My fellow Marina Dockers:
Last month was not
a good one for us financially, donations were few and far between,
but no one noticed, we kept it quite, we survived and managed
to keep our doors open and when all is said and done that's
the bottom line. We would like to thank everyone who did contribute
in September especially the people who donated their carpet
cleaner. Normally the only items we accept beyond financial
contributions are used books, but John and Gail seemed to infiltrate
the Marina Dock's psychic hotline and came up with the perfect
gift. This carpet cleaner, will save us over four hundred dollars
a month in carpet cleaning bills. Also I forgot to thank the
gentleman who periodically donates postage stamps, several hundred
over the last few months. This is also a big help as or mailing
operation every month runs around a thousand dollars for envelopes,
printing, mailing and labor etc. By the way if you need a receipt
for donations other than financial, feel free to ask at the
desk and we will gladly furnish same. Financial statements as
you know will be mailed out to all donors at the end of the
calendar year.
You may have noticed
I recently had another one of my Feng Shui outbursts and ended
up changing the layout in our social room. Everyone seems to
like the space we created and the new computer setup over by
the windows. That whole area by the counter was a bottleneck
for years, especially after meetings when it became the favorite
spot for people to engage in "arms length." You may
also have noticed we had the sidewalk outside our front entrance
steam cleaned and it looks great, we will probably have it cleaned
about once every quarter. All of this of course cost money and
we are confident you will come forward and help us out. seriously
need to take a break from the Newsletter. Nevertheless we the
Marina Dock management and staff, would like to take a moment
to express our appreciation and gratitude to all the people
who contribute in one-way or another every month.
In August, we had a generous donation
from a long term member which will not only pay our rent for
September but allow us to keep the facility open for the 10:00pm
meetings during the week and the late night meetings on Friday
and Saturday nights. It really makes a difference to the new
people when they have a meeting to go to and a place to hang
out, in a city where one is surrounded by temptation. The allure
of bars and bright city lights, especially in the Marina District
are all pervasive. Late at night the Marina Dock has a nice
mix of old timers and newcomers, which makes it comfortable
so no one need feel they are out of place. Last Week I received
a letter from a member who never stops being grateful, someone
who has been coming to the late night meetings at the Marina
Dock for almost fifteen years now, but still see himself as
a newcomer.
Lost and Found
Tony suggested I put
this plea in the newsletter - I do not mind breaking my anonymity,
and if Frank knew I had been looking for him for many years,
I am sure he wouldn't mind my breaking his anonymity either!
Tony says the newsletter readership is about 1400 people in
recovery: surely one of you knows something about this man.
Thanks in advance for your help, "as we trudge the road
of happy destiny."
Pat L
Hello, Fellow Trudgers:
I sobered up in San Francisco in 1992, along with a fellow named
Frank C. We were a couple for about 8 years and attended both
AA and NA meetings at the Dry Dock. Frank lived at the Embassy
Hotel in the Tenderloin at the time, and worked as a barber
at a neighborhood barbershop for many years. Then he badly injured
his arm, lost his job, and had to move out of his residence,
which is when I lost touch with him.
While all this was happening to him in San Francisco, I had
moved back to Vermont, then to Arizona, married, divorced, stayed
sober, but lost track of Frankie. I've tried every way I can
think of, short of hiring a detective, to find my old love.
Does anybody out there have a clue where Frank is today?
He's an African American guy about 5'8", good build, with
a New York accent. If he is still sober, he will have been sober
over 20 years by now I think, and he used to go to the Dry Dock
pretty regularly, beginning around the mid 1980's. If you have
any information, good or bad, about Frank C, please email me
at
pat61849 at aol.com.
New 12 step meeting
This meeting is at
the Marina Dock on Sat. night at 9:15 p.m.-Peter P 415-507-2695.
Dual Recovery Anonymous is a Twelve Step self help program for
individuals who experience both chemical dependency and an emotional
or psychiatric illness. We are an independent, non-profit, self
help organization with the primary purpose to help people who
have two no fault illnesses achieve dual recovery. These two
problems affect us in all areas of our lives: physically, psychologically,
socially and spiritually. Yet by having a solution we can have
rich recovering lives, help each other prevent relapse and carry
the message to all of brothers and sisters who have dual disorders.
The Meeting Is the
Key to AA
In a few postwar years
a Churchill can turn out five volumes of magnificent history
while carrying on a heavy program in Parliament and painting
creditable pictures at Chartwell. Another man lives the life
of a recluse and after his death from malnutrition the police
find a large fortune in his shabby apartment. The human mind
can rise to great heights or it can be twisted into frightening
shapes.
Something had happened to our minds, else we would not have
drunk and acted as we did. Our process of recovery requires
a healing of the mind as well as of the body. Physical sobriety
can come quickly and in many cases is achieved upon first contact
with AA. Mental sobriety usually takes much longer. This should
not surprise us for the treatment of mental conditions is usually
a long, drawn out process compared with the rather brief hospitalization
for most physical surgery. The danger to the newcomer is that
his physical sobriety may deceive him and lull him into complacency.
Like the miser, he does not realize how far he has strayed from
reality, how twisted his thinking still is.
So often do we hear in meetings, "You have to change your
thinking." Most AAs who have been sober for a reasonable
period see a gradual change in their own thought processes,
the acceptance today of principles and conclusions that seemed
anathema a month or a year ago. Hence we might admit, "Anything
I say is strictly my own opinion--today! Next week or next year
I may have different views." It is inevitable that our
thinking must change and develop if we are to grow and progress
in AA.
Our thinking changes through the technique of the meetings.
We are indeed fortunate that the meeting came to be the principal
channel for the AA message. AA did not necessarily have to take
that form. It might have become a $50 correspondence course.
Or a consulting service at $5.00 a visit and then training courses
that would produce other licensed consultants. But the founders
decided against such methods and somehow the meeting assumed
its present important place in the program.
In a large measure the meeting is the key to AAs phenomenal
and unexpected success. The meeting is a much more effective
persuader and convincer than a book or pamphlet. It is practically
impossible to learn to swim by reading a book or to drive a
car, run a large corporation, converse fluently in a modern
language. You have to get into the water, sit behind the wheel,
beat your way up the economic ladder, live among foreigners
and listen to the music of their inflection and cadence. AA
is like that in many respects.
The meeting has a two-fold effect upon those who attend with
an open mind and the right attitude. First of all it makes a
direct intellectual appeal. The AA member sits in the audience
and listens. He is not on the psychiatrist's couch and does
not have to say a word. He can admit anything and everything
to himself but he need not tell anyone in the world about it.
At least not tonight. He may agree with the speaker or think
silently to himself, "That's the bunk. It is really like
this. . . " In his act of agreement or disagreement he
is beginning to think creatively about alcohol, himself and
AA. His process of mental recovery is under way.
Over a series of meetings cases are cited, principles enunciated,
philosophies evolved. Clashes of opinion may occur but they
are provocative of thought. Which of the two views is correct?
An answer may occupy a member for days but during that period
he will be thinking in a way and in an area completely new to
him. His errors, prejudices, resentments fade and shrivel in
the light of group experience and the warmth of group therapy.
It is the action of mind upon mind in the meetings, open or
closed, that provides the mental exercise and experienced guidance
which the fogged mind needs for recovery.
The great contribution of the meeting, however, is probably
not intellectual at all. It is more indirect, more subtle. The
late Justice Brandeis once said that he was convinced that good
health was contagious just as disease was contagious. Surely
conditions of the mind are even more contagious than those of
the body. We know how moods, gloom, laughter are contagious.
Someone asks you, "What is the name of that tall man?"
You "catch" forgetfulness and cannot recall a name
that is on the tip of your tongue. Mental sobriety, too, is
contagious and can be contracted at an AA meeting. The new member
whose thinking is twisted is thrown in with others well along
the road to recovery. He somehow, "catches on" just
as a boy "gets the hang" of swimming by splashing
around in water with companions who can swim.
It is difficult to define mental sobriety, though you can recognize
it when you see it. It includes a solid grounding in AA, a sane
outlook on life, a reasonable amount of serenity, and in fact
a fair share of all the fruits of the AA program. It can be
had at the AA meeting and it is one more testimonial to the
truth of the statement, "The best things in life are free."
Grapevine 1951
Anonymous
Scarsdale, New York
Matching Funds
We have a couple
of members who work for corporations that have Matching Gift
Programs. This has turned out to be a good source of revenue
for The Marina Dock over the last couple of years. Typically,
if your company has a matching gifts program they will match
any donation you make to The Marina Dock a nonprofit corporation.
The other way you
can contribute are through our Vehicle Donation program which
is tax deductible 1- 888- 686- 4483 or talk to the person behind
the desk and they will take your information. We also accept
credit card transactions either as a straight donation or for
membership dues. It is around this time of the year people start
to think about giving to their favorite charitable trusts, we
ask you at this time to please consider us as a worthy cause
we need your support now more than ever.
Silas P Service
It was great to see
so many old friends at the memorial service for Silas, there
had to be six or seven hundred people there, Many people I had
not seen in 10 or 15 years .If you said hello to me and I did
not remember your name I'm sorry, put it down to "Irish
Alzheimer's" we forget everything except grudges. Si's
friend and sponsee Jack gave a beautiful eulogy, capturing perfectly
ebb and flow of one individuals spiritual experience as well
as the spirit and the joy of sober living. After the service,
I reminisced with Jack about the time over 20 years ago I spoke
at the "Old St Mary's' meeting and mentioned in my share
how "I did not like people telling me what to do,"
he came up to me after that meeting and gently reminded me "that's
why we have a book." He smiled and after a moment of reflection
said "that's a good story. "Next to donations, the
second most important contribution is a story, everybody has
a story that needs to be told.
If you have an article or a story that you would like to share
please feel free, we welcome your input at: 
With Gratitude,
Irish Tony
Paradox of Power
"Letting go"
means discipline, and joy comes through pain.
For several years before I began my
new life in AA, I taught American literature in a university.
One of the writers whose work I enjoyed reading and discussing
with students was Emily Dickinson, She captured in a few words
the peculiar definitions of experience that I had felt but could
not articulate. One of her poems had a special appeal that brought
me back to it over and over. It begins: "I can wade Grief
/ Whole Pools of it / I'm used to that / But the least push
of Joy / Breaks up my feet / And I tip--drunken."
Those brief lines describe clearly
what kept my drinking habits active. I could wade whole pools
of grief and depression; over the years, I had psychiatrists
to help me through them. I was used to that. But the least push
of joy broke up my feet and tipped me, drunken, every time:
a vacation, a raise or a promotion, an anniversary, Millard
Fillmore's birthday.
Those were occasions to drink. Soon,
I was finding a reason to turn every day of the year into a
festival. When that happens, none of them is special or very
festive. After being around AA for a while, I went back to the
poem one day and found an entirely new way of reading it. I
had never realized that all my drinking had begun with the carefree
moments of celebration and joy, only to end in those desperate
years when I had tried to keep up the pleasure and the fun.
The program was giving me an understanding of my dependence
upon alcohol, and as a fringe benefit, a new reading of a favorite
poem.
But that wasn't all. Several lines
further on, Dickinson comments that we must guard against those
unprotected times of cheer when we are open to hurt and anguish.
I then began to grasp the full meaning of two crucial lines:
"Power is only Pain-- / Stranded, through Discipline .
. ." I had often used that definition of power to start
classroom discussions of its possible meaning for students.
But now I seemed to be reading it for the first time. It expressed
what I was beginning to understand about Alcoholics Anonymous.
Power is a key word in this program, and its importance is underlined
repeatedly in the Twelve Steps. We admitted in the beginning
that "we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had
become unmanageable." Then we "came to believe that
a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
And in the Eleventh Step, we pray "for knowledge of His
will for us and the power to carry that out."
I began to see the emphasis this program
places upon force and drive. I realized that anyone who regards
AA as only the passive giving up of alcohol has not carefully
read the Steps. Our continual dependence upon a Higher Power
demonstrates further the importance we place upon action and
accomplishment.
The source of power, Dickinson adds,
is pain. In my AA experience, I have never met a member who
has not experienced some degree of pain. I have never met anyone
who decided to come into the program on a beautiful morning
in spring when everything was going well. Most of us entered
on our knees, and the sharing of this mutual pain is a large
part of what brings us back to meetings.
"Strand" means to form by
twisting together, as in the strands of a rope. So it is implied
that the achievement of power comes by way of mixing pain with
discipline. And discipline, the word that all of us dread from
our years in school, was the part of AA that frightened me most.
In those early days, I hoped that
with harsh discipline and self-will, I might be able to stop
drinking. I was prepared to sit through meetings holding on
to my chair with the grim determination to see this thing through,
no matter what. As a child, I had been taught that if I worked
hard enough and disciplined myself, I could accomplish whatever
goal I set. Maybe that principle would hold true for my desire
to stop drinking.
But the members of AA surprised me
with a new definition of the term. Instead of holding on, I
was told to let go. Instead of using self-control, I was encouraged
to turn my will and my life over to God. And at the end of Chapter
Six in the Big Book, I read that "we alcoholics are undisciplined.
So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined."
That was a definition I had never
heard before. "Letting go" had always meant self-indulgence:
polishing off the rest of the bottle, eating the whole cake,
sleeping until noon. Now, I heard that letting go meant acquiring
discipline. I had to redefine the term in light of what AA members
were telling me.
"Power is only Pain-- / Stranded,
through Discipline . . ."
I have been around the program for
a few twenty-four hours now, and I'm beginning to understand
the meaning of those lines. The renewal of discipline is a process
that I must set in motion every day. But I'm learning to wade
each pool of grief, to take each painless step of joy, with
the power given me through the discipline of Alcoholics Anonymous.
D. H.
Delmar, New York
