Sober

By Ian Asotte

s.o.b.e.r. is a bird's eye view of how alcoholics anonymous works based on the author's personal experience. s.o.b.e.r. tells the story of william r. schumacher, III, a middle class professional who reluctantly enters the world of aa after falling out of his neighbor's house one night in a drunken stupor.

In search for ways to help him moderate and manage his drinking so he might once again enjoy a "perfect two martini lunch", he finds instead the shocking reality that his behavior is a disease which demands total abstinence, but only one day at a time.

Along the road to recovery our hero earns the nickname "billybob" and encounters a number of colorful aa characters whose backgrounds run the gamut from "yale to jail." You will follow billybob through his first 13 months of recovery from alcoholism and through the various stages of awareness, commitment, personal examination, amends making and connection with a higher power.

Initially, billybob is put off by the persistent use of acronyms often heard in aa meeting rooms. Eventually, he comes to understand how the acronyms and sayings of alcoholics anonymous help the afflicted and overwrought brains of recovering alcoholics to absorb the meaning of important principles that enhance recovery.

Find out what these (and many other) acronyms stand for: f.e.a.r., d.e.n.i.a.l., h.o.w., s.p.o.n.s.o.r., t.i.m.e., h.o.p.e., k.i.s.s., r.e.l.a.t.i.o.n.s.h.i.p., n.u.t.s., s.t.e.p.s., s.l.i.p., and s.o.b.e.r.

s.o.b.e.r. takes you into the rooms and program of Alcoholics Anonymous as if you were a member. This is real aa, with all its humor, irreverence, witticisms, tough love and spiritual mystery. While this book won't do for recovery what the aa program does, it will give the serious drinker a non-threatening opportunity to evaluate their personal behavior and, hopefully, do something about their problem..

To the recovering alcoholic, s.o.b.e.r. re-affirms the success of the alcoholics anonymous program where "rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path."

To the person struggling with the possibility of being an alcoholic, s.o.b.e.r. may provide a non-threatening basis for self-identification and an impetus to investigate the program as a means of overcoming their disease.

To the non-alcoholic, s.o.b.e.r. is an irreverently humorous yet inspirational look into a parallel dimension in modern behavior known as alcoholics anonymous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Asotte
• Release date: Jan 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301000555

Book preview

Sober

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How the Acronyms of Alcoholics Anonymous Got One Drunk Sober By I. M. Asotte

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2013 Ian M. Asotte This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return toSmashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

SYNOPSIS

S.O.B.E.R. is a bird’s eye view of how Alcoholics Anonymous works based on the author’s personal experience. S.O.B.E.R. tells the story of William R. Schumacher, III, a middle class professional who reluctantly enters the world of AA after falling out of his neighbor’s house one night in a drunken stupor.

In search for ways to help him moderate and manage his drinking so he might once again enjoy a perfect two martini lunch, he finds instead the shocking reality that his behavior is a disease which demands total abstinence, but only one day at a time.

Along the road to recovery our hero earns the nickname Billybob and encounters a number of colorful characters whose backgrounds run the gamut from Yale to Jail.

Initially, Billybob is put off by the persistent use of acronyms often heard in AA meeting rooms. Eventually, he understands how the acronyms and sayings of Alcoholics Anonymous help the afflicted and overwrought brains of recovering alcoholics absorb the meaning of important principles that enhance recovery.

Find out what these (and many other) acronyms stand for: F.E.A.R., D.E.N.I.A.L., H.O.W., S.P.O.N.S.O.R., T.I.M.E., H.O.P.E., K.I.S.S., R.E.L.A.T.I.O.N.S.H.I.P., N.U.T.S., S.T.E.P.S., S.L.I.P., S.O.B.E.R. 

S.O.B.E.R. takes you into the rooms and program of Alcoholics Anonymous as if you were a member. This is real AA, with all its humor, irreverence, witticisms, tough love and spiritual mystery. While this book won't do for recovery what the AA program does, it will give the serious drinker a non-threatening opportunity to evaluate their personal behavior and, hopefully, do something about their problem..

To the recovering alcoholic, S.O.B.E.R. re-affirms the success of the Alcoholics Anonymous program where rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.

To the person struggling with the possibility of their being alcoholic, S.O.B.E.R. may provide a non-threatening basis for self-identification and an impetus to investigate the program as a means to overcome their disease.

To the non-alcoholic, S.O.B.E.R. is an irreverently humorous yet inspirational look into a parallel dimension in modern behavior known as Alcoholics Anonymous.

FORWARD

The disease of Alcoholism is not a black or white occurrence. There’s no test for alcoholism like there is for other diseases such as diabetes. Yet, God knows there have been enough studies to show a very significant number of people are directly affected by alcoholism and many eventually die from alcohol abuse.

Studies by the National Institutes of Health and others have estimated the alcoholic incidence rate at around 7% of total U.S. population. This means there are approximately 20,000,000 serious problem drinkers or alcoholics in the U.S. alone.

A number of other articles and studies abroad have indicated the problem is even worse in Europe, perhaps as much as double the U.S. rate.

Then there is the fallout from alcoholism

It is often reported by counselors, therapists and treatment centers that each full blown alcoholic has a negative and direct impact on three to four other people, usually immediate family and particularly the alcoholic’s spouse or significant other. Added to the base group of active alcoholics, this means as many as 100,000,000 or one third of the population is being negatively and seriously affected by alcoholism on a continuing basis.

Incidentally, I am not going to get into the discussion here, nor will I in the story, of whether alcoholism is a disease or an acquired problem resulting from environmental factors. I don’t care. I’m of the school that Once a pickle, never a cucumber wilt thou be again. For an active alcoholic It’s more important to figure out where you are going rather than how you got here.

Many people die of alcoholism, or diseases derived from it, long before they realize they can do something to save themselves. What is even worse, many people live a long, agonizing life of years or decades, in the grip of emotional and physical pain directly resulting from consuming too much ethyl alcohol.

Alcoholics suffer physical and mental ailments that result from consuming large quantities of what is, in actuality, a mild poison. Liver cirrhosis and acute pancreatitis are rarely the result of eating too many Twinkies. And none of us should be surprised that daily consumption of a known depressant (ethyl alcohol) eventually causes serious depression in the person consuming it (duh!). Too often then, the pain of living the disease becomes more difficult than the perceived pain of dying, which is why the suicide rate among alcoholics is 30 times higher than non-alcoholics.

No one in my immediate family or my extended family had ever mentioned AA, let alone reported going to a meeting. To my knowledge, no one had ever been unemployed for any extended period of time because of drinking. No one had ever gone askew of the legal system in any significant way. We were all model citizens.

We were also, or at least a score of us were, model functional alcoholics. Among these were my mother, father, oldest brother, assorted and various uncles, aunts and cousins. My mother was from a family of 9 children and my father had 12 siblings. There were scads of relatives around all the time, almost all of whom drank vigorously. To this day I still suspect I have passed relatives during my travels and may have even drank with them at airport and hotel bars not knowing who they were.

I came into the family as the youngest of six children. My father and mother were, in turn, the youngest in their families. As a result I was always surrounded by older people who drank. I remember going to many funerals of aunts, uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles, grandparents and a slew of lesser relatives. I went to funerals all the time. I thought going to funerals at least once a quarter was what everybody did. I didn’t realize at the time that many of those deaths were related to alcohol abuse.

What I didn’t see was the role alcohol played in the too early demise of a number of my relatives. The report was that uncle Earnest’s liver gave out at age 63. Your liver would suffer too if you drank a quart and a half of whiskey every day for 30 years. Uncle Charlie had a heart attack at age 55. We learned later he had been drinking with his mistress for 6 hours that day in a pub two towns away. Too much stress I guess. Aunt Rose had a problem with her pancreas – you never know what’s going to get you her sister (my mother) said at the wake.

If progression in the disease is not enhanced with drugs to achieve an early bottom, getting to be a full-fledged alcoholic can be a slow process, one that reinforces the notion one is indeed not an alcoholic. That’s the way it was with me. I didn’t see it coming. I increased my drinking to extreme alcoholic proportions very slowly, over a 35 year span.

For me it was like aging. Looking at yourself in the mirror every day you adjust to changes in tiny increments. You don’t see the overall process until you see a photograph of yourself as a young person. I didn’t see my alcoholic progression

My oldest daughter recently did a family calendar as a Christmas gift to her parents and siblings that included old photographs. I have a picture of my brother Richard, the real alcoholic, as a handsome, virile, and smiling young man in 1945, when he was 19 and I was two years old. I have a second, shocking picture of him in the same calendar taken at my father’s funeral in 1976. He was almost unrecognizable. Alcohol had turned him into a wrinkled, sallow-faced, slumped-over old man. It was as if he had aged 60 years rather than the 30 which had actually passed. He died in 1981 at the age of 59 from cirrhosis of the liver.

In 1974, when I moved to Europe I probably still had the ability to control my drinking, even if I didn’t have the interest in doing so. In Europe, I was living large as they say. I had plenty of money and a liberal expense account. Good wine was inexpensive. Table wine for the home was as cheap as bottled water.

In Brussels, we had dozens of good drinking places within a five block radius of our office for those extended lunch excursions. Drinking became an avocation for me as well as for many of my colleagues in our office. In retrospect, I can now see that the office was staffed with a number of active and potential alcoholics. I related well to them at the time and enjoyed getting drunk with them at lunch.

When I moved back to the U.S. three years later, I had changed. I had crossed the line of no return. Alcohol had become deeply ingrained in my habits and in my psyche. It had become for me the rapacious creditor talked about in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

A simple definition of an alcoholic is someone with a serious drinking problem who is unwilling or unable to stop of their own accord. By the time I entered AA, I fit that definition. Drinking alcohol had no longer become an option; I needed it every day. Somehow I had gone from 25 ounce bottles of Chateau Margeaux – ‘55 ($200) to 4-liter bottles of Chateau Defeat (October) at $9 a bottle. It took me five years in sobriety before I could look back and see objectively this transition had occurred without me noticing it.

Admitting you’re an alcoholic in time to do something about it is a judgment call, usually born of bad experiences, as it was with me. Alcoholism can manifest itself in such subtle and pervasive ways. It resulted in my acquiring a bad attitude and, eventually, major financial and relationship problems. I did not recognize alcoholism as the source of my problems. My line was: If you had my problems, you’d drink too! The truth was more like If you drank like I do, you’d have my problems.

In my mind I was not an alcoholic when I entered the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I fancied myself as nothing more than an enthusiastic social drinker the day I walked into my first AA meeting. That idea persisted for five weeks thereafter.

With me it was not denial, it was delusion. I had a vision of an alcoholic as someone who slept on the streets, wore ragged clothes and panhandled. I didn’t understand that alcoholism affects all social levels; that it has a high hereditary component and that, more or less, it is randomly distributed across the population. It is truly an equal opportunity disease.

Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. I have heard this exact phrase uttered so many times over the years in and outside of AA meetings that it has become cliché to me. Yet, it’s true. When I entered the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was bloated from water retention, jaundiced from a weakened liver and ever-prone to cold and flue like diseases. Had I continued drinking, I am convinced I would have been dead within a few years as a result of some alcohol related problem, much like my relatives. The death, of course, would have been labeled something else, something innocuous.

I did not write S.O.B.E.R. for the express purpose of exposing my personal story as it is rather dull by AA standards. My story is relatively mild when it comes to war (drinking) stories and quite similar to many others in the aspects of experiencing recovery. I truly am just another bozo on the bus, as one of our home group members put it. Nevertheless, the lead character, Billybob, is more than 95% my personal experience. Only in one or two minor instances did I interweave someone else’s experience into the story to make a point.

The other characters are also real. Most of the names of these characters have been changed to protect the guilty as well as the innocent. The nicknames of "Janet-from-another-planet and Love-muffin" have been used in AA meetings I have attended, although I must admit I encountered them later in my recovery, long after the period in this story. Their characters, however, are so basic to AA, namely that of star-crossed lovers who met in rehab and who put relationship before sobriety, that they fit into any AA room, anywhere, anytime.

I wrote S.O.B.E.R. for three reasons:

First, I hoped to reaffirm the experience of Alcoholics Anonymous among active members of AA in a setting they would find familiar. No platitudes, smarmy praises or deep psychological implications; just the simple, realistic experience found at daily meetings. I did not clean up the language used in meetings or attempt to create the quasi-religious atmosphere that I have often seen portrayed in films or on television.

The fact is the F word is often used in meetings and, even the acronymic meaning of the title S.O.B.E.R., Son of a Bitch, Everything’s Real, is a phrase often used by AA members. It is used with no purposeful intent to be sexist or to flaunt political correctness. It is simply a valid and common AA acronym that describes the condition most recovering alcoholics reach at some point in recovery. And, of course, the words fit the acronym!

Acronyms, one-liners and non sequiturs are an integral and important part of AA meetings. This recovery banter is a kind of glue that cements the fellowship, both inside and outside the rooms. Acronyms and sayings reinforce and crystallize concepts newly recovered alcoholics can relate to and hang on to. They can be particularly important to those in very early sobriety who need simple ideas to keep coming back.

The first few months in recovery are a particularly tender period for the recovering alcoholic. Newly sober alcoholics constantly jump from one incongruous thought to another. In my case, I didn’t even read the steps for the first two months. I was too fearful and angry at the world for making me an alcoholic. I could, however, see the practicality in H.A.L.T. (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) and the simple remedies of eating, praying, talking with another drunk and sleeping. I needed things to be simple.

I first thought the acronyms were silly and simplistic. After a few days, I found them irritating. Still later they began to change (or more correctly, I changed) and the acronyms became sensible and simple, rather than simplistic. Now I understand the wisdom behind them and often use them to drive home a point to a sponsee or newcomer. When I reflect on my early days in AA, I now appreciate the acronyms kept me going until I could experience and understand the wisdom and enlightened mysticism in the Steps.

The second goal I had in writing S.O.B.E.R. was to expose the humor found at most meetings. I have never laughed so hard, so frequently or with such intensity as I have in the last 22 years (I am 69 at this writing), both in meetings and at the meeting after the meeting. That’s usually a diner or coffee house where members gather at a local eatery to chat, and laugh some more.

Outsiders might find it strange to discover what AA-ers laugh at, such as a bungled suicide attempt or having gone through four husbands. A friend of mine died recently who had had eight (8) wives. I have another friend who actually had to pay book value for seven rental cars he contracted that were never found. I found that hilarious but it took my friend a year of sobriety before he could laugh at his misadventure.

We are not a dull lot. We often laugh at our bad experiences and peccadilloes because not to do so would be too painful. Laughter is also another reason for the incredible bond that exists among members. A newcomer shyly intimates that he lost three jobs in row only to be informed by his sponsor that he was a piker and the boss had seven jobs in his first four years in the program. The sting is taken away and the relationship strengthened despite the fact that the reasons behind the new bond were not noble.

The third reason I wrote S.O.B.E.R. was to provide a non-threatening explanation of what happens at AA meetings and how the alcoholic evolves and changes throughout the recovery process. The intention is to show the reality of AA to both the person struggling with the possibility of their own alcoholism and for people close to someone who is an alcoholic. S.O.B.E.R. does not promote AA but, hopefully, it will attract some of the suffering yet timid types who are afraid to explore a meeting.

In keeping with AA’s 11th Tradition (We need always maintain our anonymity at the level or press, radio and film) I have elected to publish the book under the pseudonym, I. M. Asott. As mentioned earlier, most of the names of the characters have been changed, including my own, to protect whomever needs protecting.

I have not changed the venue where I got sober, the Lehigh Valley, as there seemed no need to. Billybob’s story is applicable to any venue, but my familiarity with the area after living there 17 years made it easy to write about the background with credibility. It also provided a few opportunities to poke a little fun at some of the colorful colloquial practices there. I did this only in good-hearted jest, as I still have a great affection and warmth for the area and its people.

Many will note, and some will be disappointed, that the story does not resolve a number of issues in this volume. This is especially true with regard to the hero’s critical questions of marriage and the continuation of his business. This was purposely done to hold true to the time line of my actual story.

This book covers only the first 13 months of being in AA. I found the raw material provided by my AA experience was so voluminous and rich I could not cover a long enough time line to complete these questions without generating a book too long and tedious. The rest of the story is better left to another volume.

I wish to acknowledge several of my fellow AA-ers for their help and suggestions in reading and editing the manuscript. Thanks go to Ron E., Elliot H., Al P., Bailey C., Erik J., and Lew P. In addition, thanks to Jackie C. for applying her teacher’s eye to the draft and saving me from a myriad of grammatical errors. Those errors that remain are a result of my ineptitude at finding the original mistakes or from my carelessness in rewriting.

A special thank you goes to Beth M. for being there and giving me the encouragement I needed to finish writing the manuscript.

Very special thanks go to Pat G., who has been a patient and dear friend for many years now, and who loves the English language as I do. He has done much to help me learn the art of expressing thought in a simpler way, using fewer words and avoiding compound sentences that worked for me in the past when I was writing engineering reports but which add little to a narrative. (Compound sentences like that there one)

Lastly, my Higher Power for introducing me to Alcoholics Anonymous. For years I struggled to gather more and more things to possess, operating under the motto, He who has the most things when he dies, wins. I still like good things, after all they are the fruit of my HP’s abundance and He gives them to us all to enjoy. But I no longer need to possess things.

I list my wealthy possessions today as the many friendships I’ve been allowed to develop, my fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous, a spiritual connection with a Power too awesome and loving to really understand, and the wisdom and ability not to take a drink, just for today.

I .M. Asotte

January, 2013

Chapter 1 – F.E.A.R.

It was September 11, 1990. William R. Schumacher, III pulled his shiny black Chrysler into the parking lot of the Lehigh County Hospital Center. He came to an abrupt halt only inches from the bumper of a Mercedes parked diagonally in front of him. He was very nervous, almost hitting the Benz as he parked; his hands were shaking. He was about to attend his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Bill didn’t think he was an alcoholic but problems with his business and marriage over the past few years had caused a marked increase in his drinking. It had all come to a head recently in an embarrassing moment at a neighbor’s home, a story he preferred not to tell anyone.

Turning off the engine, Bill noticed a weather-worn medical insignia on the bumper of the Benz suggesting the car’s owner was a doctor. He also noticed fifteen to twenty people milling in front of the hospital’s side entrance. They were talking rather loudly, most of them sucking vigorously on cigarettes. He suspected these were the people going to the AA meeting. If indeed they were the ones, they sure weren’t very anonymous about being seen in a public place.

Bill nervously checked his watch. It was only 7:20 PM; he still had ten minutes to go before the meeting started. He decided to wait another five minutes before proceeding to the entrance. He didn’t want to mix with those people publicly. He might be contaminated with some horrible infection or, even worse, be recognized by some neighbor or business acquaintance passing by. No, he would make his entrance surreptitiously, just before the meeting started.

Bill was sure he wasn’t a real alcoholic, at least not yet. Oh sure, in a stupor, he had fallen out of his neighbor’s house a week before, bounced off the sidewalk, rolled down the hill and spread-eagled in the cul-de-sac. It would be weeks later before he heard the details of the drunken episode. He remembered nothing of the event the day after it happened. But he was convinced that the incident was only a rare aberration in his behavior. If you had his problems, you’d occasionally drink heavily also, he thought. This assessment had been confirmed by a therapist and a psychiatrist, so he knew his rationalization about occasionally acting thoughtlessly was accurate.

He had an impressive list of nevers. He never had a D.U.I., never had a car accident, sober or drunk, never lost a job or been warned about his drinking. He had never been told he drank too much by anyone; not his family, not his friends, not his business associates. Hell, they all drank; some of them much more than he did. Bill’s conclusion was simple; he was an enthusiastic social drinker whose occasional lapse in judgment led to a regrettable experience. Despite his drinking, rarely had he failed to adhere to the norms of good behavior.

He had to admit though, that the frequency with which he found himself in an odd regrettable experience had increased in later years. He had become a little too enthusiastic about his social drinking. He had begun to notice that on many evenings he ended up feeling no pain after dinner. And there were more and more times when he returned from a social event with a buzz on, only to drink some