East London Archives of Alcoholics Anonymous.

My partner was on to me, she said, ” You’re an alcoholic, if you carry on drinking, you’re gonna end up dead…and I thought, ” How dare you. I just did my third drink driving. My best mate and I had been on it all day. He owned a pub. We went to Epping Green, then drove to mine; the car ran out of petrol. We both had mobile phones so that we could have rung a taxi. In our wisdom, we decided to go rambling for a Petrol station. All of a sudden, my mate got hit by a truck. You know what, you really sober up quick. He went to Whipps Cross; I went to Harlow police station, woke up in the morning, and thought, here we go again. A couple of days later, my mate was taken home. He broke his ankle, but was severely bandaged so that he couldn’t run the pub. He’s back at his house with the missus; she hated me because I was like a bad influence. I knocked on the door to see him; it was like a carry-on movie. He was all bandaged up. He had a case of Stella, a bottle of vodka, 60 Silk Cut, and had the remote in his hand. He turned to me and said, ” Alright, Bern, wasn’t it a blinding night. I thought, I can’t do this anymore. That was on a Tuesday; on a Thursday, I was at my first meeting. 16th September 1996 is the date of my last drink. 

I rang A.A. The guy said, “There’s a meeting at Chingford.” He said, ” You can go pissed if you want, but you won’t learn sod all. That was a strange thing to say for a professional organisation. Nevertheless, I went. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to go in. I was standing outside, feeling a bit self-conscious, all the preconceived ideas about what it was gonna be like. I went in, and a woman gave me half a cup of coffee. I was rattling, and it struck me as strange that they had so little coffee in the cup. Some fella did the share, very animated and brilliant, I was able to identify. At the end, I thought, well, if he’s an alcoholic, so am I, but what was I going to do about it?  I went home and wasn’t sure what the coo was. I mean, a lot of fellas offered me their phone number. I went back the following Thursday, thinking it’s a bit like Slimming World, you go once a week. This time, the woman made me a full cup of coffee. Got my seat in the back of the room. Some guy gave me a dressing down, ah, it wasn’t a dressing down but felt like it. He said, ” You were here last week, weren’t you? He said if you don’t do ninety meetings in ninety days, get yourself a sponsor, go through the big book, then the wheels are gonna fall off, and you’ll end up back on the piss, and your life will be in peril. He gives it to me wholesale. I walked away and thought, ” Who does he think he’s talking to, I didn’t realise, but I copped a massive resentment, which I held on to for about seven months. Every time I saw him, I thought if he says one more word, I’ll dive across these tables, throw him ‘round like a rag doll, jump on his windpipe and all that. All he was trying to do was give me the benefit of his experience; that was it. 

I realised the benefit of meetings. When I went, I was able to share, because the first time, I felt I was being heard, because in my little head, I was the voice that’s never heard. You know that kind of feeling, sorry for myself. I proceeded to do over a thousand meetings in my first two years. I did every day, like the Mayflower in Canning Town; later becoming secretary; Sunday Forest Gate, where I did my first chair; the Dellow centre. On a Friday, there was a Barking lunch and the evening at Ilford. ‘Fireman’ Tony was the secretary, and it was where I did my first bit of service, I was the chair putter outer. The people I used to see were ‘Irish’ Kevin, always a good influence, Denis, and Gerry. The Ilford meeting was in the Quaker’s hut on Cleveland Road; it was one of the oldest meetings in London. It moved sometime afterwards. I think to the Sally Army. Eventually dissipated and is no more. It was a great meeting. I remember some of the people there, Chris, ‘Fireman’ Tony, Christie, who was a psychiatric nurse. Lovely Lady helped me out a lot. When she was around initially, there were three meetings: Dagenham on a Sunday, Ilford on a Friday, and Toynbee Hall on a Wednesday. She used to walk to those meetings. There were many good people around me, like ‘Irish’ Jean, who felt like 12-stepped more women than anyone else in East London at a certain point. She was a great friend and a source of deep wisdom.  

I would get the old where to find out and go, like, on a Wednesday night, to Hampstead, Putney, Ealing Broadway, Beaconsfield, Watford, the further away the better, because it used up that time in the evenings when I normally drink. I did three meetings on Saturday, three on Sunday, and thought, if I miss a meeting, I’ll drink. It’s hard to imagine that now, yet it did me good and I needed it. When I met my sponsor, who’s still my sponsor, when I ring him, he goes, ” How’s the patient today? But how he stuck with me, I don’t know. I saw him, I think at Derby Road, South Woodford, I thought he was the bloke I’d like to ask. I walked over to him and said, “You all right?” he said, ” Yeah, I’m alright, you alright? I said, “Yeah, I’m all right.” I said, “Did you enjoy the meeting?” He said, Yeah, I enjoyed the meeting. Did you enjoy the meeting?  I said, ” Yeah, you coming next week? He said, ” Yeah, I’m coming next week. You coming next week? Yeah, I’m coming next week. Well, I’ll see you next week. That went on for about two or three months. Eventually, I asked him; he said, “Certainly.” I said, thank eff for that, I’ve been trying to ask you for the last five or six weeks. He said, I know, I said, I didn’t think it was that obvious. 

We started getting together, and he never told me what to do. He’s never really given suggestions. He’s a good listener. But it did get to a point with him. I said the usual: “You never guess what happened to me.” He said Bern, I can’t listen to your shit anymore. I was mortified. I thought, ” How dare you? You’re supposed to be my sponsor. He said, I can’t listen to any of your shit any effin more. I walked out of the office, I’ll find somebody who understands, I thought…after three days, the dust settled, and I realised he had a point, because I had no idea that it was all about me, me, me all the time. When I went through the steps, step 5 was the big one. I had a feeling I had never had before or since. I felt I was given that second chance I always prayed for, and all that racing stuff in my head lost its power, and I felt it. The thing is, I always believed in God, I never had any issues with that, every time I was in trouble, I always turned to God, especially when my bottle had gone. For me, prayer and meditation are now a form of comfort that helps me feel less alone. When I did step 3 on my knees, with my sponsor, he said, ” You’ve done it, we did it together I felt disconcerted and weird, because I didn’t understand the politics of what I was doing. You just do it. I have a better understanding of step 3 now than I did in the early days. When I did step 4, it took me eight months to do step 5 because of the fear. If I had taken a good step three at that time, I wouldn’t have any worries or concerns. When I did do it, I couldn’t wait another minute; I just wanted to get it out. I was living in a bedsit in Leyton and had the step four written out, had ten pages of stuff, but two things in my head I wouldn’t write down, because I thought if I get burgled and they rifle through my step 4, they’re gonna think this geezer has some serious issues….so I had to do the step five NOW. My sponsor took off his glasses afterwards and said, “Is that it? You left anything out?” I said no; he said, “Well, you were thorough.” I needed to be. I did it because I knew I needed to. 

I find respite in meetings; they give me a spiritual uplift I don’t get anywhere else. I’ve tried organised religion, which I gave my best shot, but it didn’t do for me what A.A. does, which is why I’ve always been so passionate. I’ve always prayed that I never lose my enthusiasm for the fellowship. At the beginning, no one asked me to sponsor them. I thought I knew why: I’m mad, I’m not well, and I’ve got nothing really to offer. Someone said, ” Pray, someone might come along, all of a sudden, people asked. That was interesting, a lot of them just disappear, you go around their house and ring them up and nothing.  I was communicating with a guy in prison, and I went to meet him when he got out. I waited outside the prison for about two hours. I rang my sponsor and said, “What’s happening with this geezer? I’ve been here for ages.” He said, ” Well, maybe he’s gone on the piss, Bern. With sponsorship, I have to be there for them; I can’t get them to do what I want. I can’t fast-forward the process of what they’re enduring and what they’re going through. You have to let it happen, and it’s for them to decide when they’ve had enough, and then there’s a chance they might change. 

I was humiliated by an ex-sponsee. He was doing a chair, got a new sponsor, and was saying hello to him in the crowd. The guy said I used to be with Bernie, but I had to get rid of him, for whatever reason. He condemned me and put me down because there’s something I asked him to do regarding the steps and money he stole. Another guy was on the phone, moaning about money. I said, ” Have you ever thought about getting a job, he hung up.  We’re all so different. One of the hardest things for me that I did was making the transition when I came in, as I was like a victim, in victim mode continuously, self-justification, self-rationalisation. I wouldn’t be in this situation if this happened, and then there came a point where I thought, hang on, maybe there’s a possibility I might have something to do with this and developed it from there. 

I haven’t seen my daughter for 27 years. People said that when she’s 16, 18, or 21, she’ll come looking for you. I went to court for three and a half years. In early sobriety, I was trying to get access and contact with her and went through it for two and a half years. It destroyed me. In the end, I couldn’t take it any further. I was coming to the end of my tether, getting bad news all the time, always hoping I’d get in touch with her, and it never happened. One of the hardest things is being honest with yourself, owning your behaviour without any strings attached. Also, saying “No,” it doesn’t have to have anything on the end of it. I don’t have to explain myself; I’ve learned that over time, it’s those things that helped me free myself from that surrender to self. If we knew the gravity of the madness of what we have to do to get sober, I think we would jump off somewhere.  There’s a big upside to everything you get involved with; it’s easy to get distracted and drawn away, and all of a sudden, you feel like you don’t belong anymore. If I’m alright, everyone else is ok. 

Nothing is perfect; some parts are brutal, someone may offend you, it is all necessary, it’s how I deal with it. From my experience, when someone does something to me, how does that make me feel? Do I need to do it to the next bloke? Whatever problem I have, A.A. has the vehicle to deal with it. In the Big Book, there are no get-out clauses or easing the back door open to go and have a drink again, if I’m honest with myself. When you look at the big book, you can see the amount of work that has gone into that, covering every facet of the alcoholic for them to deal with it, and they wrote that book in the 1930’s. Bill W was having people round the house, they were all going out on the piss, and Lois said to him, ” You’re staying sober and the penny dropped. There is rarely a day I don’t speak to half a dozen alkies for one reason or another. I need them more than they need me. Some people don’t want a solution; they want to be heard. That is one of the things. When I came in, I felt my pain was being heard—the good thing with long-term relationships with people in A.A. If you can cut to the chase, get to the business at hand, and feel you’re being understood and heard, I feel you need to connect in the fellowship and have a little group of people you can go to and be honest with. The gift of it all is that I’m the one who benefits when I do the work, whatever it may be.