Planting Seeds

A newer friend from AA called me the other day.  I was in the middle of cleaning baby bottles, so I didn’t pick up.  It was his first time calling me, and I had no idea how important it was to him.  I called him back 30ish minutes later, bottles clean, as I was sitting outside to throw the ball with my dog.  He picked up and there was a muffled noise in the background.  Quickly the conversation revealed he was distressed.  That muffled noise was actually him at the checkout of a liquor store.    

I’ve had these phonecalls before and with varying results; I have yet to find the magic formula to ensure sobriety in all of these situations.  Only somewhat surprisingly, this friend was receptive to the idea of just returning the bottle.  He got the refund and we talked on his walk home.  

There’s a few takeaways from this for me.  Firstly, I’m curious what would have happened if they wouldn't accept the return.  They were not too keen on it but he explained the situation and they refunded him his money.  I was surprised to overhear it was just 8 bucks.  Even if that money is gone, 8 dollars burnt is still a lot cheaper than a relapse.  Back in the day myself I would drink over insanely trivial reasons, and could see a different outcome here if they didn’t take it back.  Luckily this is only a hypothetical curiosity.

The bigger takeaway was a comment he made during our phonecall.  I can't remember if this was before or after the return but he said “I called my sponsor, and then you, and then another fellow. Nobody picked up and I didn’t have anyone else to call… actually I did but only thought you three could talk me out of it.”  After the immediate hit to the ego (which is undeserved, I just called back and had an uninspired idea to return the bottle or pour it out) I thought of our relationship.  It was basically one extended conversation we had while a meeting was going on upstairs.  

I typically like being seated for the start of things (my wife can attest to this for every trip we’ve ever had to the movie theater), but for some reason I listened to my intuition and missed the first 20 minutes of the meeting so we could continue our conversation about getting/staying sober.  At the time it seemed like the right thing to do although not super impactful.  While it may not have been very impactful at the moment, it led to him calling me on a night where I was able to call him back right in time.  

I’m a big believer in delayed gratification.  I’m much nicer to future me than I used to be (nicer being a relative word there), but this brought up a newer concept to me.  By doing the right thing in the moment, I was able to show up and be helpful in a really meaningful way later.  My privilege of getting to be there in a moment of crisis stemmed from just showing up in a less impactful way earlier.   

I guess as I write this out, it shouldn’t be surprising.  Trust is built through smaller moments of honesty, dependability is established through consistent behavior, integrity exists with repeated congruence of values and actions.  I guess instead of a newer insight, this is more of a strong reminder that how we’re living is like planting seeds.

The plant from this seed, ignoring my first instinct and staying present in a conversation, was a call in a crisis, which I initially flubbed up by not answering!  The fact that I called back right in time could be luck or could be the doings of a higher power.  Either way though, the result was that I got to play a helpful role in a friend’s journey and feel really good about that.  But the most important result is that that friend hasn’t drank since then.