Checking in...

It's six months since I've posted anything. It's funny how I don't miss the blog most of the time. But the other night my daughter asked me what year she went into rehab in the mountains (one of the many rehabs she hit), and I went to my blog, as I frequently do, to see when it was. It was in May 2008. Then I read a few of my other posts, because they really do detail my life for the last almost 6 years. Blogging was so good when it was good. And then it got so bad.

I started loosing sleep over it. The evil comments really truly bothered me. Most bloggers just blow them off, but they would eat at me. The critical AA members bothered me the most. People who hated AA I could understand, but defenders of AA who felt that I was threatening it really bothered.

Then others would tell me to "blog for yourself." Well, if I was going to blog for myself, my blog would not be about my alcoholism. My blog would be about something much more interesting. I am a pretty interesting person, I have many, many interests. But for me, since I have identified as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I felt I had an obligation to have a message. In the last six months, I actually have blogged about something entirely different and it has been very refreshing. People in the other realm just do not get nasty the way alcoholics do.

The last straw for me last year was when I visited the blog of a woman who told me she read my blog faithfully first thing every morning. She fed my ego when she said I was helping her "so much." Then I visited her blog and saw that she was not drinking, but refused to go to AA. She hated her own mother to the point that she had a restraining order, which just sounded vindictive to me. Her blog was so full of hatred and resentment. And I thought "I am helping her????" Do I really want to enable someone to live that way?

I have always attracted a certain number of what my ex-husband used to call "second-handers." They don't want to actually go to AA or work the steps themselves, they just want to call someone else who does. They can fool themselves into thinking they can get the program "second-hand" that way. I could see that some people were using my blog that way - and God help them if I was the only AA they were getting!

I have some pretty strong feelings about AA - and about what I see going on in AA currently. I love the AA that I got sober in. There are still pockets of it around. I feel sad beyond words that I think it is not very prevalent, and people are not staying sober. We have gotten so watered down with treatment center and therapist lingo, you hear very little AA in AA meetings, and you see very few sober people. I really don't consider people using drugs recreationally sober. Nor do I consider people who drink regularly sober. Sorry.

So, here's what's new with me:

• I am still sober, by the Grace of a Loving God.
• I am still growing roses, baking pies, running races.
• My son is in Iraq again.
• I graduated from Biblical School - after completing 4 years of it.
• My baby granddaughter is already 8 months old.
• I am in my 60th year of life.
• I am in my 27th year of sobriety.
• God has been so very good to me, I am more blessed than I could tell you.

So, for my old friends, I have missed you.

For any stray reader who may come by: if you are an alcoholic and you WANT to quit drinking, go to an AA meeting. Buy a big book and read it. Find a sponsor who talks like the big book. Ask for help from that person. If they want to take you through the steps using the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, hang on - you are in for the ride of your life. If they aren't grounded in the big book, run for your life. You can find help in Alcoholics Anonymous, but only if you want it. You can find any kind of craziness you want in AA, and that may serve as an excuse for you to be unsuccessful - it is up to you. Truly.

But if you are the kind of an alcoholic I understand, being sober is the greatest blessing ever. It is worth the small amount of "work" involved.

"Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.

May God bless you and keep you - until then." -- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 164