Service or spirituality? Spirituality or service? Chicken or egg? Egg or chicken?

Which came first and which is the most important to Milan P. is impossible to say because these two cornerstones of Alcoholics Anonymous are both central to his life and developed together as his knowledge of the program developed.

Milan began drinking very young in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, and was a 35 year old chief bosun´s mate in the Coast Guard, stationed in Port Angeles, when he finally sobered up in December 1958. He had joined the Coast Guard in 1940 and managed to rise to chief bosun´s mate during a drinking career that included DUIs in three states and a stay in a Mexican jail.

"I prayed when I got thrown in that jail, don t let it happen to me again. When I got out I was drunk the same night. But now with AA I have a different concept. It´s of a power greater than myself, you see. I have never lost my license in 40 years. I have never abused my family since I have been sober. I like it! It´s nice to be nice. "

Milan´s career in the Coast Guard took him all over the world, including three very tough years in the Pacific during World War II.

"I ran amphibious landing craft, LCNs. We made 13 invasions--Cape Gloucester, the Marshall Islands, Guam, Saipan. I was at Tinian [the staging area for the two A Bomb attacks on Japan], Peleliu, Leyte, Lingayen Gulf. Subic Bay. Those last three were in the Philippines. And then Okinawa in the spring of ´45. We were supposed to go on to Japan after that, but President Harrv Truman dropped the big one and it was all over.

"A bad thing happened at the Leyte invasion. I got word that my brother was killed in the Black Forest in Europe. All I could say was ´Well, that´s too bad.´ I couldn´t focus on it because I was so frightened myself. When you live in a state of fear and something devastating happens, you can´t take it in until things calm down It was when I got back to the States that I started realizing just what had happened to my brother.´´ Milan and his wife of 53 years visited his brother´s grave in France this year.

Milan has celebrated every one of his AA birthdays in Washington. He first learned about the AA program in Maryland and had two months of tenuous sobriety when he took up his duty station in Port Angeles. He had to scramble for support.

"I was the skipper of the vessel so I made it a point to be at a certain spot after we´d been on patrol for two or three weeks so I could have a meeting. There was a Foss tug there that had a cook who had been sober for 18 years. I´d tie up to the tug so we could talk and have coffee. Whenever I went someplace, up to Canada or down to San Diego, I knew people on the vessel and on shore where we could have meetings, and I had a little book, called the 24 Hour Day Book, which I read for years and years and I still read today. It gives me new insights, new enthusiasm and something to think about "

Milan knew that wasn´t enough, though, so he joined the Echo Group (narned for a woman whose name was Echo) in Port Angeles.

"I was in that group for six years until I moved to Seattle. That group is still going strong. I go back from time to time. When I got down here I signed on with University One and I attended there for 20 to 25

years. And I moved around a lot--had my seventh birthday in Edmonds, and attended the [Fremont] Fellowship on Aurora [Avenue]. Those meetings kept me going, kept me enthusiastic and kept me sober.

"I chaired a lot of meetings, like the old Elm Club. It´s the Ed Lynn Fellowship now. I chaired there for 10 years and five years at the Senior Center and several other places."

Sobriety didn´t come easy. "You don´t understand, when your head is all full of confusion. You can´t see nothing. I remember that first year or two when they used to pick me up to go to meetings. I really resented it. I thought, ´I´m not helpless, I can get to my own meetings.´ But then at my second birthday in December 1960, Eric B. and Ralph B. came by. They had taken two ferries to be there in Port Angeles. They said they ´just wanted to wish the sailor a happy birthday.´ It took me years to understand why they would do that. But it gave me incentive to stay sober and I thought, ´Gee, there´s more to this program than I thought.´ It´s the little things that propel me into the next day with confidence and faith and new self esteem and enthusiasm.

"I am fortunate to have friends like that. They´re not after my money or my job. They´re not out to demonstrate their ego or their personal achievements. They ´re out to demonstrate that you can stay sober and learn to have the wisdom to know the difference.´´

And so Milan has given back to the program that has given so much to him. "I´ve taken people to meetings hundreds of times. I don´t force my wishes or my spirituality on them. I understand this is not a religious program but a spiritual program. You develop your own higher power as you see it and from then on you start to get better.

"At meetings I like to give out my card. If a person responds, good. and if he doesn´t, that´s all right, too. Either way, I win. I put myself on the winning end. I don´t force myself on anyone. That doesn´t work too well.

"If anyone had told me in my first year or two that I had to follow this program for the rest of my life, I don´t think I would have accepted it. You have to let the good things happen and let the compassion and understanding build so that you get stronger within yourself. Then you have something to give someone else. As the years go by you catch on. You watch your life improve, you watch your economics getting better, you´re working steady. You start to get more and more control. We learn from one another. From the ones who foul up and from the ones who are successful."

Milan is much more accepting of today´s dual abusers than many old timers. "I welcome them. They just don´t understand that whiskey and beer are drugs, too. If you´re pregnant you´re pregnant. There´s no halfway. Ninety nine and nine tenths of them are rummies just like me anyway. Just because they´ve progressed to a new thing called dope and they shoot things... that´s all right. They can come to meetings provided they have respect for themselves and respect for the guy and the gal next to them. I´m not against that. Never have been."

And how does he sum up his nearly 41 years of sobriety´?

"I pattern myself after the people who have compassion and are willing to share. I´ve watched them over the years. They know what they say and they do what they say. "

Interviewed and written by Dick S.