Celebrating Progress With Greg and Others

My good friend and sometimes sponsee Greg got a new job in Chicago.  He is flying out tomorrow morning.   We went to Whole Foods tonight to celebrate in quiet style at the salad bar.  Greg’s friend TM has a quality 5 months sober for the first time in years.  John will have a year on Tuesday.  It was nice to celebrate the progress of friends in recovery.  Between the four of us we have been going to 12-step meetings for 75 years and one of us almost has a year.

It could be (mis)construed that AA does not work based on our limited sobriety.  That would be ignoring the facts that we are alive, not locked up and sober today.  Greg, TM and John all have jobs.  I am functionally retired.  That is a lot better than any of the alternatives.

It was nice to be able to take people out to dinner and fellowship.  We gave John a card and a fruit basket, since he can’t eat processed foods, to celebrate his year of sobriety.  Lea made a carrot cake for Greg.

Our lives did not come close to working out how any of us planned on it going when we were little kids.  Alcoholism and addiction took us down all too many dead-ends.  The good news is that we are sober and working on doing the best we can today.  It is peculiar going out with alcoholics like us, we don’t talk about long-term plans anymore.  Our conversations are a lot like my Gratitude blog posts, a reflection on how our day went, maybe a story from the past and some hope for the future.

On the other hand, Michelle had vacillated between living here and on the streets of Seattle in the Jungle for the best part of the last year.  She has been living on the streets since December when she was going to go out with a friend for an evening and never came back.   She called today to let me know that she has spent a month in jail and is now signed up to go through the CCAP program for two months.  I hope it works out for her.  She sounded mighty sad and lonely talking to her on the phone today.   Her chaos is too much for me to handle at this time.

I am grateful for the fellowship we shared tonight over a meal.  It is good to watch formerly homeless derelicts triumph over adversity and make happy fulfilling lives for themselves.  It is a miracle to see and participate in.  It is also good to not be homeless and enmeshed in the criminal justice system—that rarely works out well.