CARBON EMITTERS ANONYMOUS
/Stories of Recovery
/Story 2
Patrick
When I came to AA emitting about 125 pounds of carbon a month, I was consuming carbon at rapid proportions. Leaving lights in my home on overnight, eating meat multiple times a day, driving alone in my car for most trips, leaving my plugs in the walls, water running or dripping for long bouts of time. The list goes on. I had my first experience with AA when I was 19. My friends in college did an intervention with me because they had noticed my abundant waste and electricity usage problems. My roommate took me to what could have been my first AA meeting, but I was too ashamed to go in. I sat in her car and sobbed.
Shameful emissions filled the eleven years after my first invitation to AA: guiltily leaving my lights on despite reading about climate change in the news, racking up plastic bags from grocery stores. I must remember this history so I will not repeat it. I do not miss those behaviors.
By The Earth’s grace, a group of wonderful women introduced me to AA meetings and the Twelve Steps. They loved me when I could not love myself and told me I could develop a new relationship with the planet.
One day at a time, I have had thirteen years of back-to-back abstinence, thanks to AA and thanks to being loved back into life.The emphasis on lowering my carbon emissions and cultivating healthy habits for myself and the planet can feel exclusive to people like me. Standing before my loving Earth and AA, I am an eco-minded person. I use my car to carpool when I need to but often take public transport. I accept that I am a planet conscious, beautiful woman, not a normal emitter. I have a new relationship with the earth and my responsibility to it based on healthy eating and living. AA has welcomed me home.
My joys of recovery through AA are sometimes indescribable, yet involve such small happenings that they are easy to overlook:
1. The miracle of living on a healthy planet, acting and feeling like a steward of the earth.
2. Having time and energy for life; not absent mindedly forgetting about how, what, when, and how much I am going to emit.
3. Feeling freer from my fears about the state of the planet by working the Steps, knowing that the fears I still experience are feelings and not facts, things I can pray about to The Earth, write about, and share with others.
4. Having a recipe for living in harmony with this planet, a guide for being part of the human race rather than a consumer.
5. Being part of a worldwide Fellowship instead of feeling I am the only one who does not know the secrets for success.
I once was blind in the face of my actions. I polluted without awareness. I acted without knowledge of cause and effect. The joys of recovery are life and love—all the gifts a day can bring. Now I know this secret—the Twelve Steps. What more do I need? After eight and a half years of abstinence, I can say my life is whole.