I'm Tom, an alcoholic.

I think it's good sometimes to remember why we're here. We have a common problem -- powerlessness over alcohol. By the time I got here sixteen years ago, I had no hope of ever being able to stop drinking. I had become what the book calls an 'unlovely creature.' But I need to always remember what I saw when I came here for help. Here were people who put their differences and their opinions aside to carry a message of hope. They told me AA does not promise anything, but it will offer three things: a safe place to heal with people just like me, permission to be human again, and the right and the privilege to make peace with my own God in my own way and in my own time. And to this day I'll never forget that gift. They offered me a program of Twelve Steps to allow my heart to be touched by the One who put it there, regardless of who or what I chose to call it. I was given freedom. They never took away my right to drink; they just told me I also had a right to be sober. They never told me what to think. They simply told me what worked for them. What a blessing! It's one I try not to abuse or to take for granted. We are all different here -- from different places with different backgrounds. But the one thing we have in common is the need for a Power greater than ourselves to relieve our alcoholism. We are people who normally wouldn't mix, but we find a common goal here to reach out to those who still suffer and to give them the same freedom we were given -- a chance to find sobriety, serenity, peace of mind, and absence of conflict. How soon we forget what I know to be true. In AA, I was given a chance to start my life over by men and women who had no more motive than to try to help another human being, without prejudice or judgment, to allow them to find in their own way the ability to feel like a member of the human race again, to find purpose and direction and strength in numbers. We must never forget that we may not have needed each other to get here, but we absolutely need each other to stay here. What I believe is not near as important as what I've learned. Carry the message -- the one thing we all have -- the legacy of seventy years of experience, and the opportunity to take what this disease did to us with a little humility, and maybe, just maybe, make a difference in another person's life. For that, I am eternally grateful!

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