Oh, happy day!

Funnily enough, as fast as the years zip by these days, it always feels like forever until my sobriety birthday comes around. It is today, December 26, otherwise known as Boxing Day in other countries on earth, and this is number 20. That seems so very momentous, but it is really just 7,305 days, one at a time. And 4,000-5,000 meetings, because I do at least four a week, and often as many as seven. People ask "are you STILL going to those meetings?", and I say, gee, if I were a diabetic, would you ask me if I was still taking my insulin? To an alcoholic, meetings are what keeps the disease at bay, because it never goes away, it is incurable and chronic and deadly if it gets out of hand. I have seen many people who once had meaningful sobriety die once they started drinking again. And those who make it back to start over ALWAYS say that they stopped going to meetings. This is not a self-help program. Hundreds of other recovering alcoholics have stood beside me, showed me by their example how to do this work (and some showed me how NOT to do it, too, remember, if you can't be a good example, you'll have to be a horrible warning). And I used to think I was sitting in a folding chair at a meeting to save my own ass, but it turns out I have saved some others, just by showing up over and over and over again. Imagine that. So, WOW! 20 Years!