Posts
I remember one of the old-timers used to say, If you don’t bend your knee, you’ll bend your elbow. I didn’t know what he meant back then. I came to learn what it meant, though. It means that if you don’t find a higher power and ask God as you understand him for help, you will drink again. I proved that one thirty-nine times in four years. I was a chronic slipper. I’d get sober a few weeks or a few months, then I’d get an urge to drink and I would drink because I had no defence against the drink, no power against the drink. Some of the AA groups in town developed a Bernie protocol. If they saw me coming, they hid their 24-hour chips, the ones you pick up when you decide to try again.
I’m not a religious man. I say the word God because it’s the only word in the English language that describes the point I’m trying to make. And when I say God, I mean whatever God means to me. When you hear me say God, it’s whatever God means to you. God as we understand him.
I was born Anglican, whatever that is. In my time, I have been Protestant, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Rosicrucian, Buddhist, Hindu, Wicca…you think it up, I probably been it. I was so busy trying to understand other people’s understandings of God that by the time I got to AA, I was borderline atheist. I had lost interest in looking, had left the search for my maker in the bottom of a bottle. What I didn’t know was that alcohol had become my higher power.
I made my first conscious contact with God as I understood him when I was hitch-hiking through that snowstorm. I was in the Bible Belt in New Brunswick, outside of Meductic. As I said, I was getting thirsty. I started thinking how nice a shot of rum would feel. I started thinking that it would warm me up some. It would certainly take the chill off. Yes sir that is what it would do for me, but what would it do to me. I began to wonder if Meductic was big enough to have a drunk tank.
Looking back, I see how things were already starting to change for me. In the past, I always believed the lie, that one drink wouldn’t hurt. Like that one beer I wanted to have on the train. Or that one shot of rum I wanted to have now. Those were lies I told myself. That it was going to be different this time, that I would be okay, that there would be no trouble this time. But, the truth is that it was never different. It was always the same. Alcohol kicks the crap out of me every time I drink it. One always leads to ten or twenty for me.
Now, it was four days later and I was trying to do the same thing, trying to find some way to stay away from a drink. I looked around. Down the road about a hundred yards was a church. I chuckled to myself. It seemed that every AA meeting I’d ever gone to was in a church and the church was invariably down the road or across the street from a bar or a liquor joint. I had the growing suspicion that I was about to attend a meeting with myself.
The church was unlocked and very warm inside. One problem solved. I sat down in one of the pews. I just sat there, staring at the stained glass, and the statues, and the pictures. As I’ve said, I’m not a religious man. In AA I had begun to learn about spirituality, but I knew it was not the same thing.
As I sat there, I began to think about some things. I thought about my childhood and how I had gone to Sunday school every week. I thought about some of the things I thought I believed in. The Native beliefs I had been researching, they seemed to make sense to me. All that stuff about the Gifts of the Four Directions. I thought back to all the testimonials I’d heard in 12-step recovery rooms about a God doing for others what they could not do themselves. Well, I certainly needed something done that I couldn’t seem to do myself. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be there.
As I’ve said, I wasn’t sure exactly what I believed in, but I did remember what the old timer had said. If you don’t bend your knees, you’ll bend your elbow. So, I went to the front of the church, by the altar. I knelt down. But, instead of praying, I just started talking. I said the usual stuff, about how it had been quite some time since I’d done this and how I didn’t deserve any help. Then, I asked whoever or whatever was listening if he could help me get back home. I even made a promise, that day, that if God, whoever He was, would keep me alive just a little longer, long enough to get back home and try this AA thing again, that I would try to believe a little bit more.
Well, time didn’t stand still. The earth didn’t move. There was no blinding flash of light. But, there was something. I felt different when I stood up. I felt stronger. It’s difficult to put into words, but it was like someone had said, It’s going to be okay. I didn't know it yet but my Great Alone was ended. I was no longer lost on the road of spiritual darkness. I was now walking the Wheel in a circle.
Back on the highway, a car stopped almost immediately and drove me quite a distance. The driver could see I was hungry so he bought me lunch. The next drive took me to just the other side of Fredericton. That driver gave me ten dollars. He said he would give me more, but that was all he had till payday. I still get goosebumps when I think about that.
I spent the next four hours walking towards lights in the distance. They looked like the lights of on-ramps and where there were ramps there had to be cars and service stations and hot coffee. Finally, a car pulled up beside me. The driver had obviously been drinking, but I was too tired to argue the point. The fellow had been on his way to a party and had passed me on his way. At the party, he had been thinking about his days as a drifter and had decided to give me a lift to the next service station. I was beginning to marvel at how much trouble this God fellow was having finding me Good Samaritans.
At the service station, I saw a pay phone and decided to try one last thing. I called an ex-girlfriend of mine. She was astounded at the story I told her and said she wanted to help. She asked me to hold the line. Her boyfriend came on. His name was Larry. He asked me where I was. I realized then that I did not know where I was. I told him this and Larry asked to speak with the gas attendant. After a five-minute chat, the attendant gave me back the phone. Larry said, “Don't move, I'll be right there.”
He must have been insane. He was in Moncton. That’s about two hundred clicks which is even longer in a snow storm. The gas station was closing so I had to wait outside. It was still snowing and the wind had picked up. It was extremely cold out there. My walkman batteries were just about dead. Metallica was singing “You're Where The Wild Things Are.” I didn't want to be where wild things were. I just wanted to be somewhere I could lie down and go to sleep. I almost dozed off standing up. I must have passed out because the next thing I remembered was being in a car. Larry was passing me a warm coffee and saying something about how lucky I was. In fact, I think he said God must be watching over you.
The next day, I was back home, sitting in an AA meeting. I could have passed all this off as a series of coincidences, claiming some feeble excuse like the law of averages had turned in my favor, or some other nonsense. But, I chose not to. I figured God must have been listening and had kept his end of the deal. He had kept me alive a little longer. Now, it was up to me to keep my end. That night, when I prayed, I remembered my manners and I said Thank You.
I spent a week or so with my friends, but honestly now, I was her ex-boyfriend. I left them to live their own life without me in it and spent the next six weeks sleeping under the bridge.
