In a group last night we were trying to sort out a disagreement between two clients. One of the clients was a supervisor who'd been in our program for some time. During a previous stint he’d also served as a manager for four years. The other client had been with us for less than six months. They'd gotten into a disagreement on a work assignment and nearly came to blows. Fortunately, it didn't turn into a physical confrontation, which would have required them to be discharged from the program.

When the group started those involved tried to present their case as if they were speaking to a jury. There was a lot of back-and-forth between "he said, he said." After ten minutes, with each participant presenting his case, the group leader stepped in.

"It probably doesn't make a lot of difference who said what,” he said. “The more important thing is the attitude that started all of this."

He deftly took the conversation back to why we’re in the program: we want to change. If we’re here to stay sober, he said, we act better and treat each other better. Oh yes, he went on; we have disagreements and dislikes. But if our objective is to stay sober then we’ll usually do the right thing. He said we must look at those around us as being like us because they share our goal of sobriety. If each of us looks at the other as a person who is sharing the same goals it helps us overcome our differences.

He finished by saying it‘s the little things that cause a relapse.

"Probably none of us got drunk over the war in Iraq or the government raising taxes," he said. "If you guys are like me, you got drunk over a broken shoelace or because it started raining and you're planning to work that day."

We get rid of issues by dealing with them immediately. That way they don’t fester and become larger.