You’re not really sober …. 

My name is ………..And I’m an alcoholic 

Something wasn’t happening for me in recovery. I didn’t know what. But I did know it wasn’t happening. I was missing out on something. I was not doing something.  

In my first year of sobriety, I went to meetings every day. Sometimes twice. I called my sponsor every day. On the dot of 6.45am. I was particular with my time keeping.  

Not a minute later or a minute earlier. But I wasn’t getting well. I was sober and I was sorting things out at home. But sobriety wise, nothing had changed. I nearly drank.  I was so close.  

And after maybe 500 meetings, I went to my sponsors meeting. Newcomers. It wasn’t a meeting for everyone. But it was run on military precision lines. It was run by a matriarch. My sponsors sponsor.  

She held nothing back; she pulled no punches. She gave out tough love. She said what she thought. And she said it with conviction and without fanfare. 

And the one thing I saw, and the one thing I knew, was there were many sober people in this meeting. They talked steps, they talked traditions, they had Joe and Charlie over to hold their incredible big book studies. They took our sobriety extremely seriously at this meeting.  

And they had three meetings a week. A speaker meeting, a feelings meeting, and a step meeting. The meeting even hosted its own monthly newspaper. And that’s really where I got sober.  

Not that this meeting was any better than any other meetings of AA. It was just the meeting I needed at the time. I kept my original home group. 

But there was something that appealed to me at this, my sponsors group.  

I needed the tightness of its message. 

I loved the way this group adhered to the spirit of the steps. And the traditions were spoken about with strength and authority.  

It had a healthy membership list, and many of the old timers locally and many further afield, had at one time or another been a member. And it held a massive part in my getting sober 

I’ve learnt over time, to wear this program like a lose fitting cloak.  

In my early days, my grand sponsor told us all repeatedly that ‘you’re not really sober until your 5 years sober ‘. It took that long for the fog to clear. It’s taken me another 20 years, to settle into AA. And it’ll take the rest of my life to realise just how lucky I was to have such good teachers. 

Anon