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GaL-AA "Spotlight on Sobriety" 06/15/2025
- Steve N.
- Jun 1
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
In this week's publication:
James R. Story (GaL-AA's Archivist)
Accepting the Differences AND the Similarities
Many things have changed during the multiple 24 hours I have been in the program, and many other things have not changed even though they have taken on different yet, sometimes, more sophisticated guises. The things that have changed are mostly internal while the things that have remained the same are almost all external. What I want to do here is share my experience, strength and hope by telling what it was like, what happened and what it is like now.
My family was either supportive when I came out in the very early 1970s, or, at least, chose to ignore my sexuality. This was the era of the bars which is where, and when, my serious drinking began. I distinctly remember, when I first entered a gay bar, having a feeling that I was in the right place at the right time. Looking back, however, I should have realized that I had a problem. I entered with a set plan that I would stay for three drinks and then catch the bus home. Needless to say, I had more than three drinks and closed the place down before catching the LAST bus home of the evening. This was to become a pattern, with only minor variations, that would get worse during the next ten years.
Even though I was out, having some professional success, had, by dint of force, completed a graduate degree with a double major in voice performance and music history, had found that I could function socially in the bars and in the gay community, and had experienced that initial feeling of being in the right place upon entering the bars, I had yet to find a place and a group with which I felt I truly belonged.
I do not believe that my family understood the amount of my drinking, or my increasing dependence on alcohol to balance my mood, decrease my feelings of fear and anger, and temper my resentments. Even when my serious drinking began, it tended to magnify my character defects of perfectionism, judgmentalness and arrogance. I do believe, however, that people with whom I worked in the music profession understood because at various times it was pointed out to me that my behavior was unacceptable. I also know that I lost performance and professional opportunities because of my anger, fear, resentments and general arrogance. In retrospect, I can also see that everyone, family, friends, colleagues and, to a certain extent, myself, was coming to the realization that something was wrong.
I met the gentleman who was to become my sponsor about a year prior to my putting down my last drink. He was someone with whom I would normally never associate. He was artistic, but also a hippie in the truest sense of the term. Where I was uptight, angry, irritable, discontent, judgmental and a perfectionist, he had a strong intellect and clarity of thought that interested me. It was also obvious that he was comfortable with himself and had developed the ability to deal with a physical disability rather than letting it define him. He was very open and honest about his recovery as well as his addiction to drugs and alcohol. We did not date as such, but I did begin to hang out with him and his friends regularly. Gradually, during the ensuing year, he showed me, by example, that recovery was possible and desirable. Toward the end of that period, he began to suggest that I just might have a problem.
My drinking progressed through 1979 and into 1980. By this point I was reduced to working for my Father in the family florist business, singing in church choirs and doing a small gig as music director and actor for a local production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. At rehearsals for the play, I was generally so hung over that I had to read my lines from the on-set couch. On a Wednesday evening in late February 1980, I did something that I rarely allowed myself. That was to start drinking before choir rehearsal.
I was able to make it through rehearsal, but then went back to the bars and continued drinking, finally staggering home at 6:00 AM, fully aware, for once, that I had a problem, that a possible solution was available, and that my access to that solution was readily available. Sometime prior to 6:00 AM, February 27, 1980, I had finally taken my last drink.
That was as close as I have ever come to a “burning bush” spiritual experience. The remainder of my spiritual awakening has been of the slow, gradual, educational variety. Through my work in church music and family history, I had known about AA for years. However, AA was simply that group that met in the Scout Hut at the bottom of the parking lot, that did not want others to know who they were. Little more. My sponsor quickly changed that. A group of his friends was planning a trip to North Carolina that weekend which is where I attended my first meeting and was introduced to the Steps, Traditions and Promises.
The first meeting I attended at what is still my Home Group was my sponsor’s first anniversary the following week. It was at this meeting that I, again, had the sensation of being in the right place at the right time, that I had sensed when walking into a gay bar for the first time in 1970. I knew that I was where I was comfortable, where I could feel safe, and, finally, where I belonged.
My home group, Frankly Open, was the first open LGBT+ AA group in Atlanta. There was a group that had established itself earlier, but it had faced a great deal of harassment, so its meetings were all closed and doubly anonymous. To be admitted one had to be recommended by two members who had more than one year of sobriety. To further control admissions, a rope, attached to a bell, would be hung from one of the meeting room windows down to the parking lot. When this was rung, one of the attendees would come down to the ground floor, unlock the door to the building and admit you.
Frankly Open was still relatively small, so I was encouraged to get into service work early on. I started out by making my first ever pot of coffee. This required me to arrive at meetings early, which gave me the opportunity to get to know people socially. I continued with these group service positions, leading discussion, chairing meetings, editing the phone list and becoming treasurer for the group on two occasions. Service continues to help me feel that I am a part of the group. It also helps me develop responsibility and overcome my fear of failure.
I was also becoming interested in how AA worked beyond the group level. This got me involved with Atlanta Intergroup through the Cooperation with the Professional Community (CPC) Committee. I edited the committee’s newsletter for about a year and then moved to the editorship of The Voice, the Newsletter for Atlanta Intergroup.
Getting these publications out to subscribers required help. To take advantage of the lowest postage rates possible, we had to manually separate and bundle the newsletters by zip code and personally deliver them to the nearest post office for mailing. These Intergroup activities encouraged me to attend meetings throughout Atlanta and introduced me to people in the fellowship outside of my comfortable, home group. It also showed me that if I wanted to feel “a part of,” I had to participate in the activities of the groups I was visiting. I had to volunteer where appropriate and when needed, I had to raise my hand to let people know who I was and what I thought.
I remember attending my first roundup in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the mid-1980s. I was visiting an AA friend who was working at the Provincetown Inn at the time. He was not able to participate in the roundup due to work commitments which left me on my own a good deal. I recall feeling somewhat left out and at loose ends until I took advantage of a volunteer opportunity. Almost immediately my attitude changed, and it became easier for me to participate in activities, to meet people and get to know individuals.
In 1990 my partner and I attended our first International Convention in Seattle, Washington. We were nearing our tenth anniversary, but we had never taken an extended trip together. It was here that I first heard about The International Advisory Council for Homosexual Men and Women in AA, (IAC). We also met another person, Doug H., who played a pivotal role in my sobriety for many years. We visited with Doug several times during the ensuing years including the 1995 International Convention in San Diego, California. Doug was a volunteer for the IAC hospitality suite at that convention. This gave me the opportunity to get to know more people and learn more about the history and development of the Fellowship.
Evidence from both New York and Akron, some anecdotal, demonstrates that gay and lesbian members have been a part of Alcoholics Anonymous since its earliest days. This same history also demonstrates that AA has, sometimes after MUCH discussion, tended to be more inclusive than many other parts of society. This inclusive attitude is what led to our Third Tradition, “The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.” Lesbians and gay men, however, tended to remain closeted, not wanting to be labeled by society with the double stigma of homosexuality and alcoholism. A number came to realize however that, “In order to practice these principles in all our affairs,” they had to practice the same level of honesty with their sexual orientation as they did with their drinking. This led, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, to the establishment of groups and roundups specifically geared toward the needs of the LGBT+ community as well as the multi-year discussion within the Fellowship about recognition and acceptance of these activities. I have certainly realized this to be true, both after I came out in 1970, and even more so after I started to get sober in 1980, I realized that my sexual nature was as much a part of ME as my alcoholism and recovery. I realized that I need to be as honest about both of these important aspects of my personality as I can be.
I am continuously amazed that all those feelings of anger, irritability, discontent and not being a part of that I felt were causing me to drink, were actually exacerbated and made more prominent by my drinking, have dissipated.
James R., Atlanta, GA
Online Meeting Guide Update
We made an update to our online meeting guide on our meetings page. The button will now take you directly to AA's Online Intergroup directory, already sorted for LGBTQ+ meetings. This saves time and confusion. Visit the page, we have other meeting information posted there.
WhatsApp for the Convention
If you are going to the AA International Convention in Vancouver, you'll want to add our WhatsApp member chat to your phone. Even if you are not attending, it is a great way to communicate with other members or ask GaL-AA a question. We think it will come in handy, septically at the Convention.
Thursday's Welcome Meeting @ Convention
Reminder, we are holding a GaL-AA LGBTQ2S+ Welcome meeting Thursday night. At the Convention Center, 6pm, Convention Center East, Meeting Level, Meeting Room 1. 999 Canada Place.
Your GaL-AA Team
