How Alcoholics Anonymous helps put lives back on track mia vamos-yuhasz FOR BRANT NEWS
W
sober, but she still takes her battle with what she calls her “soul-sickness” one day at a time. Every day she makes the choice not to drink. Anita had been a drinker since her early teens, but her problem really started to escalate in her mid-20s. She stopped drinking mainly in social circles, being “the life of the party,” and began drinking alone. A lot. It
offered her an escape and made her feel special, which was especially important after a sexual assault left her riddled with shame and fear. “I’d pick up a bottle of wine on a Monday night to last me through the week, which is insanity for an alcoholic to say that,” Anita says. “On Tuesday I was picking up another bottle. I didn’t realize how quickly it was picking
up on me. “I’m an intelligent woman and I knew that I shouldn’t be doing this, but suddenly I’m needing this all the time to deal with life on life’s terms.” The last five years of Anita’s drinking “were horribly soul destroying,” she says. “I felt like a real slave to alcohol. I didn’t want to do what I was doing anymore, but I didn’t know how not to
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hen I first saw Anita, I walked right by her. I was certain that the beaming, shiny-haired woman rapt in conversation and sipping a herbal tea just couldn’t be who I was looking for. Except that it was.
Anita is in her late 40s, but she hardly looks it. She’s tall, fit and emanates warmth and confidence. She’s also a selfproclaimed drunk. For 25 years, Anita had an intense and destructive relationship with alcohol, until one day – her 38th birthday, to be exact – she found salvation through an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Anita is now eight years
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do it.” Finally, she found her answer through a friend. As a fellow drunk, there was something within Ralph that she identified with and she trusted him implicitly. So when he talked about AA with an intoxicating devotion, Anita listened. In time, she asked him to take her to a meeting. “The best gift anyone ever gave me – the best gift I ever gave myself – was attending that meeting,” she says. That first meeting was 10 years ago, but she can still recall it in precise detail. “Hold my hand. If you don’t, I’ll bolt,” she remembers saying. She held Ralph’s hand tightly, the stale taste of her morning beers thick at the back of her throat as she swallowed down her nerves. She was abuzz with fear and excitement as she crossed the well-manicured lawn outside a single-storey brown building that might just help in changing her fate. That building ended up being only a few steps away from her home, the irony of which was not lost on her. Steps, it turns out, are very important for alcoholics to take. Anita was immediately welcomed into the meeting. She remembers friendly faces and handshakes, but especially laughter. “I loved their sense of humour,” she says. “I hadn’t laughed in a long time, and I love to laugh.” Anita and Ralph sat in the front row of a cluster of metal chairs arranged to face a table on which sat a group banner, a big book and the serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
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Ralph crossed his legs casually and never let go of Anita’s hand. Anita remembers noticing that his white socks looked so clean and new, a telling recollection, as that day was her new beginning. “I finally felt some hope,” she says. Still, sobriety wasn’t instantaneous for Anita. “Like the hook of alcohol, the hook of recovery took me slowly,” she says. But that was alright, because sobriety isn’t a requirement for participation in AA. The only requirement for AA is a desire to stop drinking. Sometimes Anita went to a meeting everyday, sometimes not again for three
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weeks, but unity kept drawing her back. “I was hearing their language – we call it the language of the heart,” she says. “And that’s where our program, I believe, is so effective. It’s really just one drunk talking to another.” Eventually, Anita started going to three or four meetings a week, and she continues that tradition today. She’s now an avid participant and believer in AA, especially its three united aspects of recovery, unity and service. In the Brant Erie district of AA, there are at least three meetings a day in Brantford, sometimes more – except for Sundays, when there’s only one. High demand keeps the meetings going. There is never a shortfall of struggling or recovering alcoholics in the community. Debbie Christie, director of addictions and mental health with St. Leonard’s Commu-
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nity Services, says what’s unique about alcoholism is that there are no boundaries for addiction. “It’s the most widely used and abused substance,” she says, mentioning its easy accessibility as a factor. So forget your preconceptions: the alcoholic in the room just might be the beautiful brown-haired woman you walked by, like Anita. Anita is also unexpected in another way: she’s honest and open about her struggle with alcohol, which isn’t the norm among AA members. Anita explains that the need for anonymity runs deep in AA, not just to protect identity, though that is part of it. “No one is meant to be a poster child,” she says. Anita, with her outgoing personality, is drawn to the service aspect of AA and she does as much as she can to help others as they once helped her. She even volun-
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“Anita” sips tea at a local watering hole. She has been sober for eight years and now leads AA meetings. PHOTO BY MIA VAMOS-YUHASZ, FOR BRANT NEWS
teers weekly at a women’s prison, leading AA meetings. It’s important to mention that AA holds steadfast to the belief that only individuals can determine whether or not they’re alcoholics. They label themselves – when they’re ready and if it’s right. “It’s acceptance in claiming that you’re an alcoholic,” Anita says. I ask her about another AA principle: it’s abstinence-only approach to drinking and whether or not it’s discouraging. She’s quick to tell me “no.” There is a big divide between being a problem drinker and an alcoholic, she says. For a problem drinker, there’s hope that moderation can be learned. But for Anita, drinking has never been about moderation. That’s just who she is. And so she has to abstain. “One drink is one too many and a thousand is not enough,” she says, quoting a popular AA mantra. Anita will keep her label of alcoholic all of her life. For her, that’s just part of recovery and there’s nothing stigmatizing about it. Her addiction is a disease and she’ll always have it. But that’s OK, because she now has the tools to better herself, even if it is just one day at a time. Brant Erie AA – which serves Brant and Norfolk – has a 24-hour helpline that can be reached at 519-7525981. It’s the organization’s biggest expense, and its most important service, according to Anita. In the Haldimand region, people can call the Hamilton area AA 24-hour helpline at 905-522-8392. If you need help, just ask.
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