A husband’s journey from powerlessness to serenity

The professionals at my wife’s treatment center told me to go to Al-Anon. “Alcoholism is a disease,” they said.

I was working my way into an ulcer, had almost constant anger, high blood pressure, insomnia, and could not accept that she was sick. “If it will help her, I’ll do it,” I said as if I were doing just fine.

The meeting was on a Sunday in a rural community, thirty miles from home. I didn’t think anyone there would know me. They knew me all right, as no one before had ever known me.

Subconsciously, I tried the 58-minute meeting: arrive a little late, leave a little early, and don’t talk to anyone.

The First Step identified the problem. I accepted my view of powerlessness and unmanageability immediately. Powerlessness and unmanageability were the result of lack of knowledge and technique on my part. One of you experts would have the hook I could use which would get my wife to behave and all would be well.

The only other man in the room basically tackled me in the parking lot, and tricked me into going to the Wednesday Night Men’s meeting at a treatment center in the city. After that meeting, three of us stood in a light rain, under a street light, as I poured out the details of my sorry lot in life.

On the way home, I realized two things: they listened; and they didn’t tell me what to do. After three weeks of meetings, a long-timer asked me to make coffee. “Someone did,” I said.

“I didn’t mean tonight,” he replied, “I meant for October, November, and December.” This request didn’t sound like a suggestion, but it led to years of service.

My name would magically show up places—to share, or serve as Group Treasurer. I wound up on a panel on serenity at an Al-Anon workshop that way. I didn’t think I had any serenity that day. “That’s all right,” I was told. “Tell us how you lost it.”

Today, I view powerlessness as a daily gift from God. The first Three Steps in six words: I can’t. He can. Let Him. If I fully accept the first Three Steps, the rest of my life is none of my business.

When you talk to your boss on the job, you can ask: Who? What? When? Where?—Never “why?” “Why” is a management question, and with the Third Step, we are under new management. If the rest of my life is none of my business, then certainly my loved ones’ lives are none of my business either. They also have a Higher Power, and it is not me.

By Michael H., New York
The Forum, August 2010

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