During my first few years when traveling, the AA books went in the suitcase before underwear and coffee pot, LOL. They went to Germany and Canada, too. Many times on jobs, the construction crews I was there with were our partying their asses off every night, while my No. 1 purpose in life was to find a local meeting. It worked - I stayed sober and many of them wound up in jail.
Some very important contexts and deep meaning started coming to me after around 5-years, and then I started seriously learning to understand my personality and history. I'm still learning.
Sponsorship helped me tremendously because I always insisted they share their life story with me, and I shared mine with them. Thereby, I was able to see what makes us humanoids tick...and why many of us screw up. Those things have helped me stay bullet proof through some hard times, and the challenges keep coming as I'm into the old age zone and with health issues.
One of the things that helped me connect the dots was reading As Bill Sees It and AA Comes of Age, so that I could feel connected with what the founders went through and see the differences in their backgrounds and drinking history. Those two books made a lot of new light bulbs come on for my spiritual journey, obviously along with the Big Book and 12 & 12 book. Bill W. and I have some things in common in the mental department, for example.
I'm a bit of an oddball in that I'm a scientific-minded soul and have to understand everything as thoroughly as possible. I finally learned that I could use that nature as a tool for understanding myself, and thereby finally accepting myself and others - warts and all!
Amazing how all the old tools still seem to work! Thanks for the opportunity to share.......
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