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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