Sticking with the Winners in AA Recovery. Why It Matters.
A newcomer arrives at his first meeting
When I was new, I was immediately intrigued by all the paraphernalia that gave AA meetings their unique quality. There were the two scrolls hanging side by side. Someone told me they contained the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions. I was too befogged by years of alcohol abuse to be able to read what was written on them, much less was I able to absorb what these scrolls actually said. I didn’t take much in at that first meeting. All I remember was that the lights in the room seemed unusually bright. I was glad to be at the meeting, but I was also glad when it was over. Despite feeling very jittery and disoriented, the thing that I was most glad about was that I was able to get to bed without having to pick up the first drink.
After about a week of going to meetings, everything started to come into view and make more sense. I realized the meeting had a secretary who led it and introduced a member who was asked to share their story. I noticed the meetings had a literature table and slogans stuck on the walls around the meeting room. One Day at a Time, Keep it Simple, Live and Let Live, Easy Does It, First Things First and Stick with the Winners.
Gradually, as weeks turned into months, the slogans began to mean more to me. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I became a serial relapser for over a decade in AA. When I emerged from this difficult experience, one slogan in particular began to mean something special to me. I want to share my experience in the hope that it may save someone from making the same mistakes I made.
Stick with the Winners
For a long time, I thought that by ‘sticking with the winners, ‘ a newcomer in AA was much less likely to drink again. Even though I wasn’t even sure what a ‘winner’ was and what you had to do to become one. Over the years, and after years in AA of being both on a dry drunk and frequently a wet one, the slogan stick with the winners has come to have a very special, and deep meaning for me. It’s not just about staying sober. It’s about staying sane and sober. After living so long with untreated alcoholism, and the terrible mental suffering that a ‘dry drunk’ frequently involves, it was in my best interests to find out what a winner was and identify what I was doing that had turned me into such an all-time loser in AA.
The winners in AA all had sponsors and surrendered to their Good Orderly Direction. (GOD) They stayed in regular touch with their sponsors and shared the daily suggestions they followed during meetings. This involved working through the steps and having service commitments at meetings. You would see them approach newcomers, take their phone numbers, and offer support. Many of these winners already had their own sponsees. They always seemed to share positively at meetings. Even when dealing with a painful event, they would try to share the solutions they had learned in AA rather than dwell on the pain of the problem they faced.
Addicted to doom and gloom
In short, I was doing the exact opposite of all that. Not only was I trying to stay sober just on meetings and fellowship, but I was going to “doom and gloom” meetings where no one was working the steps with a sponsor. We would use meetings like group therapy and share our pain, misery, and unhappiness from the floor of the meeting. We believed this was the group’s therapeutic value. As someone who, in my early years, was committed to therapy, I genuinely believed that the way to get well was to share your unresolved emotional issues at a meeting. The few buddies I did have in AA enjoyed a kind of negative camaraderie. We would cynically judge the more upbeat meetings, where everyone had sponsors, and accuse them of being brainwashed and clones of their sponsors
My best buddy Mathew
I met Mathew in my very first week in recovery. It was way back in 1984. We met every Saturday night at St. Bernard’s Hospital in London. It was on the Max Glatt unit, which was a chemical dependency unit in an old Victorian Psychiatric hospital. It has long since been demolished, but I remember meeting Mathew there as if it were yesterday. Mathew was as much an addict as he was an alcoholic. I, on the other hand, was more of a drinker. We got along very well from the get-go, and in no time at all, it felt like we had known each other forever. Like me, Mathew came from a very dysfunctional family. All we had both ever known was abuse and rejection.
Although we both attended many meetings, we mostly attended the kind of “doom and gloom” meetings I described in the previous paragraph. Mathew and I had so much in common. We were like twin souls. We would stay on the phone for hours talking about God knows what. Sadly, we also had something in common: we were both serial relapsers. Neither of us was interested in the program of action described in the first 164 pages of the AA Big Book.
Bound together in the problem, rather than the solution
There is one night that I will always remember. This is how sick we both were. We had a phone conversation that started around midnight and finished at 5 am. Can you imagine? We spent 5 hours on the phone engaged in an intense conversation. Do you know what we were talking about? Until the early hours of the morning, we spent cynically deriding all the ‘happy clappy’ meetings, the Twelve Steps, and the whole idea of having a sponsor tell you what to do.
Shortly after that, Mathew died of a heroin overdose. This was a huge shock as he was such a close buddy. Not only was it a shock, but it was also a wake-up call in terms of my attitude to recovery. After losing Mathew, I had to learn to put my recovery first. I may develop affection for friends I made in recovery. However, to survive, I had to put my personal feelings aside and learn to stick with the winners. My primary purpose became getting a sponsor and taking suggestions. I had to distance myself from members who didn’t have sponsors, no matter how much I liked them.
Conclusion
I have learned over the years that, left untreated, the spiritual illness creates a particular type of negative consciousness. The illness creates an energy that is not only powerful but also very contagious. Undoubtedly, people in recovery have been negatively affected by being around me when I was a dry drunk. Similarly, their untreated alcoholism would affect my recovery. Energetically, our illness is very powerful. It condemns us to remain in negativity and darkness. We cannot afford the luxury of surrounding ourselves with people choosing to stay in the problem. The simple slogan “Stick with the winners” means not only avoiding people in habitual relapse, but also people who are failing to get honest and grow spiritually.
“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”
BB “Into Action” p.85
In fellowship
Andy F
Rest in Peace, Mathew
