My First AA Meeting - After Thoughts

I recently found out that my new cubical neighbor at work is 20 years sober (her and her husband!). To say I was excited is putting it mildly! Up until now my sober community has all been online, which I’ve honestly been very comfortable with, but I thought how fun to actually have someone physically around me! So that being said, she invited me to my first AA meeting as a sober person.

Now, I’m at 88 days alcohol free today & honesty, I’m feeling and doing better than I ever could have imagined!!! I did consciously choose not to go to AA but I’m not against AA. I’ve been in and around that world since my teens due to my parents drinking. Alateen, Al-Anon and even AA with others as I got older. I even read the “Big Book”. I guess I just felt, from MY experiences, it wasn’t for ME.

I’ll be honest, my first thought was “uhhggg, I don’t know that I want to go.” but overall I decided it was a great opportunity to check it out, feeling safe and possibly create new friendships, so I went. The AA meeting was fine. It really wasn’t anything out of what I expected I guess. Lots of stories, lots of truth, lots of life exposed in those moments. One can really bare their soul there. I even knew a couple other people. Small world. I’ll most likely even go again.

Here is the thing, I don’t know that I CAN keep going. AA SEEMS to be a form of religion and there are some things I just CAN’T follow the herd on. Even if the ultimate goal is the same (to live a happy sober life), I’m starting to wonder, if I don’t follow their rules or share their beliefs, can I share the space there?

For instance, I don’t feel any need to say “Hi I’m Codette and I’m an alcoholic.” I don’t say that to sound pretentious. I’m just not willing to give myself a label like that. I don’t think it’s fair to myself. Not because I didn’t have an issue with alcohol but how “alcoholic” is viewed and defined. I don’t believe I have any disease or an “allergy”. I do believe that alcohol is an addictive substance. One that changes your brain function. You can put it in any drug category for me. Just because it’s legal or socially acceptable does not make it less harmless. It isn’t ME, it’s the alcohol.

I could go into my why I feel so deeply but I don’t think I can say it better than Annie Grace from “This Naked Mind” or Holly from HipSobriety. I don’t know that I would have been able wrap  my mind around quitting without them. The stigma around being an “alcoholic” is so dismal and dooming. I don’t get why slapping a label on me after I QUIT drinking helps my process. Where quitting drinking is enough of a task without having to put a label on it that makes you feel even less empowered. I mean in reality I’d feel more apt to take the “alcoholic” sickness/disease title when I was still drinking! But after? No. I was a drinker. I’m a non-drinker now. That’s it.

I don’t know what I can accredit my path to. Is it the blogs I found? The books I’ve read? The hard mental pain I went through the last 7 years trying to “moderate”? Watching my Dad almost die? Seeing my mom become someone I didn’t know or care to be around? Seeing my friends get DUI’s? Having health issues directly associated with drinking? Was it that I caught myself early enough? That maybe getting off my elevator before hitting rock bottom has allowed this process to be easier? Maybe it’s all these things or none of these things. Who knows? Either way I’m grateful 100% and I love love love how absolutely FREE I feel.  

I don’t say all this to anger or frustrate anyone that lives and breaths AA. I support the AA movement just as much as I support my own. I would never discourage anyone from doing what works to keep them sober. Maybe AA is what it is because it’s has a defined path for those who have had a different experience than myself? All I know, is from my vantage point, AA isn’t the ONLY way. Just because you don’t choose AA – it doesn’t mean you’ll fail but likewise just because you choose it, doesn’t mean you’ll be successful either. I fully believe each path is unique and each individual has to figure out the right path for themselves.

much love, Codette

Path of destruction

It's been a while since I last wrote/typed. I'll admit, it wasn't all due to lack of time but I struggled with WHAT to put down. I decided what that meant for ME is I was in a good place so I let it be. This week I've been chewing on something that happened last weekend...

I woke up last Saturday morning and on my way down the hallway I was struck by thoughts of my dogs that I had left behind in my divorce 5 years ago. I don't know where the thought came from but I thought of their cute little faces and I started crying. And I couldn't stop. At all.

The thoughts went from my dogs, to that marriage, to how that marriage became in the first place and then I broke down harder. It was a solid 30 minutes of tears and thoughts that just wouldn't stop. In the end the common denominator was the path of destruction alcohol had created in my life.

It got me to thinking, when was my first negative memory with alcohol? Can I see the progression?

I immediately thought back to being 10 years old. Our family reunion. A big one. I have only a few memories of it and one is my dad being completely hammered and being so belligerent and mean that he got in a fist-to-cuffs with my Grandpa (his father). I remember watching from behind someone, watching them swing at each other. I remember spending that evening at my parents friends house. They were like an aunt and uncle to me. I don't even know if my mom was there! I remember the "uncle" made us chicken noodle soup when we woke up. I have no concept of time in this memory but eventually we were home and I was walking up to the house and the sliding patio glass door had been ripped from it's frame and thrown out into the yard and there it lay broken. I big gaping hole opening our home. I don't recall any conversation about this. It just was and then we moved on and from there, I have many more memories...

• The fights, the screaming, the yelling during my childhood (that I carried into my adulthood...)
• My father's 3 year affair with another woman
• My parents vocal and physical fights
• My mother almost divorcing my father 
• My parents dysfunctional marriage kept together by what I can only tell - alcohol
• My early adulthood built upon events surrounding drinking
• Partying with my parents
• My first husband saying he thought we drank too much
• My affair
• My first divorce
• My second marriage to the one I had the affair with (and he also ended his marriage)
• My later adulthood built upon even MORE events surrounding drinking
• Partying with my parents
• My second husband saying he thought we drank too much
• My second husband's affair
• My second divorce
• Sleeping around
• Loss of friendships
• Falling in love with a man who didn't have a driver's license due to some old DUI charges
• The complete downfall of my "functioning alcoholic" father when he retired early (because financially he could) after being brought to the brink of death after escalating beyond 1.75 liters of vodka a day, every day.

This is just a short snip-it because the list in reality is much larger. It's more a book. After all...in the middle of that bullet pointed list is my life and as dismal as the list sounds, mixed in with it are some really great parts.

Thing is, none of those good parts in reality had to do with alcohol. I'm not saying I don't have any good memories drinking. Sure I have a ton of them. But those happy moments I've realized are not to the credit of alcohol. Those happy times are because of the frame of mind I was in or those I was around. The big sad ugly moments in that bullet point list, I feel I can directly give credit to alcohol. The role it's played for my dad, for my mom, for me, for my sister, for my ex-husbands, for my current significant other, for my friends, for my family & extended family...I don't "blame" alcohol but there is a significance in recognizing it's involvement, it's pattern, and ultimately it's path of destruction.

When I really sit down and think about it, it's destruction is EVERYWHERE and in EVERYONE. And whether you consume or not, you've most likely been touched by it.

It's these moments of clarity I'm so grateful for now and I'm humbly proud to say my personal path of destruction has ended. I know not everyone can say the same and it's for those, I pray.

much love, Codette