Read it like your life depends on it

Let me be straight about the numbers, because the story doesn't make sense without them: 14 years sober, two years drunk, and the 17 I'm counting today came after that. Thirty-three years since I first walked into the rooms. Thirty-one of them sober. Not in a row.

For the first 14 years of my sobriety, I did what a lot of us do. I went to meetings. I chased opportunities. I stayed busy, stayed social, stayed around the rooms. I knew the slogans. I made the coffee, gave the rides, raised my hand when it was time to share. If you'd asked anybody in those rooms, they'd have told you I was doing fine. What I didn't do was open the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and actually work the steps the way they're laid out. I thought showing up was enough. I'd have argued with you about it, too.

It wasn't. After 14 years, I got drunk again. Not after a tragedy. Not after some big event I could point to. I just did, the way an alcoholic who hasn't treated the thing eventually does.

I was out drinking and using for two years. Two years I can't get back, and two years that cost me things I'm still not sure I've fully counted. Some of it I can name. Some of it I'm still finding. I was fortunate — genuinely fortunate — to find my way back at all. A lot of people don't. I've been to their funerals.

When I came back, something in me was different. I had a willingness I hadn't had before — the willingness to follow someone else's direction instead of my own. For 14 years I'd been the guy with opinions. Now I was the guy with a notebook, asking what to do next and then doing it. Someone told me something early on that I've never forgotten: an alcoholic who follows direction will stay sober, and one who won't, won't. It sounds simple. It is simple. It's just not easy. Easy would be doing it my way. Simple is doing it the way it's written — one step, then the next, with someone who's done it before checking my work.

So this year, on my anniversary, here's what I want to say to the newcomer, and to the person who's got a little time but hasn't picked up the book yet:

Meetings matter. Fellowship matters. The people, the coffee, the hugs after — all of it matters. But none of it is the solution. The solution is in the book. It's in the steps, worked in order, with someone guiding you through them. Not read about. Not talked about from the podium. Worked — pen in hand, with the person you asked to take you through them. I spent 14 years proving that you can do everything else right and still go back out, because I skipped the one thing that actually treats the disease.

Fourteen years, then two out, then seventeen. The book is the difference between the first stretch and this one.

If you're an alcoholic, open that book. Read it like your life depends on it. For me, it does.