If you always do

If you always do,
What you always did,
You will always get,
What you always got.

This little ditty is part of our Program Life. It might be another slogan poster someday.

It is often used when dealing with newcomers to show that if they persist in drinking, they will continue to get into trouble and live unmanageable lives.

But the value of the poem continues past the pink cloud of new-found sobriety. It is worth as much to someone with a year of sobriety as someone just coming into the fellowship. The young AA will find that habits of life, when repeated, result in the same consequences.

Storming around the house when I don’t get my way does not work any better with a year of sobriety than it did when I was drinking. Gossiping about my co-workers over lunch still inspires hurt feelings and betrayal, even after sobering up. This is a surprisingly difficult lesson to learn.

At least it was a hard lesson for me to learn. When I celebrated my first year of sobriety, I was a young power-driven lawyer. Old habits of behaviour were demonstrated daily. To my surprise, demanding perfection from myself and everyone around me did not work out any better sober in a law firm than it had in my heavy drinking university experience.

People did not find my old habits easier to take because I was sober.

I was doing the same things and getting the same results. I was doing what I always did, and I was getting what I always got — pain, misery and angry reactions throughout the day.

It reached a crisis when the office manager of the firm took me aside. She said, “there is no doubt that you are doing well, and secretaries like to work with winners, but your temper and tone is such that I cannot find anyone to work with you. The word is out. You might be a winner, but you are difficult to work with.”

She paused to let that hard advice sink in, then, in a softer tone, said, “your career is a marathon, not a sprint, and you are going to need help to get to the finish line. A new attitude is in order.”

I was deeply grateful for her advice. She might have been a good sponsor in AA, but only if she had the tools to show me how to change. She did not; she could only see the problem.

For the solution, I had to turn to my AA sponsor and the Steps of the program. I had to inventory my behaviours, see the defects for what they were, and then turn to my Higher Power to remove them. It did not happen overnight, but my current assistant and I have been working together for over 25 years.