Bipolar Depression

I took the advice of “Dear Abby” and my boss and found a meeting near where we lived at the time.  I attended regularly, but only in body.  My folks had convinced me that I did not have a mental or emotional problem; what I suffered from was physical  (A hard notion to drop, after so many years.)  My husband went with me, too, for the first few meetings and picked up the Recovery language  and tools well enough to “prompt” me when I needed it.  Of course, a lot of times that did not sit well with me at all; in fact, I resented it instead of being grateful for the real encouragement he was giving me.

I attended meeting after meeting, and our leader was one of the best, but I kept right on sabotaging.  It took a few years before I finally decided that if I was going to take the time to go to meetings and read the literature, I might just as well put my whole heart into the Method.  Then, and only then , is when my condition began to improve. Before that, I was still in and out of hospitals like a rubber ball.

We moved during that time and I was fortunate enough to find another good meeting nearby.  I became the Assistant Leader (which helped my own progress immensely), which I was for six years.  Then our leader decided to retire from Recovery because of the pressures of business and home, and I became the leader.  I wish I could say I was a good leader, but I made some bad mistakes.  Probably the worst was while giving examples, I would tell about the most awful things going on at home. Like the fact that our two sons were on drugs, skipping school - not trivialities, at all.  It had been a very large meeting, but no one likes to listen to personal problems of that nature and soon our membership started to decline.  In my own defense, however, a lot of our members were up in age and simply retired to a warmer climate, went into nursing homes, or became incapacitated.

I continued leading that meeting for a period of six years.  I had no Assistant Leader during those six years, although a couple of people tried to help. Since I was using my own “Method,” my “followers” didn’t cooperate with them at all.  It finally became difficult for me to commit to being at the meeting every single week.  Age was starting to take its toll, too. 

I became Assistant Leader again when a veteran leader in Recovery took over the meeting.  I might say at this point that I am a much better follower than I am a leader, and it’s good for me to be able to relax and skip a week if I need to.   We are a very good team, and the meeting is thriving again.