Friends of Bill Wilson? enter here

Just bringing THIS thread up again - hoping that everyone is doing fine.

Hi, all. I've had an "interesting" (*see below) last year, talking strictly in terms of my sobriety. since I moved away from San Antone to Looseeyana.

It happens that there are only 2 groups around here I can get to on a regular basis. I've been trying to maintain my quota of 3 meetings a week, but mostly fall short of that. I haven't felt anywhere near the level of community here as in SA. I got a sponsor, but it's basically in name only - we talk pretty infrequently. A lot of the meetings are very poorly attended, and its discouraging.

My wife says she also feels the lack of a welcoming sort of feeling here that she always felt when she went to meetings with me in SA.

I've experienced this before. I've been to AA and NA meetings in 5 states. Some places were an easy fit, and some not.

It has never stopped me from coming to meetings or from continuing to try to stoke the fellowship, but I miss the easy camraderie and comfort of the groups I got familiar with in 4 years in SA.

I just became the P.I. rep for my home group here, and I try to keep an eye out for newcomers that I could help.

I sometimes get kind of scared that I will let the tepid fellowship cause me to drift away. But it won't be today, or any day that I can remember how much better it is to be sober than not.

A day at a time, everybody.

*(as in the Chinese curse "May you have an interesting life")

Thank you Walter. It is that time of year when I begin to feel the holiday blues, and my disease starts banging across the table like a pingpong ball, and my shitty committee starts singing Nobody Loves Me.

But I guess its a tradeoff wherever you live. Boston is big, so there are a lot of meetings, lots of commitments and lots of opportunities for service.

I went to a meeting yesterday, the Sugar Hill Group, which originated in Roxbury and which was my Saturday afternoon meeting 25 years ago. As with time and circumstance it now meets in the South End of Boston. But when I walked in I was greeted with faces from the past with hugs and kisses. Some have gone on to the Big AA meeting in the sky paving the way for the rest of us.

Now on the Big Island, because of numbers (the population of the whole entire island is about 170,000) there are not too many commitments because there are not that many groups. But we make up for it with lots of Big Book meetings, 12 step meetings, strictly men meeting, strictly women's meetings, strictly gay meetings and top that off with lots of Alanon and Alateen meetings, Coda. Getting envolved with service is really stressed. I am GSR for my group. We do conventions, get to go to Maui, Honolulu, LA. We have the Big Island Bash which is combo AA & Alanon.

And we are the most partying bunch of drunks you would ever want to meet. We take food everywhere we go.

Our motto is eat hardy and stay sober.

Suit up, show up and stay sober!!!!!!!

Southie is really nice - I can confess that since I've stayed there (East Broadway/G St) :wink:

(25 years sober next month)

Let me be the first one to say congrats. 25 years is a major mile marker when you are trudging the road of happy destiny.

I celebrated my 25th two years ago in the basement of Old South Church on Boylston Street in Boston. And it was special, because Old South is where I went to my first meeting and found out "That I was not a bad person trying to get good, but a sick person trying to get well".

I'm glad Walter got this thread out of the warehouse and put it back online. There is a lot of good sobriety on A2k which we will be happy to share. If you don't feel comfortable posting on an open thread, please use the pm function. Confidentiality will be respected.

Oh, and Walter, didja come back from Southie with a wee bit of an Irish accent. I've always thought that the Broadway Bridge was where Boston ends and Ireland begins in Massachusetts.

Well, of course I've met Father O'soandso, had lunch in an Irish pub and my hosts had heard that England has more cities than Manchester (and perhaps London).

But you really get a marvellous view from there



.... I even had "ocean view" :wink:







Oh, and thanks for the congratulations - but either live or die, that was my only chance.

Those are wonderful pictures. Thank you for sharing.

Congratulations, Walter.
That is a very impressive achievement!

Thanks, msolga - but it was founded in plain .... fear of dying :wink:

I hear you loud and clear.

I didn't want to die, but I did not know how to live until I found the program of AA. I was convinced that I wasn't an alcholic because I could stop drinking any time I wanted to. Like I was in control, huh?

I could stop for three months, six months, a year. What I didn't see was that without a program that the disease of alcohol was still in control. I was okay until I had a major crisis and I would pick up that first drink to take the pressure off, and I would be off and running until I again, drank myself into a corner or hit a jackpot.

Today, with a program, that doesn't happen.

I couldn't stop drinking - but I knew a lot people, who drunk more than I did.

(I didn't go to the AA, nor ever joined them, but mad a short-term therapy and joined a different selfhelp organisation, founded two groups ... and left them after ... 10 years, I think.)

I will never say that AA is the only path to recovery. There are other programs. At one point in my recovery I attended meetings with a group called Women for Sobriety. The emphasis was on women developing self-esteem. I learned a lot of good stuff there, and even got some self-esteem.

What was your program called Walter?

I like AA because of the language, the language of recovery, which reaches every drunk. Not to mention that Dr. Carl Jung along with Dr. Bob, and Bill Wilson helped write the recovery material still used 60 years later.

Well, I "decided" to go to tje therapy (which lasted only six weeks as compared to the six months people usually want to in those days) in early December.

I got a date for the following week, but didn't want to be there over Christmas/New Year.
So at first they didn't want to offer me an alternative - but somehow my social worker convinced as did the leading psychiatrist.

Actually, you only could have gone there if you had visited some groups over a longer period and had been to hospital before to be clean.

I think, I said, I'd done both - but actually I didn't know what a 'group' was nor did I want to go to a hospital.

So I arrived there on Friday - and got a spectacular grand mal-like withdrawal syndrome.
Fortunately, I again could convince them not to kick me out - but was on diet all the time. (The last couple of days voluntarily.)

Part of the therapy was that we had to go to the various groups.
I didn't like the AA - because I feared, I could hide there.

So, returned home, I founded with the help of my social worker (= he told others about my idea[s]) an independent group, with no statutes, no big regulations ...
After a year or so, we joined a (origianally Catholic abstinence) group-organisation, founded in 1896, more or less only because of the infrastructure, the free schoolings etc.

I left them because I didn't like that they (on federal level) 'abused' me = while I (meanwhile a social worker myself) led several schooling/training courses without getting any money, developped a couple - others got rather large fee. And then they parts from my thesis without asking me for various articles in their magazine ...

17 years and one day (I do count that one day at a time :wink: ) In one more hour, I get to count the longest period of time for sobriety I allow myself ~ 24 hours.

Yeah, I got 24 more hours!

Seaglass is celebrating 27 years March 17

My 25th was in January this year.

I'm just a baby, I know ~ but next year I become an adult

Has anyone heard from the little owl, pueo?

Seaglass --

27 years today, isn't it?

CONGRATULATIONS!!!