A Journal of 90 Meetings in 90 Days.

Luc D. traveled to Nashville in 2009 to attend 90 in-person meetings in 90 days in a desperate attempt to save his life after a relapse binge. He kept a journal during this time and shared it with other members. Below and in the following editions, ESSAY will be sharing parts of his journal.

What led my coming from tiny Belgium in Europe to the green state of Tennessee in the Bible Belt of the US? My acting out had worsened so much these last months that I had given up my job (for the twelfth time in 12 years), stopped going to meetings, avoided any contact with program friends, and had eventually gotten into a binge which lasted for two consecutive months. I spent around $3,000 those last two months. 

My ever-worsening insanity had been offering me two horrible lies: first, that if I were to end up in jail, I would in fact enjoy it. The last week of this sheer hell was with only the drive to act out. I knew I had lost all control. I felt scared of what was going to happen. Suicide was becoming each day a more realistic way out. Today, I realize I could have died there. Only my Higher Power kept me alive. 

When I desperately called my sponsor after two months of radio silence on my side and told him that the last two months had been one horrible and long relapse, he responded by saying that he would have been more surprised if I had kept sober and serene without the Program for two months. 

When I asked him timidly if he still wanted to sponsor me, he answered: “Don’t deny me the opportunity of staying sober by sponsoring you.”

He suggested three options to examine: one, to go to a treatment center; two, to take Depo-Provera (a tough medicine based on hormones that arrests lust); or three, to come to Nashville for 90 days to go to meetings and work the Steps. After phoning a trusted old-timer in the UK who encouraged me to go for it, I chose to do the latter and thus ended up here.

Yesterday morning, I got out of bed at six am to walk an hour later to take the bus to the airport. I remember flying along the snowcapped mountains of Greenland. Seeing the Big Apple from the plane. Praying to my HP hundreds of times, “Please may I find in You whatever I am looking for in this or that woman.” It became a long day. It was, only by His grace, a safe and good-going journey.
 
This morning, my tired, crazy, and ever-inventive mind whispered to me to act out. The disease always looks for our weak spots! Fortunately, my Higher Power kept me sober.

Pooh…I feel my nerves whirling around now. What am I doing here? Have I completely gone crazy? Let’s get out of here! Will they accept me in the meetings? How will things evolve?

Calm down…I have, together with my sponsor and others, prepared this step-by-step. It will work out now, one minute at a time. Let’s get out of my mind and be gentle with myself. Now, go for a nice breakfast, look for a SIM card, write my feelings down, phone my sponsor (who lives in Nashville, and I just heard that the phone in my room is free of charge for local calls). Go to the noon meeting: that’s already a nice program for a jet-lagged recovering addict, isn’t it?

After my very first noon meeting here, a program fellow, a kind man, took me in his black Jeep to buy a Boost phone, a simple cell phone which I can charge monthly in order to phone and text unlimitedly within the whole US. He also lent me his second mountain bike to use for the whole three months here! It looks like my Higher Power is taking care of me: me doing my best in coming here, He doing the rest now.

At the meeting, I also saw my sponsor for the first time. When he was sharing in the meeting, I realized it was him! Funny…we have been phoning daily by intercontinental calls, and now the owner of this well-known voice was sitting there as a real person amongst these people. In my Walt Disney mind, I had imagined him very differently.

I got the instruction to go again through my First Step, which I had written out and told him five months ago, to see how I could give a short version of it to the group in 35-40 minutes.

In this short video, we see an excerpt of a member cleverly carrying the message using a string. This video was made years after this member journeyed to Nashville from Belgium in a desperate attempt to attend 90 in-person meetings in 90 days after a long relapse binge. He remained sober until his death.

To be continued…