So I was contacted today by a lad that I knew from my home group. He’s a military guy that I have not seen in a long time, I was correct in assuming that he had been posted to another military base. He reached out to me on social media today, which was great as I was curious where he had been. G (which what refer to him as) came into the program when he was a young lad and he managed to stick around for upwards of 10 years when he was here. He informed me that he was posted up north due to some family issues; that he is doing OK…but just OK. He asked me how my grasp of the steps is at the moment as he was looking for someone to sponsor him temporarily. I’m happy to help him out, but this is a guy that has, to my knowledge, much longer sobriety than I do. Unless he’s had a relapse that I’m not aware of and I sure hope that is not the case. I never want to see anyone go back to that hell that was active addiction.

I feel like I’m going to have to double up on contact with my own sponsor which will be challenging while he is in Florida. I’m very bad myself at keeping in touch with him. I’m the type of guy that reaches out when I am struggling and for the most part I’m great. I have the odd shitty day here and there, but I almost always know what the cause of it is.

UGH! I’ve been sick for a couple of days now; the thing I hate most about being sick is that it reminds me of the hang overs and towards the end of my drinking…the DTs. Going through the DTs was absolute hell and I hate this feeling. I’m not shaking or hearing or seeing things or anything, but it does feel like I’m sluggish and have body ache. I am so glad to be sober and I’m choosing to use the illness as a remember when. The book talks about how few of us can recall the pain and suffering of our last bender with sufficient force to keep us sober. Well, being sick is a close reminder…

I don’t know how to process this situation and I am seeing. There is this young girl (A) that has been coming to our little group for a bit, I met her at another meeting in the area. She is only 18 years old and is coming to AA after going through a 2 month treatment program. The center that she went to did not go through 12 step recovery with them but encouraged them to go to meetings after they left the place. Which is interesting because they describe their site as doing “evidence based recovery” and not 12 step recovery. I find this interesting because while they don’t “use’ the AA methodology they certainly use many of the same concepts. They talk an awful lot about triggers and getting to the root of the reasons why a person was trying to escape from themselves. But whatever, not my program, I know what works for me and that has been AA so far.

So here we are with A coming to our little meeting for a month or so and she seemed to be doing OK. She was in regular attendance, she came out for coffee and she went to the local roundup with us. All signs pointed to the fact that she was enjoying the early recovery life, until she started to open up a little bit. She stopped coming for a few days and then reached out and informed me that she has been drinking every day. When I encouraged her to come back she started to unload a lot of information to me that included how she has a lot of suicidal thoughts and ideation. She apparently has tried to end her life a few times, this makes me so sad. I understand the “call of the void” thing and I go through that many times myself. But this was different; she was telling me that just genuinely feels like she is not built to exist in this world. That she cannot see a future that she will ever be happy with. I am not equiped to help someone with that sort of mental anguish. I am wrestling with the old character defects that have me wanting to try to save this girl. But I have to realize that I am not responsible for her and her well being. I’ve said many a prayer for her and I wish her well but that is about the extent of what I can offer her. I am always willing to listen and guide and point people to others in the program taht I know can help, but this one is outside my control.

Be well my friends, and A…I hope you’re doing OK. I truly wish for you to find some peace in this life, with us.

B

I don’t know if you heard of this thing that the world went through called the Covid Pandemic? But it was a big deal and it sucked. All the meetings in my area were closed and a lot of them went to online versions. They were alright as far as meetings go but as a person that spends most of his at work time on MS Teams meetings and conference calls…the Zoom recovery meetings got real old, real fast. This included my Alumni meetings from my recovery treatment centre in Toronto. I went to Renascent in the Annex of Toronto, which has a wonderful alumni program that allows those of us that have graduated from their program to come back and talk to the guys in the house currently going through the early stages of recovery. It was something I was grateful for while I was in the house and I was excited to be a part of when I graduated. I made a commitment to try to get to one of the bi-monthly meetings on a regular basis. I did this for a few years until the stupid pandemic shut them down too. Yesterday was my first chance to get back to one, it was so great. I am so happy that it worked out and I could get to one again. Hopefully I can get back into that habit and get to them again.

While I was there I met a new comer that is from my area, he’s going to reach out to me as soon as he gets out and comes home. I’m very excited for this lad to get out and come to the groups up here. I hope falls in love with the program and recovery as much as I have. Being able to be a part of a round up and to have gotten to more AA events this year, I’m feeling really stoked and revitalized in my recovery.