INTRO: First Step

The first visit to an AA meeting was a humiliating experience for me.  Even more humiliating was being cuffed and incarcerated the night before I accepted that I belong at AA meetings.  For years, I would wake up in the morning, recognize that I had a problem, vow not to drink that day, be drunk by bedtime and repeat the process the next morning.

Repetition is a quintessentially religious act.  I drank religiously---every day, often with gusto, regardless of the circumstances.  Drinking became more and more important to me, inching its way up my priority list.  I considered myself to be a religious person.  I was committed to doing well personally and professionally, but it did not occur to me that doing well and being well would require me to stop drinking altogether until I faced the consequences of a DUI.

The DUI was not the problem.  Drinking was.  Had a DUI not brought me into AA, I am sure that other consequences of my actions would have caused me to face my problem.  In the beginning, I was anxious and desperate.  I did not know if the DUI would cost me my family or my job.  I was afraid of where further drinking would lead, and I was afraid to start facing life without the comfort of alcohol.  

AA's steps and traditions were posted in the fellowship halls of churches that I attended for years before coming into the program, so I had some idea of what to expect.  The first step is about power and the alcoholic's lack of it.  There are two big, bold statements in this first step: 1) We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol; and 2) that our lives had become unmanageable.  

I am smart enough know that I should not drive after drinking, and I am compassionate enough to care that drinking and driving may have consequences for everyone that I meet on the drive home.  One of the problems with drinking is that it impairs judgment.  Once I start drinking, I am not able to stop.  This is the essence of powerlessness, and it leads to unmanageability.

I have not had a drink since I attended that first meeting.  I have not had a second DUI either.  Sometimes I feel powerless but am increasingly comfortable with the fact that I am not all-powerful.  I am better at managing life now than I was when I came into the program, because what I do repeatedly has changed.  I practice the steps of AA, which provides more structure and comfort than alcohol ever did.