I’m grateful for a really busy day. I’m grateful to have a certain officer in the Navy sleeping in the next room. I’m grateful for second chances. I’m grateful that doors don’t close. I’m grateful there was a way back. I’m grateful to be sober today.
It’s Friday and there is a temporary visitor here courtesy of the U.S. Navy. It’s a little hard to imagine things getting better, except I think everyone knows that we will be engaging with pancakes around 0930. Wait, you’re asking, where is the Friday song thing? 1
As I mentioned, we’ve been reading “A Vision for You,” the last chapter in the Big Book and of the many gems contained in those pages is the highly, highly improbable story of how Bill W. and Dr. Bob met and how Alcoholics Anonymous came to be. I’m going to start by saying that the principal change in my life since getting sober has been the frequent and completely unexpected way people drop into my life. Since I showed up here in NYC in the middle of the pandemic with my bags under my arms, the most unlikely array of people have shown up and helped carry me to the next place I needed to get. I was usually not aware of the need for these people or the journeys we took together. They were impactful, profound and a big part of how things changed for me.
It turns out that Bill W. and Dr. Bob had very similar experiences. We can start with the unlikely appearance of Ebby T. at Bill’s doorstep in Brooklyn—offering dinner and sobriety out of the blue and at the moment Bill was finally willing to listen. The story picks up several months later. Bill is precariously clinging to a few months of sobriety and has found himself in Akron, Ohio in pursuit of a business venture that will help shore up the very precarious Wilson Family finances.
The deal goes south. Bill gets into a scrap, there are threats of litigation. Bill is left standing in the lobby of the hotel wondering how he’s going to scrape together the money to pay the bill. On one particularly discouraging afternoon, Bill was in the lobby, no doubt imagining the impending destruction of his universe and all of the dire consequences that would flow from that, like every good alcoholic would. He spied the glass case that was in most hotel lobbies in the olden days—those displays contained listings of all the local churches along with phone numbers. Bill stood in front of the glass case:
Down the lobby a door opened into an attractive bar. He could see the gay crowd inside. In there he would find companionship and release. Unless he took some drinks, he might not have the courage to scrape an acquaintance and would have a lonely weekend…After all, had he not been sober six months now. Perhaps he could handle three drinks—no more!
Big Book, p. 154
The line about the three drinks. That’s an alcoholic. It’s never about one drink with us. What is the point of that, we ask? Bill turns away from the Lobby Bar, picks a church at random and calls the minister from the nearby pay phone. The minister happens to know of an alcoholic doctor in town—maybe Bill and Dr. Bob could hang out? Dr. Bob had been a well-respected proctologist for many years, but it was pretty widely known that he was a real drunk and there was even a joke about the unfortunates who placed their asses in his hands—or something like that. Anyway, Dr. Bob was a real alcoholic and near his “nadir,” according to Bill.
What happened? They started chatting and figured out they had the same disease. Dr. Bob quickly agreed that there was no amount of willpower that would change his situation, only a spiritual experience could accomplish that. Over the next few weeks, Dr. Bob began working the proto-steps. He acknowledged he was an alcoholic and could not control his drinking. He set out to make a clean breast of it with friends and acquaintances. Bob initially feared that “coming out” would destroy what little was left of his reputation. It turned out exactly the other way.
Bill and Dr. Bob took their burgeoning sobriety show on the road:
But life was not easy for the two friends. Plenty of difficulties presented themselves. Both saw that they must keep spiritually active. One day they called up the head nurse of a local hospital. They explained their need and inquired if she had a first class alcoholic prospect.
Big Book, p. 156.
She had a “corker,” and turned out to be Bill Dotson, AA#3. The story of Bill and Bob working with AA#3 is pretty revelatory—the best part I think, is when Dotson comes to and he’s now in a private room and there are Bill and Dr. Bob lurking by his bed. Dotson says, ”who are you and why am I in a private room?” Bill’s answer: “Don’t worry, you’re getting a treatment for alcoholism.” hahahaha That is so awesome.
That’s how AA started. A few alcoholics sharing their story and seeing they had the same disease. Once you’ve established that, it’s a downhill trip on the big logic hill to the idea that what worked for him, might work for me. That’s it, that’s the nugget at the bottom of the AA mine, the toy in the box of cereal, the diamond in the rough: If they have the same affliction I have, maybe what worked for them will work for me?
My life is a series of challenges and beautiful coincidences and things happening the way they are supposed to and when they need to. Those are not necessarily the same as what I want and they don’t always leave me happy. Often, I’m left wondering why things have to be this way, why did that have to happen? Why did they have to go? But I realize I’ve learned something I needed to learn and the next thing is already happening. Or maybe none of it was about me. It was for someone else.
My sobriety was the product of highly unlikely events coalescing in a way that I could never have imagined and certainly couldn’t have orchestrated. Bill picked a church at random in a desperate moment and got connected to the person who was to be his partner in destiny. Together, their sobriety has helped literally millions of people. You think that was an accident? Happenstance? Bill and Dr. Bob could never have achieved what they did, by simply setting out to do it. They were just following the path illumined for them by the same force that was capable of helping them get sober, even when their own efforts were always insufficient.
Bill stood in that hotel lobby with six months of sobriety, looked at the convivial bar scene, the ancient comfort he had always relied upon, just steps away. “Three drinks” was all it would take to bring down that familiar oblivion, the temporary reprieve from his troubles. Instead, he called a church “at random” and was willing to see what happened when he did. Instead of “three drinks” and a relapse, he went with good old HP and met Dr. Bob. The two of them, thanks to that fateful, random phone call started something that has miraculously saved millions of alcoholics, this very grateful one included.
And I didn’t hear an answer the last time I asked, do you really thing that was an accident? I think the Big Guy really digs willingness and has a pretty soft spot for alcoholics.
Happy Friday.
This is a song I’ve liked since I saw the band “Gang of Four” in like 1980. They were the first act in a show at a club with like 500 people there—the Ramones were the headline act and the band that opened for the Ramones was a brand new band from Ireland with the funny name U2.
Are you familiar with the stage play “Bill W. & Dr. Bob” by Samuel Shem? It’s a great telling of that first meeting and more. I directed the play in the nineties, which led to my reading “A Vision For You” over and over.
A few years later, I got to visit Akron. The Mayflower Hotel had become a nursing home, but I got to visit Henrietta Sieberling’s little gatehouse and Dr. Bob’s house. Funny, they didn’t look like they did in my head.
I forgot all about Gang of Four until your post. I saw them once in the 80s and had a brief obsession 😊