For the practicing alcoholic, Christmas can be a grand and fortunate series of neighborhood cocktail gatherings, office and club parties, gifts of bottles of fine alcohol. Yes indeedy, during the Christmas Season, such gatherings seem to be unending. Even cheap stuff is gifted, but it was more fun to receive fancy attractive bottles from places you never heard of, like Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, from Glenmorangie, Tain, Scotland. An alcoholic plays the role of a taste-master for all the Christmas and New Years’ shindigs.
There’s another characteristic at this time of the year: everyone seems to overdo their drinking, especially the practicing alcoholic for there is more opportunities to do so, more acquiescence to “overdoing it,” and seemingly an attitude of many that getting drunk on these tasty liquors is acceptable, or so it might seem.
But what if you are new in the Program, let’s say newly attending the noon meeting at St X Noon in Cincinnati. What about that very delightful neighborhood gathering, are you attending or not? The best advice is “don’t go,” but if it’s a “must attend” function, call in sick, claiming a tough coughing cold, and be sure to “cough, cough” over the phone. If you’ve been around those basement floors at St X for a while, then go but arrive late, stay a bit, tell the host, “We have a ‘must attend’ gathering at my Boss’ home (or “our oldest is arriving home from college”). So leave, and here’s my suggestion: then drive to 405 Oak Street, Cincinnati’s first AA Club House. There undoubtedly will be a bunch of people having fun, laughing and telling stories of their times when confronted by these “holiday home-tavern parties.”
This escape to the local AA Club House happened to me. We were in Denver with our son on Christmas Day waiting for dinner that evening. I sat there feeling sorry for myself… but suddenly, I said to my son, “Let’s find the Denver AA Club House.” We did and of course I saw folks new in the program but maybe afraid they’d slip back, listened to reading of the Steps, and that necessary question of whether any new folks were present. On it went, just like I knew it would, and just as it did every noon at St X in its basement. It was wonderful for it brought me out of the “poor Jim” downtrodden attitude and put me exactly where I should be that day in Denver.
Sometimes when I recall encounters like this, I ask myself “Why did I keep drinking?” …I could see and feel the damage it was causing. In reaction, we “snuck-drank” to assure access to alcohol. When repairs were made in Dr. Bob’s Akron home, bottles were found in the walls and buried in the yard.
Maybe we were ashamed about our drinking habits and the ramifications, so we snuck out, shouting out as we left our home, “I’m going out to get us some of that new ice cream you’ve wanted.”
We seem to play “hide and seek and catch me if you can.” Sometimes I feel that attitude merely reflects a bit of the old suspicious attitude toward alcoholics, the stigma period and the “stigma label” placed on any alcoholic.
We can’t erase our alcoholic past, but we know we can seek amends. But perhaps it is a good thing to recall but please, please, recall those days for a short time, and infrequently.
A trip Christmas Day to the local AA Club House makes a wonderful Christmas celebratory event. You will be refreshed, perhaps aiding a new person, and will be reminded of the incredible fortune we have to be around the AA Program, the words of Bill and Dr. Bob, the work by many to make a Club House available. Is there an excuse for not stopping at “Oak Street,” as the Cincinnati Club is called?
Look again at what Step Twelve calls us to do … we are to use opportunities to carry the message of the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous to those still suffering and those who are in recovery. Carry that responsibility to your conversations with new folks and others who might find value in the discussion.
The Club House offers a fine place to do so.
Jim A., St X Noon, Cincinnati, Ohio
