AA Almost Andy

I have a sort of an anniversary coming up on August 13th.  The other night I did two thirty minute stand up comedy shows here in Hillsborough and a friend said to me, “Do you realize that your initials as Almost Andy are AA?”  It triggered a memory and when I arrived home I looked at our calendar and discovered that I have a little anniversary coming up.  I will be celebrating my forty nine and one half years anniversary of continued sobriety. Just six months to go until the big 50. Some people take me to task for revealing the fact that I am in AA.  After all it is Alcoholics Anonymous.  I’m not being very anonymous if I am revealing the fact that I am a member.  I started revealing this in my speeches many years ago and I can’t count all of the troubled souls who have come up to me after talks and after that they made their way to their own AA meetings.  I know a number of them who have now accumulated many years of sobriety.  Too often public perception of an alcoholic is that of one completely out of control.  When some folks see me demonstrating a reasonable display of sanity they sometimes change their perception.  When I look them in the eye and say, “I made it and so can you,” just sometimes it helps.

And so, God willing, six months from now I will receive a brass coin with the letter L in the center representing fifty years and on the back will be that marvelous prayer that helped so, to make it possible. It is the serenity prayer and it goes, Lord grant me the SERENITY  to accept the things I cannot change, COURAGE to change the things I can and the WISDOM to know the difference.