The meeting topic was responsibility. And, kind of an aside, the guy chairing asked us to think about when does responsibility tip over into ego gratification–at what point are we in danger of helping others mostly so as to be able to feel better about ourselves.

This is, I think, one of the program’s slipperiest slopes. We are all so into helping each other out, sharing our experiences, hopes, and strengths. With the best of intentions, it’s so easy to leave “this worked for me” behind  in favor of “this is what I think you should do.” One is program; the other is advice. Which is not a bad thing, it’s just a different thing.

So here’s what I’ve decided is the line I’m going to try not to cross. The truth is I’ve been sober for quite a long time, and so have a lot experiences to offer other folks in recovery that might actually be useful. I think I cross the line into helping others in order to feel good myself, however, whenever I offer those experiences with an expectation of how the person I’m talking to should respond. In other words, I need to offer what I offer just to pass it on, and not to get something back.

Does that make sense?

Okay, I had to have very minor eye surgery, which required that I be awake. After talking over the risks/rewards with my doc of taking Valium (given that I am a drunk and a junky who’s–hallelujah–in recovery) I decided to risk 2 milligrams  in the interests of having my best shot at avoiding permanent eye damage.

Since I’m sworn to tell the truth, I must admit that a very high percentage of my pre-operation thoughts were fixated on taking that pill. I was both appalled and amused to realize that I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO IT!!!! I beamed right back twenty years ago to how I’d welcomed what I remembered as the pleasant swimmy feeling that drug had always induced in me–before, that is, I began washing it down with Black Jack and risking braindamage and death!

The morning of the surgery came, I took my pill, and waited . . .

Nothing pleasant or swimmy happened. If the truth be told, I felt sleepy and slightly demented.

So much for flirting with my old, wild ways.

The surgery, I’m happy to report, was a raging success!

This is a hopeful country, right now. Perhaps a hopeful world.

After a decade of what felt like partisan bickering for bickering’s sake, it feels to me as though we’re abruptly willing to slow down, chill out, and start looking for each other’s  good qualities again. All around me, I’m aware of people reaching out to one another, finding  areas of agreement instead of dispute, open  to working together addressing  the world’s formidable problems.

Boy howdy, does it feel good.

Of course, many credit our president-elect for the resurrection of hope in this country. I saw Senator Obama speak and would be hard-pressed to deny his combination of formidable intellect and inspirational message contributed to America’s psychological turn-around. But I think it runs deeper than that. I think when this country gets off track, there’s something in us as a people that rises up and demands that we do better.

The hope this country seems to feel right now reminds me of the hope I felt when I came in the rooms. I’d spent a pretty miserable, self-destructive couple of years getting myself into them, but once there,I knew all I had to do was  reach out, join hands with my fellow drunks, and together we could get to a much better place.

I hope hope lasts. I plan to do all I can to see that it does. Want to join me?

Okay, it was bound to happen. Everybody who rides a motorized bike is going to drop it at some point.

Perhaps its just that I wasn’t expect to have trouble leaving my own driveway. But there I was caught in the drainage ditch on the other side of the dirt road I live on and going down.

I was going about five miles and hour so there was plenty of time to jump clear. Charlie had gone on ahead on his bike, so I was on my own with a two-wheeled vehicle that weighs considerable more than I do. Plus, I was pretty freaked out.

Okay, I’m also a sober alcoholic. Agitation is bad for me So the first thing I did was calm down. Then I braced one foot against the far edge of the ditch, leveraged my weight against the handlebars, used every ounce of my Cybex-honed strength, and got thatscooter upright again. Then I rolled it out of the ditch and got it and me facing downhill again.

Here’s the deal: THe truth is I was really scared–scared I’d fail, scared I’d wreck the bike, scared I’d hurt myself, for Pete’s sake. But sobriety has also taught me that turning my life over to fear is perhaps the most self-destructive things I can do. So, instead, I repeated my favorite Doobie Brother’s line which goes like this: YOu always have the chance to give up, so why do it now?

And then I got back on that scooter and headed on down the road.