History of AA

 

 

My name is Bliss, and I'm an Alcoholic.

 Bliss isn't my real name. A part of the reason I am Bliss in this context is so I can self-identify without being in violation of the 11th Tradition. 

I want to provide a summary of my experience in sobriety so far:

What it was like:  I suffered a TBI that damaged my frontal lobe when I was five years old. As a result, I experienced severe social and emotional difficulties that resembled a number of mental illnesses without responding to treatment for any of them; what I had may have looked like these various disorders, but they weren't. I had a damaged brain. I met drugs and alcohol in my early teens and I experienced the phenomenon with which most all of us can identify: one drink was too many a hundred was never enough. I tried to use substances to quiet the noise in my head, the chaotic confusion inside of me that nothing else could quell. I succeeded in winding up institutionalized three times before the age of 21. 

I first discovered Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 18, but never enjoyed more than a few years of going without drugs and alcohol until I was 34. I simply was without the stability to benefit from the program until I my brain damage was identified during a hospitalization when I was 33 and I was properly medicated. Even still, I struggled. My marriage detonated and I lost custody of my young daughters because of my relapse. This was rock bottom. I was either going to make a permanent end of things, or I was going to really give the program my all. I decided to try. 

My sobriety date is January 10th, 2016. 

What happened:  When I came into the program, I had no hope that anything would get any better for me. I only knew that I couldn't abide it getting any worse. There were a number of "not yet"'s looming over me like specters: getting DUI's, getting fired from my job as a professor, losing my apartment. These seemed very likely outcomes for me that were on the verge of occurring. 

But yet, I was hopeless. I shared this at a meeting and was astonished to discover that everyone around that table understood, they could relate, they had been there; and their lives all reflected the fact that it had gotten better for them. As such, it could surely get better for me, too. 

I will never forget how a woman next to me laid her hand on my arm and promised, "God is going to restore to you everything that you've lost. And maybe even sooner than you think. Just do what you need to do."

In that moment, despite the fact that I felt I could believe in little else, I believed in her. And so I did what everyone said I ought to do: I got a sponsor. I worked my steps, all the way through for the first time. I stayed sober through some frustrating, disappointing times. And I kept growing. Years began to amount up, and the changes in my life were boundless. God was indeed restoring to me everything that I lost, including custody of my children. Things continued to get better and better, little by slowly. Whatever challenges I had to face came with God giving me the strength to face them. And so it was: the promises came true for me,  and now I'm someone around the table or Zoom reassuring newcomers just as I was once a newcomer being reassured.

What it's like now: It sounds cliche, but God did more than restore to me what I had lost. He's given me all the desires of my heart almost. I'm married to my best friend and we live in a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood. We are raising my daughters full time. I've written two full novels with more to come after years of not writing at all. I have a working relationship with God. I have something to give to others, wisdom to impart. I am stable. Things that I never would have believed possible are possible. And I owe all of it to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This is my space where I will share my experience of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous.

 This is a primary reason I am using a pen name and keeping my real identity concealed...I want to be able to speak freely about my experience in recovery in such a way that doesn't violate the 11th Tradition which states "that our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films."

There will be more to come. Stay tuned!