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For the second time this week, let me just tell you a funny sobriety story. Maybe there’s some important meta message in there for you. Maybe there isn’t. It certainly ranks as one of the most important moments in my sobriety, because it changed my worldview of what sober relationships could look like.
Here goes:
The first time I did a Fifth Step, it was in the lobby of a busy financial services high-rise in New York City. I sat in the lobby coffee shop as people with briefcases and heels hustled in and out of the building. I remember an indoor waterfall piping in some soothing noise in the background.
My sponsor and I sat at a small table as accountants and stock brokers jetted past us. I went through my entire fourth step with him—my resentments, the parts of me affected by the resentments, and what my role in those resentments looked like. It was an incredible two hours.
Right there, scribbled on the pages of an old notebook, was the recipe for my addiction. So much anger. So much fear. So much big ego/low self esteem. So much self pity. So much finger-pointing and judgmentalism. All of the ingredients were there to create somebody who had to numb out to be able to deal with life.
When I got done, I felt equal parts exhausted and exhilarated. It felt like I’d poured my soul out. My sponsor said, “Great job. You did some really good work here. I love you.”
I was taken aback. Love? That wasn’t something I was used to saying to very many people.
“Uhhh, thanks, and, um, I love you, too,” I blurted out.
Then I awkwardly added, “I feel like if we’re gonna love each other now, we should at least know each others’ last names.”
My sponsor started dying laughing, and he told me his last name and I told him mine. “What’d you think I was gonna do, one-night stand you?” he asked.
We had a good laugh about it, and it was one of the most significant moments in my life. It hammered home the idea that I didn’t need to ever navigate the difficult stuff in life by myself. I had a community of people here who loved me even though they didn’t know my last name. For me, that’s what the Fifth Step is all about.
As I left the lobby that day, I felt love, and I felt loved, as I walked back to my office. And the best part? Unlike actual one-night stands, there was no walk of shame for this one!
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke.
An inebriated lady was weaving down the street carrying a box. A friend stopped her and said, “What have you got in that box?”
“It’s a mongoose,” said the lady, with a hiccup.
“What on earth for?” said the friend.
“Well, you know how it is with me. I’m not very drunk now but I will be soon, and when I am, I see snakes and I’m scared of ‘em, and that’s what I got the mongoose for—to protect me.”
“But,” said the friend, “those are imaginary snakes.”
“That’s all right,” said the woman. “This is an imaginary mongoose.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2000, Diana L. from Tulelake, California)
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