Step One- “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.”
“I’m Darrell, and I’m an alcoholic.”
The room erupts as a chorus of voices responds, “Hi, Darrell.” The Georgetown AA Group has just begun its Sunday morning meeting, and across the room, people have come to admit they need help. They are unable to fight their demons on their own and recognize that they need the help of a higher power and the love of a community to stay sober.
Step Two- “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Darrell Jones (his name and those of other sources have been changed to protect his privacy) is noexception. He attentively listens from the last row of chairs and to the far left. There is only one chair between him and the window, on which he has placed his worn, brown suede jacket. Jones sits with his hands folded in his lap, his slightly rounded stomach pressed against his light forest green button up polo and a Styrofoam cup of fresh coffee at his feet. Wisps of fine gray hair mark where his hairline used to reside, but now the shiny freckled skin can be seen underneath. “I’ve been losing more of it lately,” he said earlier that week. The wrinkles around his wide brown eyes betray his sense of humor and his crooked smile possesses an infectious quality. Jones directs his full attention to the front of the room as the man chairing the meeting begins to call on people to share. As Jones’ name is called towards the end, he calmly tells a small portion of his story.
Step Three- “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
Jones was born in 1958 and raised on the north side of Houston, Texas with his sister. When he was 15, his parents divorced and he stayed with his mother and, eventually, stepfather. In high school, Jones was shy and didn’t have many friends, but he studied hard and graduated third in his class before attending the University of Houston and majoring in mechanical engineering. Jones lived at home during school, spending the majority of his time with his family. The summer after sophomore year, his uncle offered him a job working for an oil company in Mobile, Alabama. Jones has been working in the oil industry ever since.
Step Four- “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
That summer was Jones’ first away from home. Jones began drinking more when he got bored and took the habit home to Houston, but it was not a big issue as he finished college. “I guess I did pretty good. I was in the top cum laude or something,” he says. Jones’ first job after college was as a petroleum engineer in Bay City, Texas. There, his drinking escalated and he began racking up DWIs. In 1989, he was relocated to Beaumont, Texas after meeting and marrying his wife, Pati, and having a daughter, Veronica, in 1988. Jones quit drinking for two and a half years after meeting Pati and attended AA meetings on a regular basis. But after a business trip to Houston, he began drinking again and his marriage eventually fell apart.
Step Five- “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
Since Jones was now single, his company sent him to work overseas in Kuwait, where his drinking habits continued to cause him problems. After that, Jones was offered a job back in Houston. When he returned to the States, Jones got another DWI and had to spend 60 days in jail. After several years in Houston, Jones missed being overseas and took a new job in Mongolia. Even though he was not supposed to be drinking, Jones continued to do so and he was fired. After almost 20 years with his company, Jones found himself interviewing for new jobs and oil companies. He eventually found work in Indonesia, but he continued to party and was put in prison for six months for the possession of a marijuana cigarette. While in prison, Jones attended church weekly and read through the entire Bible. Throughout his time overseas, his personal relationships with his family were strained. “I only saw him pretty infrequently. And plus, overseas, he’s only ever home four weeks out of the year,” says Jones’ daughter, Veronica Jones. “He would take us on vacations when he had time off of work and spent a lot of time with us,” says Bridgett Robertson, Jones’ step-granddaughter. When he was released from prison, Jones returned to Houston and was hired as an oil consultant. As a consultant, he traveled to Vietnam, Russia and eastern Siberia. On his last night in Moscow, Jones ended up getting drunk and the next morning was detained in an airport jail as he was trying to leave. Arrangements were made and Jones flew home the next day.
Step Six- “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”
As his consulting job came to an end, Jones took a job in Oman and maintained his drinking habit.. While he was in Malaysia, Jones decided that his drinking had become a serious problem and that it was time to make a change and move back to the States. It wasn’t easy for him. “You could kinda tell he was struggling with [alcoholism], he had all the symptoms like shaking,” Robertson says. Finally, with a strong commitment to become sober, Jones plugged into an AA Group and has been attending meetings since Jan. 23, 2009.
Step Eight- “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”
In the past three years, Jones has dedicated himself to maintaining his sobriety. He gives God complete credit for removing his desire to drink and for every day that he has been able to remain sober. Jones has fought his instincts to pull away from others when problems arise, to refuse help and to shut people out. “He continues to grow and develop in the program,” Jim Smith says. “That’s a big deal. Because if we get complacent, that slowly takes us one step further from the program and corporate fellowship.” Smith has been Jones’ sponsor for the past three years and the two have formed a close friendship.
Step Nine-“Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
Today, Jones’ relationships with his family are stronger than ever before. “We see each other like twice a week and go to dinner and talk about things…. We have a really good relationship,” Robertson says. Veronica Jones says, “Looking at his life before, when he was still an alcoholic… it seemed like he didn’t really have life to the fullest because he was missing the personal side. It was kind of insufficient or not enough. But now he can say that he has way more.”
Step Eleven- “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
As the Georgetown AA meeting comes to a close, the 40 to 50 people in attendance gather in a large circle in the center of the room. The walls are decorated with banners displaying “the Promise,” “the Twelve Steps,” and “the Twelve Traditions.” Framed quotes such as “Only by the grace of God,” and “Live and let live” scatter one wall and a Twelve Step clock ticks out the seconds from the front of the room. The group grasps hands and recites the Lord’s Prayer together. After the prayer, the group pumps their clasped hands up and down in unison saying, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it,” encouraging each other that all is not lost. There is still hope. “I don’t think that anyone can ever be too far. Because I used to think that my dad was too far, like he couldn’t come back. And the fact that he has, to me means that no one is too far,” Veronica Jones says.
Step Twelve- “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
