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When I first got sober, I cared about my sobriety and the meetings I went to. That’s it. I didn’t want to hear about area commitments or world services, or the history of 12-step recovery. My ass was on fire and I needed to figure out how to live without substances on a daily—sometimes hourly—basis.
Boy, has that changed. I can’t quite put my finger on how or when it changed. But I think it was when I had about a year sober. At that point, I could raise my hand to potentially sponsor other people, and I’d been around enough that people asked me to chair meetings, be the treasurer for a meeting, and other bigger responsibilities.
At that point, I began to understand and revere how an unorganized pack of millions of people managed to not implode. And a lot of it stemmed from the dreaded 12 Traditions.
I used to avoid traditions meetings for the reasons mentioned above. I wanted to hear from people who were battling to not abuse alcohol and drugs. I didn’t want to know why anonymity is important, or the reasons why 12-step programs can hire outside workers for some management jobs. No thanks.
But once I started to get into the sponsorship zone of recovery, something clicked for me about the importance of carrying the message—not just my message, but the message of recovery and the rooms of 12-step programs. Around that time, I found myself hanging out more and more with people who had 10, 20, 30, even 40 years sober, and it seemed like a key component of that longterm sobriety was thinking bigger about holding down the recovery fort. That meant commitments at the area, state and national levels. But it also meant learning the Traditions and trying to guide newer people toward understanding what has worked for 80 years.
I bring all of this up because I just finished a six-week commitment chairing a meeting on the traditions. We read two per week for a month-and-a-half, and I had no choice but to really dig into them, form some thoughts and be able to speak about them. I gotta say, it was an awesome experience. I think the mistake I made—which I think lots of people also make—is that the traditions are rules from almost a century ago, and nobody likes old rules, or any rules, really (especially alcoholics!).
But one of the beautiful parts to the traditions is that they are like the entire program of recovery—they’re suggestions, and one of them specifically says every group is autonomous. The not-so-fine-print says that every group is its own entity except when it harms the recovery community as a whole, so there are limitations. But if a group decided they wanted to start raising money for a political candidate, they could. My hope would be that some people show up at the next business meeting and make the case for why that probably isn’t a great idea and goes against multiple other traditions. But every group is autonomous.
By the end of the six weeks, I think my biggest takeaway was a new appreciation for the tradition lovers out there. I used to groan about those old-timers who talked about who did what when they were writing the Big Book and why anonymity is so important and why avoiding outside issues is crucial blah blah blah. But what would we be without every generation aging and gaining wisdom to help guide the next generation? I am now 46 years old, with 15 years of sobriety, and I am quickly becoming the older generation. Part of my responsibility now has to be to continue to gain wisdom and also try to be a steady guide for newer people.
I guess I am saying now I need to be a mature, well-behaved adult… and I got some work to do on both of those fronts!
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:
My alcoholic husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God, and I didn't.
(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by Anonymous)
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