Goodbye to the Bondage of Self

I’d like to say that I found the God of my understanding in my first meeting, or my tenth, or my 20th. I’m pretty sure, however, that resentment, self-pity and grandiosity are imperfect indications of spiritual recovery and that I still had a long way to go. I had crawled into AAA the day after my wife bailed me out of jail, humiliated and exhausted enough to admit defeat, identify as an alcoholic and agree that my life had become momentarily unmanageable. I had lost my job and we were broke. Worst of all, my secrets had been discovered. I knew I would figure out a way to fix everything if people would just get off my back. But in the meantime, going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous was part of my strategy to calm my wife down and reassure the judge before I was arraigned.