting on that mask and it’s not good for me or you or for the rest of the people I live with or interact with. So I am learning a lot about when I feel threatened because that is usually when I react.

If, for instance, I am talking about my beliefs and someone challenges my beliefs I can easily kick off with ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ - that’s immaturity. I have reacted like that hundreds of times before I get to see myself and the immature behaviour, the immature reaction but until I see that for myself there is no use in you pointing that out for me.

I spent years reacting to my ex-wife – ‘Who the hell does she think she’s telling to stop drinking?  Well I’ll show her whose boss!’ and off  I’d go to the supermarket and spend my weeks wages on vodka and everyone else in the house would have to survive on whatever scraps they could find. Needless to say that is not how it is today and I suppose that’s why we have the slogan ‘THINK,THINK,THINK’ to remind us to stop and pause for thought before we launch in and live to regret it. Thanks.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Eddie.”

ALICE

“Can I come in Jeff?”

Alice is married to Jeff. They come along to the meetings together because their son is an active alcoholic who is drunk most days.

“If I am always reacting I am never free - that is the most powerful message for me. I don’t have to make other people’s behaviour my own by reacting to it. I suppose I have reactions within myself more than I react to other people. I was frightened to react to the alcoholic in case he became violent, which he could do when he was drunk. My father was very strict and I would never react to him because of fear and that fear took away my self-esteem. Then the alcoholic took away the last bit of self-esteem I had so I was very ground down by the time I came to AL. I couldn’t argue with him because he thought he was always right. I did nothing. I could never work out whether it was because it just wasn’t important enough or whether I just couldn’t be bothered because if I reacted I would have to carry that through and I couldn’t be bothered. I suppose it was doing anything for a quiet life.

Today, I am afraid of the way the alcoholic reacts because he reacts very, very badly and I don’t want to be in that situation. I can’t fly off the handle, I never have been able to - it wouldn’t be me. I’m not reacting because it would be like opening Pandora’s Box and once I let that genie out of the bottle I might not be able to handle the consequences of it. I feel I must do more work on finding the courage to do what I can instead of just hoping someone or something else will come along and change everything for me.

Thank you.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Alice”

ADELE

“Can I come in here Jeff?”

Adele joined the group a year ago because she thought her new boyfriend might be an alcoholic. She later decided he was not an alcoholic and stopped coming to the meetings. She’s back tonight because her boyfriend started going to AA three weeks ago. She is now 6 months pregnant and is concerned about the future.

“I’m finding it very difficult living with someone in the early days of sobriety. I’m finding it very hard not to react all the time. I’m trying to be ever so patient. I always try to remember how difficult it is for him coming off the booze.

A few times I have been really, really annoyed inside at how I’m been snapped at and spoken to. Most times I have said very little but the other day when we were out, at the end of a conversation I said something and he had this terrifying explosion of anger and I was really scared and that brought everything back as to how it used to be.

When I got home I was in terror of what was going to happen next. When he got home he was still furious at me and I didn’t try to talk about it, I just left everything alone. I thought there is no point in raising the issue now when he is in such a foul mood because it is not going to be very productive. I just left everything and by early evening everything was OK again and initially I thought I had handled that quite well but then I got the feeling there was something not right because I am living in fear of raising any subject or discussing anything because of these rages. I said to him I am not perfect either I make mistakes. It comes to a point where I think I am not being honest and wonder if I am just accepting too much and I’m not being honest with him either. I’ve accepted his moods but these rages really scare me. I am trying not to panic but it has shook me up.

I’m getting to the stage where I am saying nothing for days on end because I don’t have the courage to be honest with him and it just grows until I feel like blowing up but in the meantime it is just making me feel like a nervous wreck and I feel that I am walking on a hot tin roof. I feel that I have to be so very careful about what I say because I am frightened that it will cause another outburst of rage and cause him to drink again.

Maybe I should just tell him straight away and not allow it to build up and fester. Maybe I should just say no I don’t think that is acceptable behaviour, I want to be able to tell him how I feel in the situation. What is that expression ‘Let me speak my truth quietly’ but he is not even allowing me to do that, so when do I get to speak my truth?

It’s something I am still trying to work out. Thank you.”

GROUP TOGETHER

“Thanks Adele.”

JEFF

"OK, it’s that time again, so can I just thank everybody for such a good meeting, I’ve got a lot of food for thought from it. And can I just remind our recent members we suggest you come back for at least 6 meetings before you decide whether it’s for you or not. The reason we say that is because we have different members and different topics here at different times and it could be that you don’t find anyone you feel you can identify with at your first few meetings. However, if after 6 meetings you find no identification then the group is probably either not for you or not for you at this time.

Before we close our meeting tonight I will just remind everybody of the theme for next time is -

                       

‘Take what you like and leave the rest.’                                      

                                                            

Do we have a volunteer to be the main sharer for next time?”

JOSH

“I will be the main sharer Jeff.”

JEFF

“Thank You, Josh.

So it just remains for me to say that there are no dues for membership but we do ask you to make a contribution of whatever you can afford to cover our costs for tea and coffee and rent. If you cannot afford anything then that is OK too.

Tim, can I ask you to read the suggested closing to close our meeting please?”

TIM

“In closing, I would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you liked and leave the rest. A few words to those of you who haven’t been with us long: whatever your problems, there are those amongst us who have had them too. If you try to keep an open mind, you will find help. You will come to realise that there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.

Will all those who care to join me in closing our meeting?”

Everyone joins hands in a circle.

GROUP TOGETHER

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.

Same time, Same Place, Keep coming back, it works if you work it."

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