[bluidkiti]

March 20

Quote of the Week

"Meeting makers make it."

When I was ninety days sober, I saw a guy take a seven-year anniversary cake. He talked about how grateful he was, about his sponsor and sponsees, and how he still went to at least five meetings every week. I was appalled! Seven years sober and he still went to that many meetings?! In fact, still went to meetings at all? If he could go seven years without a drink, wasn’t he better by now?

After the meeting, I asked my sponsor how long I would have to go to meetings. He said I’d have to keep going until I wanted to go to meetings. This made no sense to me at the time because going to meetings didn’t seem to be an option, but rather an obligation. I knew that if I didn’t go, then I’d soon be drinking and using again. I also harbored the idea that one day I would graduate. I’d learn how to control the urge to drink and would be normal again. I soon learned differently.

The longer I went to meetings, the more I discovered that those people celebrating anniversaries for longer-term sobriety were the same ones who consistently went to meetings. The other people whom I saw occasionally, and then stopped seeing, eventually went out. And that’s when I made the connection: Meeting makers make it. I realized that to retain the sense of ease and comfort I’d found, I needed to keep receiving the message of experience, strength, and hope I heard in meetings. Today, gratefully, I want to keep attending meetings, and now as an “old-timer,” I realize that by consistently making meetings, I’ve been able to keep making it.