“An AA Regular Adds Al-Anon to the Mix” is a guest post by Jim Anders, former advertising copywriter and the author of All Drinking Aside. In this article, Jim explores the roles AA and Al-Anon have played in his continued long-term recovery. Jim can be reached via email at alldrinkingaside@yahoo.com. You may also want to explore his Recovery Tweets at https://twitter.com/JimAnders4

An AA Regular Adds Al-Anon to the Mix by Jim Anders

I was raised in a culture of addiction (born 1950). In my little bedroom community of what was once Bethlehem Steel Corporation, that culture accepted smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, part and parcel of those times. My drinking and smoking started almost inevitably at 16. After many visits to detoxes, rehabs and assorted hospitalizations, my recovery meetings remained exclusively within the walls of Alcoholics Anonymous for 13 years.

Slowly, I started moving more in the direction of evidence-based recovery and recovery meetings available on-line. The world of recovery meetings outside A.A. expanded as my exposure to others naturally came my way. Somewhat dissatisfied with some aspects of the 12-step recovery program, I began seeking more and different avenues of recovery.

A Recovery Clubhouse, which had been open nearby called Hope All Day, culminated in a bus trip with NCADDNJ (The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, New Jersey) and others to a political rally in Washington, DC a few years ago. This is where my circle of friends and acquaintances outside A.A. began to widen. A Linda C. (mother of a former drug addict, now in recovery) and I became fast friends through all of this non-A.A. exposure.

At Linda’s suggestion, I attended my first Al-Anon meeting. Deep emotional traumas in my childhood or in my active addiction and in recovery were not baggage I carried upon entering Al-Anon. Fresh perspectives on my alcoholism and recovery were my primary motivations.

My overall emotional take-away from my very first Al-Anon meeting was that it could have as easily been a meeting of Survivors of Rape. A mixture of “why-me?” and self-blame permeated the atmosphere in subtle ways, despite proclamations of “I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it. I can’t cure it.” The expressions on many of their faces were too curiously similar to the expression on the faces of newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous. Through a microscope, a telescope or dead-on human eye contact, both AA and Al-Anon newcomers appear soaked through with “Why me?” and self-blame, so much a part of my own early experiences in recovery. As I would come to more fully understand, I started Al-Anon at the suggestion of a friend and my desire to better understand the impacts of my alcoholism on others. I’ve stayed because my participation is now one of my long-term recovery tools and a reminder that I never want to drink, again.

AA & Al-Anon have Different Customs, I Soon Learn

Thankfully, both groups benefit from the experience of those who are living in sustained, long-term recovery and are joyously alive. The spectrum of humanity I have witnessed at both groups has been generous. The chaos and incongruities of addiction and the spin-off of emotions in the whirlwind of people in and around addicts’ lives is phenomenal to me. These meetings, both AA and Al-Anon, not only give me reason for hope for any and all in recovery, they are, together and separately, a reason for hope in all mankind. At least, that’s my experience. Isolator that I am, I usually leave most meetings more buoyant than I entered.

Different sides of the recovery coin, after one of my early Al-Anon meeting, I was quietly pulled aside and told I shouldn’t identify myself as an alcoholic to the group. I get that those new to the Al-Anon recovery meetings and those most recently hurt by the tsunami that is alcoholism bruise most easily. How much on my tiptoes must I walk? Might someone plummet into some abyss of unknown consequences at the mere suggestion that I am an alcoholic in long-term recovery?

With Time, Self-Identity and Connection to Others Begin to Merge

With a little more exposure to Al-Anon, I have slowly learned to acquiesce for the greater good and eventually I did find reward in this. My own rush to judgment and my own impatience are things I am learning to work on here. Certainly, I don’t want to be looked at as some enemy behind foreign lines, as I was initially made to feel. Another fellow at another Al-Anon meeting innocently mentioned the use of another drug besides alcohol. I could almost hear the pounding of nails in the corner, the construction of a cross for his crucifixion at such an unholy transgression. This was about alcohol, after all. Sometimes, still, I want to shout “A drug is a drug.” I kept quiet for once. I get their point about being side-tracked about outside issues besides that one drug called alcohol. But really. Suck it up, Jim…. I sucked it up.

Indivisible? I’m Not Yet There!

I can express “I am an alcoholic in long-term recovery” and “A drug is a drug” in conversation before and after the meetings on a private basis. AA and Al-Anon will likely be much the same long after I’ve gone, despite my philosophical differences on these and a multitude of other issues.

This field called ‘Others’ has land mines everywhere. Walking on eggshells, an understatement. I don’t always know the rules, where the land mines are and what might detonate them. Find silence and keep it. Unwittingly, I was the bull in the china shop. Not a first for me. Trust me on that one.

“Why me?” and self-blame suddenly fit my description as well.

Everything old is new again. “Ego is not my Amigo” gains traction with each new wall my defiance has created. Loathe to admit it, my Human Family has much more to teach me. Fear, guilt, anger and a host of other emotions, defenses, slip away with time. Such a strange courage connection with others gives me. Once again, I feel like I’m but one day sober. What an odd lot we humans are.

Learning to Listen, Damn it! To Feel the Words of Others

Previous to my exposure to Al-Anon, I’d had no real, first-hand knowledge on this emotional level of how crushed and fragmented these fragile survivors of others’ addictions can be. To love an alcoholic (or an addict, god-forbid) seemingly may cause a curious addiction of its own that is somehow parallel AND perpendicular to the substance abuser’s. The substance abuser seems to become like a drug of abuse, too, to those with emotional connections with them. Addicted to an alcoholic, as it were.

The chasm separating people can be deep. I must learn to think ten times (or at least twice) before I speak. This is not easy, for me, at any rate.

Before you get all crazy on me, I sensed that healing was going on and that kinships of shared courage were germinating there, but I would be learning a new language here, a very different parallel universe from the other recovery groups I was already familiar with.

Addiction Monkey Wrenches Emotions

“I only stole emotions” is what someone at an AA meeting once said aloud many years ago. Remote, in my addiction, I had been mostly oblivious to how others felt. The pains I may have caused other people truly never considered.

To the looks of “Why me?” and self-blame, I wanted to shout that it doesn’t matter why-you and that self-blame is not a quick-fix or even remotely helpful to the alcoholic or addict or to the whirlwind of people in their lives.

Untangling Addiction’s Emotional Snarls

These meetings are positive forces of change. By observing and by listening, certain truths are beginning to stick to me. I’m beginning to value these Al-Anon meetings, not only for the members, but for me, too. Diplomacy has a place, a purpose, and may reap rewards. Learning to learn.

For once, my eventual silence began to feel like a humble offering. 13 years of continuous sobriety has brought me to Al-Anon and once again, it is me who is the beginner. How refreshing to learn that I am not an Old Dog here. I am a Beginner in new Recovery territory. My recovery is being renewed despite myself.

Unknown to them, I was gratified to feel that this new perspective was beginning to deepen my human experience. I’ve come a long way from being an alcoholic animal in the throes of my addiction to a responsible human being in recovery.

Scars, emotional tattoos I still carried, would find some healing here, too. Indeed, I had been growing gnarly and these meetings were injecting some fresh vitality into me. Becoming part of this group began happening despite myself. Buffered by the passing of niceties and platitudes before and after each meeting has began to soften my occasional brashness. Many meetings will be necessary for me to fit in here at the depth I seek, but I am learning that a few compromises on my part will work in my recovery’s favor. I, of all people, repeatedly asking others to learn patience, am learning patience here. I am learning new lessons in humility.

More in Store as Gratitude Flourishes

Some personal growth simply can’t be achieved without interaction with others. No man is an island, blah, blah, blah. Damn! It’s always been difficult for me to admit I need help, that I still need help. Progress, not perfection, as I am occasionally reminded, is often kindled by patience.

Let me remind you what a nice way to start this year these meetings are becoming. I am learning to fit in with all of these various recovery groups and (I might add) I am learning to fit in with myself.

I humbly submit that I, and We, have far to go.

©2018 Jim Anders