No Matter What. Группа авторов

      ANONYMOUS

At My Age March 2009

      A little over a year ago, I was fired from my last job as a drug and alcohol counselor at a well-established treatment center. I was devastated: anger, frustration and denial were in full force as I was ushered out the door. I had been fired from the previous two positions I had held, and this was the charm! I felt worthless, bewildered and belittled. I felt that something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t persuade anyone to listen to me. At my AA group, all I got was a well-meant suggestion to take the Third Step. After 27 years of sobriety, I deserved better treatment than this, I thought.

      I progressed in some sort of sickness that neither my wife nor I could pin down. I thought I was just depressed, and I had always found that one more meeting pretty well takes care of my depression. But not this time. I sank deeper and deeper and, finally, began to think suicidally, screaming to myself, “They’ll all be sorry when I’m gone.” As a last resort, I went to the hospital for evaluation.

      While I was in the hospital, with my wife present and supportive through every single moment of the ordeal, I had both a stroke and a heart attack. The heart attack was the easier to deal with. The stroke, however, was a complete surprise to me, like nothing I had ever experienced. When I had recovered sufficiently, I was sent home with instructions that I was to be evaluated by a specialist. Upon following through, I was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. My team of doctors ordered me not to seek employment. I became officially “disabled.”

      This was never supposed to happen to me! I came from a family filled with doctors and lawyers. I was a championship debater in college and a coach of national championship debaters. I had financed my way through college and graduate school on academic scholarships. I owned a computer programming business and had completed law school after staying sober for three years. I’d returned to teaching and become a school principal. Then, when I had gotten tired of teaching, I was certified as an alcoholism and drug counselor. Now, I could never work again. Ever!

      Was this fair? Was this a part of the deal? Was I now relegated to a life of being “stupid, boring and glum”? I had a very difficult time reconciling my new status as terminally ill with my own mental self-image as “superman.” My wife tried to reassure me, my group listened patiently, and ultimately I got very tired of trying to “figure it all out.”

      The last time I had felt this lost and alone was when I’d sobered up. I had been arrested in Lafayette, Louisiana, and strapped down in an isolation room until the police could figure out what to do with me. I knew as certainly as I know that I am typing these words that I heard the voice of my Higher Power clearly and distinctly saying, “Now are you willing to let me do this for you?” And since that moment, the moment I answered, “Yes,” I had never—until now—questioned the will of God in my life.

      I have been praying to that voice that I heard 27 years ago. I have also started getting phone calls from newcomers, who ask how they can possibly stay sober with everything going on in their lives. I recognize the anger and fear in their words, but realize they are trying to follow directions, just like me. They’ve mirrored back to me my own insecure fears and that has actually been helping me knuckle under and follow my own physicians’ medical advice.

      It took a long time for me to finally come back to the Third Step, as had been suggested when I first lost my job, but I’m grateful I did. It’s not such a bad thing to have no answers. It’s just a little scary.

      JIM L.

      Newton, Kansas

      CHAPTER TWO

      My Greatest Test so Far

      Members who are deaf, blind, or otherwise disabled do whatever it takes to get to meetings, stay sober, and carry the message

      Members who were differently abled before they came into the rooms, or who became deaf, blind, unable to walk, or otherwise physically challenged after they got sober, write about how they used the program to find peace with their limitations. Almost all of them had to take special actions and ask for help in order to keep hearing or reading the message, or to attend meetings. Most, at one point or another, felt the pangs of feeling “different.” “We are all ‘different’ from other people, and that is what makes us alike,” a deaf AA points out. Adds a fellow member confined to a wheelchair: “I’m still a drunk, whether I walk into these rooms or wheel in.”