A Real Alcoholic

I just got off the phone with my sponsor. When I talk with her, it is like no other conversations I have. We understand each other. We are cut from the same bolt of cloth. She is an alcoholic. So am I.

I talked for a minute about visiting the website of the marathon (now in 30 days) and how that fills my heart with excitement (until I think about getting out and running another 23 miles in the next two days).

She told me she was the third woman in the jail there when it was new. She doesn't remember how many years ago that was - but it had to be more than 37, because she has been sober that long.

I thank God I have the example of a beautiful, kind, intelligent woman who is a drunk like me. If I had to talk with someone who had a few too many sherries until she thought one fine day she might try AA, I would have been dead years ago. I know her and she knows me. We are the same.

Which is what makes AA different from therapy. Some perfectly kind, wonderful, and intelligent paid professional can talk to me until they are blue in the face, but without that identification, I am never really going to really listen.

That is what Bill W. and Dr. Bob discovered worked when nothing else would or could. One drunk talking to another drunk.

Thank God.