WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IF...
Recently on of my non-AA friends asked me whether I still went to all those meetings and if so, how much longer I'd need them. After all, he pointed out, I've been sober more than seven years now.
Later, I found myself reexamining my commitment to meetings. Why do I go? Certainly, it isn't to gain any new information about alcoholism. And if the basis of my program is, as I contend, a Higher Power, couldn't I talk to Him as easily from the warmth and comfort of my living room? Why should I continue to trudge out on cold winter evenings? What would really happen if I quit going?
I never want to learn the answer to that last question. But given my thinking these last seven years when I get away from meetings for even a few days, I suspect the scenario would be something like this...
For a time, I wouldn't drink. My disposition would suffer. I'd find fault frequently with my family and myself. The circumstances of my life would appear more and more unacceptable. But I wouldn't drink.
Then, some months (maybe even years) later, I would be sitting in a living room awaiting dinner. Or maybe it would be a restaurant or even a plane. My host or the waiter would offer me a drink, and I'd think, "I can handle it now. Dinner is almost ready. I can smell that food. I'll just have one."
Maybe I'd even get away with it that time. But not the next time or the one after that. And there would be a next time as surely as winter's bleak landscape follows the glories of autumn.
Soon, I'd be worse than I ever was before, and everything--family, home, job--would be gone...
Why do I think that would happen?
Because the times I've been tempted these last few years have not been my worst moments. Temptation doesn't strike me when I feel down. Then, I don't want anything to heighten my misery!
I'm attracted to alcohol when I feel on top of the world--on those warm, sunny days when all the actors are reading their parts the way I wrote them--when my employers and family recognize my true worth and treat me as I deserve.
Then, a small voice in the back of my mind says, "You have control of everything now--even yourself. You've licked all those emotional problems that made you drink. You can handle one drink."
Incredible, but true! After seven years of meetings. After all the sickness , humiliation, and guilt my drinking heaped upon me. After my Higher Power has given me as new life much richer in every way than anything I had while drinking. After all that, I can seriously--albeit momentarily--consider drinking when that little voice reassuringly coos, "You can handle it now."
Clearly, the inside of my head is my greatest enemy. No intruder in my home, no act of nature--nothing--can harm me as much as I can harm myself.
And what defense can I offer against that totally devastating but often enticing small voice?
Meetings are my antidote to that portion of my brain bent on destroying me. They always remind me, not only of who I am today, but of who I was, where I was going, and even where I will surely end up if I ever decide I've been sober so long that I don't need meetings anymore.
(K.W. Fairborn, Ohio: 1982 AA Grapevine)