“Alone no more” is what my first sponsor, Mary M, wrote on the back of the Serenity Prayer plaque she gave me to help celebrate my first AA Anniversary. And those three words sum up my 41 years as a recovering alcoholic/alanonic. I am alone no more…I don’t have to try to do anything alone…I have a posse, I am one among many, I belong.
My recovery journey, like that of many others, started in Adult Children, then I moved to Al-Anon, and then to AA. I was 37 years old when I got sober: it took me a long time to realize that I could be a mother devoted to her children, a professional woman, a faithful Episcopalian choir member and lector, and someone determined not to repeat the mistakes I had seen other people make—and still be a codependent alcoholic.
My finding the 12 steps was really the 12 steps finding me. One day in 1984, having just fired yet another therapist, I prayed to God, “Please—send me a group I can’t bs!” And sure enough, within weeks a friend told me about the disease of addiction, the possibility of recovery, and the different kinds of 12 step programs.
When I was 15 months sober (I waited until I had passed the one-year mark!), I moved from the small New Hampshire town where I had started my recovery to another small NH town. As soon as I moved (40 years ago), I immediately went to an AA meeting in my new town. People greeted me as if I were the long-lost cousin they had been longing to see. They gave me their names and their phone numbers and urged me to come back. They told me about other meetings in our town and in towns around. I sure knew that I was not alone, even though I was in a new place and the names and faces were unfamiliar.
Even so, a few days later I crashed. The newness of everything was overwhelming. Where were my friends? Why didn’t I see my sponsor at the meetings I was going to? I was miserable and scared. Yet, I did what I had been taught to do: I found the piece of paper where I had written the names and numbers and I called Sandy, one of the women I had met at my first meeting in that town. Sandy listened to me for a few minutes and then she said, “I’ll be right over…give me your address.” So, I did and she did. She came and sat with me and let me cry about everything I had left behind and how bewildered I was that I had packed up and brought myself and my kids to a whole new town. And she showed me, in her person and in her presence, that I belonged.
And for 40 years, I have lived and learned and laughed and loved in that beloved community with those beloved friends. I have attended countless AA and Al-Anon meetings and heard thousands of stories. I have watched people stay sober and serene and reach out for help from the group when they were faced with every kind of joy and sorrow. I have learned that I can’t do it alone and I don’t want to do it alone---what’s “it”? Live.
I have learned that the 12 Steps of Recovery really do have the answers to life’s problems. That with the fellowship and the program, there is “there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.”
In 2020 there was a profound shift in my (our) recovery. The world went into lockdown, but the 12 Steps found a way to unlock the doors. “Alone no more” took on a new Hollywood Squares-ish meaning. We learned how to Zoom. For me and many of my friends, new kinds of meetings and meetings in new places began to happen. Even after the quarantine ended and we were free to move about the world once again, we realized how expanded our worlds had become. For a few of years, I went to a Zoom meeting that was centered in Las Vegas. I visited there in 2023 and so I met many of my dear AA Zoom friends in person! Because of Zoom, I have been able to attend Al-Anon meetings with the group where I had started out in 1984. The world is large and solid. The program and fellowship continue. None of us are alone. We belong.
And here I am, having moved to a new home in a new state just 12 days ago! And I already have friends here. For the past year, I’ve been Zooming in on some meetings that now I can attend in person. When I walked into my first meeting in this city, people recognized me and I knew who they were. The promises do come true!
Thanks to our amazing 12 Steps, we know that we are never alone. There is nothing we can go through that someone else in our fellowship hasn’t already gone through and stayed sober and serene throughout. We look each other in the eye and promise, “You belong here. Alone no more.”
By Christine H
