Starting my journey in AA with a lot of meetings of a lot of varieties, one of the most common phrases was “meeting makers make it.” I liked this line a lot. I was 100% for trying to save my life and give it any measure of self-esteem. So I went to lots of meetings. It was great. There was so much to learn and so many people to connect with. It was AWESOME! I had never felt like this. Never like I actually fit in. I had found my Island of Misfit Toys. And that was good enough for a while…
Eventually, the time came for me to move. I lost that crew and tight network and found it a bit more difficult to establish in my new town. I was hitting lots of meetings, riding to and from meetings with people, and going on commitments, but I still found myself sick in sobriety. I didn’t use, but I felt myself becoming unhinged. It all came to a head with a little psycho thinking on the highway. All the AA that I’d been going to paid off in that moment with the clear idea, “Better go to a meeting.”
So I went to a meeting and it was a hardcore Step meeting. A lot of the things I had been told about the crazy Step meeting people were true. But they were mostly wrong. Mostly, it was the same type of people as me and they were just doing more specific stuff to treat it. I was hooked and jumped into the Steps. In fact, I got so into them that I turned into that elitist tool I had been warned to stay away from, at least for a while.
Busy telling everyone else they were “doing sobriety wrong,” I started feeling restless in AA again. While at a conference, I heard a service person talking about the 3 sides of the triangle: Unity, Service, Recovery.
I had seen the circle and triangle and even the 3 labels on my proudly accrued chips. But it wasn’t until that speaker broke it down that I understood. He said that Unity is meetings and fellowship, Service is taking an active role in helping other (particularly making AA function), and that Recovery is the 12 Steps. He said that Alcoholics Anonymous is like a 3 legged stool. A stool with only 1 or 2 legs is going to fall over.
Just like meetings hadn’t been enough, the Steps hadn’t been either.
When actively involved in “all 3 sides of the triangle,” my recovery feels and functions the best. How well do I want to get?
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