Living Sober. Anonymous
to postpone this until we had been sober a little while.
The point is, there is no prescribed A.A. “right” way or “wrong” way. Each of us uses what is best for himself or herself—without closing the door on other kinds of help we may find valuable at another time. And each of us tries to respect others’ rights to do things differently.
Sometimes, an A.A. member will talk about taking the various parts of the program in cafeteria style—selecting what he likes and letting alone what he does not want. Maybe others will come along and pick up the unwanted parts—or maybe that member himself will go back later and take some of the ideas he previously rejected.
However, it is good to remember the temptation in a cafeteria to pick up nothing but a lot of desserts or starches or salads or some other food we particularly like. It serves as an important reminder to us to keep a balance in our lives.
In recovering from alcoholism, we found that we needed a balanced diet of ideas, even if some of them did not look, at first, as enjoyable as others. Like good food, good ideas did us no good unless we made intelligent use of them. And that leads to our second caution.
B. Use your common sense. We found that we have to use plain everyday intelligence in applying the suggestions that follow.
Like almost any other ideas, the suggestions in this booklet can be misused. For example, take the notion of eating candy. Obviously, alcoholics with diabetes, obesity, or blood-sugar problems have had to find substitutes, so they would not endanger their health, yet could still get the benefit of the candy-eating idea in recovery from alcoholism. (Many nutritionists favor protein-rich snacks over sweets as a general practice.) Also, it’s not good for anybody to overdo this remedy. We should eat balanced meals in addition to the candy.
Another example is the use of the slogan “Easy Does It.” Some of us have found that we could abuse this sensible notion, turning it into an excuse for tardiness, laziness, or rudeness. That is not, of course, what the slogan is intended for. Properly applied, it can be healing; misapplied, it can hinder our recovery. Some among us would add to it: “‘Easy Does It’—but do it!”
It’s clear that we have to use our intelligence in following any advice. Every method described here needs to be used with good judgment.
One more thing. A.A. does not pretend to offer scientific expertise on staying sober. We can share with you only our own personal experience, not professional theories and explanations.
So these pages offer no new medical shortcuts on how to stop drinking if you are still doing it, nor any miraculous secrets for shortening or avoiding a hangover.
Sometimes, getting sober can be done on your own at home; but frequently, prolonged drinking has caused such serious medical problems that you would be better advised to seek medical or hospital help for drying out. If you are that seriously ill, you may need such professional services before you can possibly be interested in what we offer here.
Many of us who were not that sick, however, have sweated it out in the company of other A.A. members. Because we have been through it ourselves, we can often help—in a layman’s way—to relieve some of the misery and suffering. At least, we understand. We have been there.
So this booklet is about not drinking (rather than about stopping drinking). It’s about living sober.
We have found that for us recovery began with not drinking—with getting sober and staying completely free of alcohol in any amount, and in any form. We have also found that we have to stay away from other mind-changing drugs. We can move toward a full and satisfying life only when we stay sober. Sobriety is the launching pad for our recovery.
In a way, this booklet is about how to handle sobriety. (Before, we couldn’t; so we drank.)
2 Staying away from the first drink
Expressions commonly heard in A.A. are “If you don’t take that first drink, you can’t get drunk” and “One drink is too many, but twenty are not enough.”
Many of us, when we first began to drink, never wanted or took more than one or two drinks. But as time went on, we increased the number. Then, in later years, we found ourselves drinking more and more, some of us getting and staying very drunk. Maybe our condition didn’t always show in our speech or our gait, but by this time we were never actually sober.
If that bothered us too much, we would cut down, or try to limit ourselves to just one or two, or switch from hard liquor to beer or wine. At least, we tried to limit the amount, so we would not get too disastrously drunk. Or we tried to hide how much we drank.
But all these measures got more and more difficult. Occasionally, we even went on the wagon, and did not drink at all for a while.
Eventually, we would go back to drinking—just one drink. And since that apparently did no serious damage, we felt it was safe to have another. Maybe that was all we took on that occasion, and it was a great relief to find we could take just one or two, then stop. Some of us did that many times.
But the experience proved to be a snare. It persuaded us that we could drink safely. And then there would come the occasion (some special celebration, a personal loss, or no particular event at all) when two or three made us feel fine, so we thought one or two more could not hurt. And with absolutely no intention of doing so, we found ourselves again drinking too much. We were right back where we had been—overdrinking without really wanting to.
Such repeated experiences have forced us to this logically inescapable conclusion: If we do not take the first drink, we never get drunk. Therefore, instead of planning never to get drunk, or trying to limit the number of drinks or the amount of alcohol, we have learned to concentrate on avoiding only one drink: the first one.
In effect, instead of worrying about limiting the number of drinks at the end of a drinking episode, we avoid the one drink that starts it.
Sounds almost foolishly simplistic, doesn’t it? It’s hard for many of us now to believe that we never really figured this out for ourselves before we came to A.A. (Of course, to tell the truth, we never really wanted to give up drinking altogether, either, until we learned about alcoholism.) But the main point is: We know now that this is what works.
Instead of trying to figure out how many we could handle—four?—six?—a dozen?—we remember, “Just don’t pick up that first drink.” It is so much simpler. The habit of thinking this way has helped hundreds of thousands of us stay sober for years.
Doctors who are experts on alcoholism tell us that there is a sound medical foundation for avoiding the first drink. It is the first drink which triggers, immediately or some time later, the compulsion to drink more and more until we are in drinking trouble again. Many of us have come to believe that our alcoholism is an addiction to the drug alcohol; like addicts of any sort who want to maintain recovery, we have to keep away from the first dose of the drug we have become addicted to. Our experience seems to prove this, as you can read in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and in our Grapevine magazine, and as you can hear wherever A.A. members get together and share their experiences.
3 Using the 24-hour plan
In our drinking days, we often had such bad times that we swore, “Never again.” We took pledges for as long as a year, or promised someone we would not touch the stuff for three weeks, or three months. And of course, we tried going on the wagon for various periods of time.
We were absolutely sincere when we voiced these declarations through gritted teeth. With all our hearts, we wanted never to be drunk again. We were determined. We swore off drinking altogether, intending to stay off alcohol well into some indefinite future.
Yet, in spite of our intentions, the outcome was almost inevitably the same. Eventually, the memory of the vows, and of the suffering that led to them, faded. We drank again, and we wound up in more trouble. Our dry “forever” had not lasted very long.
Some of us who took such pledges had a private reservation: We told ourselves that the promise not to drink applied only to