“In a word, our holiness is in heaven, where Christ is; and not in the world, before men’s eyes, like goods in the market place.”
~Martin Luther, Treasury of Daily Prayer~

I woke up to a text from Arya saying the supervisor wasn’t there and also asking if we had group. It was 8:50. Then she said he was there now and I told her I’d slept in and would be there as soon as I could. It was her turn to lead group. I was out the door in six minutes and was mistaken for a drunkard by the new woman who was there today. Not to use crass language, but there are differing levels of drunks.

What I mean is that some have a more advanced or severe stage of the disease, if you use the disease model. This is something I’ve observed. I’d observed it so much that when one woman was trying to tell me she had a drinking problem I almost didn’t believe her because what she was describing seemed nowhere near as bad or deadly as some of the other things I’ve heard. Even so, she meets the criteria.

I would recommend AA for several reasons. The accountability, the support, and perhaps most important, the repeated shame-reducing experience of being accepted by a group of people. The way addictions are fought are through connections with others. If that connection doesn’t happen, although I should never say never, it pretty much means that recovery is an impossibility. And each time it occurs is a miracle.