White-Knuckled Sobriety
July 25, 2008 by Mark
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
If you don’t know please ask your sponsor…
From today’s Daily Reflection: “Those Who Still Suffer”
“For us, if we neglect those who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity.”
It is my personal opinion (fwiw) that this is a piece of writing that undoes the profundity expressed in meetings that the newcomer is the most important person in the room. I think whoever made that statement up about the newcomer needed to say something they thought made them sound important.
When you get down to reality, in a belief system based on a Higher Power, each and every life in our rooms is equal in value and has no more or less importance. We are all equal!
“I know the torment of drinking compulsively to quiet my nerves and my fears. I also know the pain of white-knuckled sobriety. Today, I do not forget the unknown person who suffers quietly, withdrawn and hiding in the desperate relief of drinking.”
They don’t even have to be hiding in drinking. I’ve known many folks with years of sobriety who’ve sat in the rooms in pain because they had somehow lost the ability to ask for help and no one asked them how they were doing because they were oldtimers and supposedly had it all together. They were not less important than the newcomer.
Very true and well spoken post. Often times it is those who least look in danger that need the most help. The most important thing we can all do is talk. Communicate, socialize, check-in. Just by making each other available alot of pain can be avoided.
I think that a suffering Newcomer( a walking time bomb) is perhaps a person who is still ignorant of AA programme and hence is more important. Soooo after almost 56 Years what Bill W. says in his essay on Tradition # 5 seems to be very much relevant.
I’m not sure how an “oldtimer” who lost the ability to ask for help is any less a “walking time bomb” than another…
I also have no idea what the reference to 56 years is about. Bill died well before 1991.
And from The Language of the Heart, page 116;
The Fifth Tradition – “Each AA group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose – that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.”
Is suffering from ignorance the primary requirement for help? How does that make one life more important than another?
Hi Mark. I’m still lurking and learning.
s.
Aaaah HA!!! A new profundity!!! Lurking and learning… lmao
BTW – Hailey agreed to the back seat! Did I tell ya’ I’m gettin’ a bike after the paperwork is done?
Yeah, we collectively suffer the delusion that somehow after “x” number of years, we are all OK. Bullshit! I think a troubled old-timer is a more lethal time bomb, because they don’t tend to get sober again, but the newcomers do. And the other problem is that no one wants to listen to a person with a lot of sobriety – they say “Oh, you’ll be OK…”
Well, The quotation is from 12 and 12( Page 151). The book from the edition i have seems to have been published first in 1952. 1908 – 1952 = 56 Years.
I was trying to reflect about the quotation in the narrower context of Para from which it was taken out.
Well an oldtimer if in the “bleeding deacon” mode will certainly be a walking time bomb.
But as a socitey it is suggested that the only high mission could be carrying of A.A. message to a newcomer who is still sick and ignorant that there is a way out.
Suneel – please go back and re-read that page. The quote you’ve offered does not say “newcomer” at all.
The very previous sentence says “For us, if we neglect those who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity.”
And nowhere, repeat, nowhere does anything I say place a suffering oldtimer in a bleeding deacon status! Where the hell are you getting this crap?
BTW – Its 44 years from 1908-1952 and what is 1908? AA was founded in 1935. Your facts are screwed up…
Edited: OMG – it just dawned on me! Suneel! This is 2008!!! 2008-1952 = 56 years… Please tell me you didn’t really do that!
Exactly – and thanks MC!
Oooops. 2008(Current Year) minus 1952( publishing year of 12 and 12) equal to 56 Years.
Crap is from 12 and 12: Essay on Tradition # 2.
I belong to a nation where the membership of fellowship is rather very small in quantity. Hence, i have limitations of practical experience.
Thanks.