Keep Coming Back!

Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive and ultimately fatal disease. It not only kills its victims in a veritable smorgasbord of death (liver failure, suicide, choking on one's own vomit, car crashes and other fatal accidents to name a few), it also devastates family members of its victims and its terrible cost is borne by the entire community.

Our jails are filled to overflowing with people who likely would not be there if alcohol and drugs were taken out of the equation. Of course they are not ALL alcoholics, but many if not most are.

Alcoholism is also uncurable. That is to say medical science recognizes it as a disease, but has not discovered a way to make a "normal" drinker out of an diagnosed alcoholic; or even make one stop the drinking that is killing him.

Complete abstinence from alcohol and drugs is the only proven way to arrest this fatal condition. Simple! Just don't drink.

Because of the physical dependence inherent in addiction, and the mental obsession accompanying it, this is difficult for most alcoholics to even try. And those who have tried can recite a laundry list of failed attempts to stay sober.

Alcoholics Anonymous has proven itself as the most successful and accessible remedy. A sufferer desperate for help need only attend an AA meeting to start this healing process. An appointment is not necessary and there is never a charge to attend.

There are several different types of AA meeting and truth be told, no two meetings are ever exactly alike. Each of the many meetings available has an AA group which provides the location and may slightly vary the meeting format. Each meeting's tone and character is shaped by the actual attendees and their comments as they share their experience, strength and hope.

If at any meeting a newcomer shares that he is attending his first meeting, he is welcomed with applause and told by the others that he is "the most important person" there. Usually they share how they came to their first meeting and how things have changed since they found AA.

Invariably the newcomer is told to "keep coming back" and assured that AA is a program that works--if you work it!

In the last couple of weeks I have been approached by three friends and acquaintances that wanted help with their drinking. One was pretty unfamiliar with AA but already expressed doubt about meetings. He didn't like the two he had attended. The other two had attended meetings a few years previously and stated "they didn't work" and they didn't like the meetings they had gone to, citing such petty factors as attitudes and personalities as being why they didn't go back.

If a cancer victim could be healed by attending free hour long meetings and patiently listening to what was shared there, I believe it would take armed guards to keep him out.

To me it was kind of like someone giving up on God because they didn't like the first church they tried. I don't think I know anyone who went to an AA meeting because they thought it would be fun. The ones I know went because they were willing to try anything to save their lives, or at least escape the Hell they were in.

I am pleased to report that all three have decided to give AA another shot and have indeed kept coming back, so far.

Three simple words "Keep coming back!"; who knows how many lives they have saved.