My friends, I'm grateful for almost nine years of consecutive sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I keep coming back every day because I want to help as many other people get sober as possible. I feel good, I'm accountable, and other people were there to help me. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in April, May 2014, when I first got sober, there were people who had been coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and had consecutive sobriety my entire life. The whole time I had been alive, they were going to AA meetings. And today, I love the idea that maybe someone who hasn't even been born yet is going to run into me in the future in an AA meeting. I am very much aiming to stay sober the rest of my life, because if I want to reach my full potential, I do not want to have my vision or my mind screwed up ever with alcohol or any kind of drug.
The fog of alcoholism
It was really foggy this morning driving my daughter to school, and it was such a good analogy for alcoholism. When you are taking things like alcohol and any other kinds of drugs, regardless of who gave them to you, mind-altering substances create this fog that makes it difficult to see. And what is difficult about getting sober is that when the fog lifts, you see why you wanted that fog there in the first place. Because often problems seem to become more acute and more challenging instead of less. That's why many of us drank ourselves into this fog where we can barely see anything around us, and we can lie to ourselves and say it's okay, because we really can't see anything around us. We can't even tell where we're at or what we're doing with our life anymore.
Going to AA gives meaning to my life. In fact, when I had my last hangover on April 22nd, 2014, one might argue I was so inspired, or so delusional, that the thought of coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and helping other people get sober really excited me. Now, remember, I had a hangover at the time. I couldn't put together a few days myself. And yet, I thought about how good it'd feel to help other people get sober. That's the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous and many other programs where people show up with the goal to help each other, like Al-Anon. You have this great feeling that comes with trying to help someone else, even if they don't get it.
Watching others fail keeps me sober
Most of the people I've worked with and tried to sponsor have not stayed sober. I only have one person out of all the people who have asked me to be their sponsor, whom I've worked with and started the steps with, who is still sober. And I'm glad he's got more than four years sober now. I started working with him a little bit after he had his first year. What I am grateful for is that I have stayed sober. Watching other people fail, ironically, gives me a lot more motivation and helps me continue to learn to have even better sobriety myself.
I called one of the guys, Bill, who was instrumental in helping me get sober. He was one of the men who had been sober my entire life in Alcoholics Anonymous when I came in. I was 29 years old and he had more than 30 years sober when I came in. I called him up one day as another sponsee was failing, and I said, "Bill, what is going on with all these guys I sponsor? They all just drink. They don't want to do the steps. They don't want to take suggestions. They just ask me to be their sponsor and then they keep doing whatever they're doing. Like, why even bother?" And he said, "Well, Jerry, I told one of my sponsees one day, after he had drank, that I thanked him." And I said, "What? You thanked him?" He's like, "Yeah, because I thanked him for showing me that this works." Because his sponsee didn't do anything he suggested and drank again, and in the process, showed him how well what he does works. So being accountable to other people keeps me doing better and better myself.
The people who stop coming back
This is where I see a lot of people miss out on the biggest gifts that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer. I've seen so many people who get sober, get a much better life, and then stop coming. Now, not all of them drink. Some stay sober, but it seems a lot stay sober and then things get a bit rough. Sometimes they'll come back before they've drank. Lots of times they'll end up relapsed. And I see so many people who just get too busy to come back to Alcoholics Anonymous. They forget how much it made a difference that all of us were there to help them, and they forget how they used to be.
Because I see that if I stop coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, I could very easily forget how I used to be. 2014 is 2023 now. That seems like a long time. I didn't have kids. I had only been married to my wife at that point for a couple of years. I was still very much a child in a lot of ways. I feel a lot more grown up now, and I've learned so much since then. And with that, it would be easier than ever to BS myself, or to believe the mind and the programming from the outside world where alcohol companies make a fortune selling a substance that is pretty cheap to produce and is a depressant and a poison to the human body. These companies make a fortune and spend billions of dollars advertising alcohol in order to program all these moist robots that alcohol is a great thing for you, because it makes them profits. And it actually keeps people submissive. Drinking keeps you in this obedient state. Especially when you are hungover, you think that you're drinking to rebel, and yet drinking is blocking your ability to intelligently rebel.
Why I still go five to seven days a week
I see how easy it would be if I dropped it. I go to an AA meeting five to seven days a week, and sometimes I get there late and leave early. Other times I get there early and stay late. I frequently get there right about on time, and often spend anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour talking with people after the meeting. Those conversations consistently help me get out of myself. The root of our troubles with alcoholism is selfishness and self-centeredness, and listening to someone else talk about their life helps me get out of mine.
I love the real conversations we have at Alcoholics Anonymous too. Alcoholics Anonymous kind of screwed me up on having conversations with people in other parts of my life, because I just don't want to talk about superficial nonsense. If I'm going to hang out with you, I want to get down into the real energy of life. I don't want to just talk about the weather or fashion trends. I want to talk about things that really matter. I just won't tolerate hanging out with people now who can't have that heart-to-heart, real connection, quality conversation.
I'm so grateful Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. It gives me a place to continue to show up and help others, which is why I've started this new Jerry Banfield Recovery channel, so that I can have all my videos dedicated to the subject of recovery here instead of putting them on my other main channel where I've got all these other different subjects. Going forward, on this channel, I'm going to keep putting out anything I'm inspired to share about recovery every day. I hope this is a great resource for you to expand your sobriety and expand your life. If you want to go deeper on any of this with me, the best way to walk this road together is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we can have the real conversations that matter.
There's no substitute for being there in person
That said, there's no substitute for being with people in person. I love listening to AA speaker meetings on YouTube, and videos and books about recovery, when I can't make a meeting in person, mainly when I'm traveling, which doesn't happen that often because I like staying at home. I like hanging out and just creating stuff in my studio. I have a sponsee, and consistently when he's traveling, which he does often, I send him these AA speaker meetings and videos. That can make a big difference if you can't make an in-person meeting. As I've said, with the connection with others and the working with others, there's no substitute for face-to-face interactions and really being present with another person. It's so much of a higher energy. Zoom is certainly better than nothing, but being face to face is ideal.
This is why I continue going to Alcoholics Anonymous when many of you might think I should have graduated, that I don't need to go anymore, that I'm wasting my time. I look forward to my AA meetings almost every day. I look forward to the people I'm going to see. It gets me out. It helps me to meet new people and get new perspectives. I often see what I am not interested in. I see people who are new who are just going to continue drinking, and they are sick and insane. I see what I don't want to be like. There's nothing like hearing somebody who's drunk just blabber on in a meeting, just nonsense, and it reminds me, wow, that's what I used to sound like when I drank. And it doesn't look sexy, because all these fake commercials make drinking look sexy. But when you see some alcoholic who's drunk in an AA meeting going on and on, and then the chairman cutting them off, it doesn't look sexy. It looks sick. Wow, this poor person is running at a reduced capacity. This poor person has no better idea of what to do with themselves than to get drunk, even though they know they should never do it again. If you want to follow more of this journey, I've gathered a lot of it in my Life playlist.
I'm grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous, and that's why I keep showing up to meetings almost every day, and that's why almost every day I make a video on recovery as well. Gratitude is an action word, so thank you for being part of that with me. Almost nine years in, this is what keeps me sober: showing up, being accountable, and helping the next person however I can.