Hi, my name’s Bill and I’m…

Well, how did that happen? Another month has gone by and I have found another reason not to write the AI column I keep going on about. Next month. By then I’ll have better concrete examples of how I’ve been using it.

My reason for changing horses in the middle of the stream (which ToP totally told us all not to do) is an impending anniversary. Which is better, I guess, than the death of a musical hero. (See last month’s column…)

So, here’s the skinny. Hi, my name is Bill and I’m an alcoholic.

I’m pretty sure I have outed myself as such at some point in the past almost three years of writing for the Review. So I beg forgiveness if this is something you already know about me.

But, as we say, God willing and the crick don’t rise, 15 days after this edition of the paper hits driveways I will mark 20 years of sobriety. Which is a pretty long time.

I have had oldtimers (which I guess I kind of am now) tell me that any random group of people who initially find their collective way into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous will lose half of their number each year up until about year five. Which means that of every 100 people who come in, only about three or four are still around after five years. After the five-year mark, the drop-off slows down and then it slows down again after 10 years when the numbers go to more like 20 out of 1,000.

I’m not writing this to fish for any kind of congratulations or anything. Truth is that after a few years, not drinking just becomes part of who you are. Or at least that was the case for me. I’ll never forget when a very good friend of mine got sober and then relapsed after a couple of years and was newly about 90 days sober. My sponsor at the time (now deceased, sadly, but sober when he died) knew my friend because we had gone to a meeting at my sponsor’s house together when he was in Vegas. Randy (the sponsor) knew my anonymous friend had hit 90 days and anonymous friend knew Randy had just hit 24 years. And Randy sent me off to anonymous friend with a message. “Tell him,” he said in his raspy, post-throat cancer voice, “Tell him that I said 24 years is nothing. Ninety days is a big deal.”

I don’t know that I understood it back then, but I do now. For sure. I’ve not gone to more than a handful of meetings since Randy died in like 2011, but I still know that the kid with 90 days has accomplished something of great value.

I decided that this would be my topic when reading one of the multiple newsletters I get every day. This particular one dealt with the topic of great one-liners. Not jokes. More of the inspirational variety. And one person wrote in that she had found a piece of wood in an antique shop with the words “Accept or Change” carved into it. And how she used it as a kind of guidepost. If you don’t like something, the only two choices are to accept it or work to change it.

Us drunks take it further. You may have heard of a bit of alcoholic wisdom called the Serenity Prayer.

God grant me the serenity…

To accept the things I cannot change

The courage…

To change the things I can

And the wisdom…

To know the difference

Understanding and, well, accepting, the truth in those words is a big part of being sober and at least relatively happy. It is not the most important thing, though. That would be having to make a fearless inventory of all the ways one has hurt others and then sharing that inventory with someone else and, finally, making amends where it is possible. That process will knock the wind out of pretty much anyone’s sails. I highly recommend it. Even for the non-addicts out there.

The thing about the prayer though is that it is both really simple and incredibly hard to do. Because over time, you come to a realization. Again, this was true for me. And for most of the long-term sober folks I know, too. But your mileage may vary.

That realization is that the only things anyone can really change are how they think and act their own bad self. I can’t change anyone else. At best, I can, maybe, be there as a support while they try to change themselves.

It’s a hard thing to realize. Because it means having the courage to change oneself. And then the wisdom to figure out that one can’t change anyone else. It’s called the Serenity Prayer, but the truth is that part comes last. First you change yourself. Then you (in my case, at least, finally) figure out you can’t change anyone else. And then you (again, in my case) slowly learn to accept that.

So, what is the big point to all of this? There isn’t one. Not really. In 15 days, I’ll wake up (God willing and the crick don’t rise…) and I’ll do the same gratitude inventory that I have shared with my maker every day for most of the last 20 years. I’ll kiss my wife (who somehow stayed with me through all of this) and pet my dogs. I’ll put on my lifeguard uniform and work a shift at the pool and then head home and start thinking about my stories for the paper that’ll come out on Dec. 11.

In short, it’ll be just another Friday. And then I’ll put one foot in front of the other and start the journey to Year 21, just trudging the road of happy destiny.

And I’ll keep coming back. You didn’t think you were gonna get rid of me that easy. Did you?