((((Col)))) it really is true that sober people are great people...check yourself out. You got time to care and commit to being caring and you easily practice compassion and empathy and love...what an emotion that is...HP loves a creation that loves. Motive? and consequences for him and for you that's another thing; just as important as physical and emotional sobriety is our mental sobriety. Yes this is a tough lesson and I relate to your story a bunch...when I stopped; I just stopped drinking...no fanfare...no drama. I was done and don't remember the last day I was done and I wasn't done with my alcoholic/addict wife. I needed to make sure that she found "done" herself until I realized I was no ones higher power especially when I was up against booze and drugs. Those are also powers greater than myself. While I kept busy with her "program" she kept busy drinking and using and that is when I learned about "turning her over" (to God). I had some crazy idea that I made a difference in her life and all it got was patronization from her. Her best times were with her drinking and using group...just like it was with me on my journey here. Did I mention that I married the women I drank with? Toughest lesson was to not do that ever again and the greatest outcome? She got clean and sober without me being around to scrutinize. She found a HP greater than me and my HP used her to give me a metaphor for humility which I never ever would have thought up myself.
She put herself into a rehab and on the first morning of the first two weeks of the program her program manager found her with a bag over her head and when the manager asked "why the bag"? My spouse replied, "because I have come to realize that unless I allow myself to be led blindly into recovery...I will not make it". I heard this from another program member who was attending "family night" and came back to one of my meetings to relay what he had seen. She was to wear that bag over her head for the first two weeks...never took it off at anytime and was led by the hand daily. Humility for me is "being teachable". HP did us both at the same time.
The point? Be helpful and don't get in HP's way. (((hugs)))
-- Edited by Jerry F on Sunday 12th of May 2013 12:14:35 AM
I know that I cannot keep somebody else sober. I know it intellectually, but it hadn't stopped me from trying. I think that I have been extremely blessed in my sobriety. Before I even stepped foot in a meeting, or read the BB, or even really knew what alcoholism was, I knew I would stop drinking. My last night of drinking I just knew it as fact. I spent 25 long, hard years to get there. I never tried being sober, no rehab prior to my first day sober. It simply hit me. Well- I did have a bit of help from a friend in the program who I knew as a coworker. He showed me that I was an alcoholic by sneakily slipping in BB quotes. Everything he said was an epiphany to me. This gentleman and I don't always get along, but we have the bond of AA and alcoholism. At that point in time- in the months preceding my last drunk, he was not sober. He pretended as though he was, but he was in the midst of a hidden relapse. He admitted to me that this has been his pattern in the past. He puts together a few months, then out again hiding his drinking. Now, I recognize the signs of this. I witnessed firsthand the change in behaviors and all that. Most people buy his BS, but I see right through it. I am trying with everything that I have to keep him close to the program- I find myself checking up on him to make sure he goes to meetings, asking about his support system and sponser. I'm walking a fine balance between helping and causing harm to myself. This guy has expressed unhealthy interest in me that boarders on obsession, he makes inappropriate comments and generally would like to have much more of a relationship than I want to. It's stressful, but I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to this man for helping to show me that I had a problem and directing me to AA. In essence I'm trying to keep this man, who's over 20 years my senior and has been in and out of AA for a decade, sober. I feel as though he should really be reaching out to the men more. I notice that he seems to know all the guys, but does not make an effort to really connect with them. Instead, hes leaning on me. I'm trying to push him in the other direction, but also feel as though I cannot abandon him. He tells me 'thanks for making me go to that meeting' when all I did was ask if he was going. It seems very unhealthy to me. Any advice as to how to handle? I seem to have a pattern of wanting somebody else to be sober more than they want it for themselves. I want others to take it as seriously as I did from the very beginning. It's heartbreaking to see the people I wanted this for so badly go back out.
I can relate to this. I have someone like this in my circle. Well....in actuality, they are not in it any more because my boundaries got firmer and firmer. I felt I owed this guy something because he was there for me when I was a newcomer. Well...the entire fellowship was also there for me. This guy does have an unhealthy obsession with me and he has tried to grope me every time I would give him a ride and he makes all sorts of nasty innuendos. Ick! He supposedly went out a month after I came in to AA. I don't know if he was ever really sober. I think he's been sober since but I dunno. Over the first few years of sobriety, I relied on him sometimes as a friend and I tried to be a friend to him despite the constant hitting on me, me constantly rejecting him, him actually telling me "I am obsessed with you." Yuck! I guess it stopped when I became the GSR for my homegroup. He volunteered to be assistant GSR and then started bothering me about why I didn't tell him whent the district meetings were so we could ride there together (basically me give him a ride so he could grope on me while me telling him to stop). Basically another ploy to get near me. I said it flat out. "Not my responsibility to get you to do the service you volunteered for." My sponsor also intervened and made some comment about "Did you just take that position so you could stalk Mark even more?" Since then the contact has dropped pretty much completely. The only way it would resume is if I called him or acted politely concerned in him even.
Yeah - he kind of was important when I first came into the rooms, but his behaviors merited me putting up these boundaries. Furthermore, I don't really respect his program that much either. He owes me money and others too. Just a user that plays off the kindness of people in AA rather than take further steps to be self-sufficient. He's changed sponsors like 100 different times and never worked the steps either to my knowledge.
I'm not the one to keep him in the program and I'm not the one to bring him back if he goes out again. There were some nice things he did for me, but there was always an ulterior motive. Oh well. Not my problem.
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
I can relate to your story. There where a lot of people who helped me stay sober in the early days that ended up not staying sober themselves. It was somewhat disturbing, but I am grateful for them and they will always have a special place in my heart, in some way I think they where still doing God's work.
There are those who bounce in and out for years before getting long term sobriety, some never do.
Looking back it is just part of our growth process, we can carry the message but we can't carry the drunk. Sometimes the best thing we can do is stay sober and be a power of example.
This guy, and many other men and women who have a long term history of not staying sober sometimes gravitate toward the opposite sex people at the meetings. Sometimes they are not taken seriously by those of the same sex who have tried to help them in the past, they are also less likely to be questioned/confronted about their program or nuts and bolts sobriety issues with the opposite sex and can keep things on a "small-talk" level.....just my experience.
__________________
Rob
"There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box."
