Hello, my name is Tommy, and I am a grateful, recovering alcoholic. My sobriety date is July 10, 2009.1
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In Chapter 2, we discussed the baffling nature of the disease of alcoholism. Before we continue with that discussion, first an apology for the extreme delay between Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. In addition to finally contracting COVID (which stole over 3 weeks of my energy and my daily routine), TBD, the folks in the Lab at Thanks for Letting Me Share and I have been developing a new program offering that we hope will be a far more compelling, meaningful, enjoyable, and hopefully an interactive way of sharing the AA 12-Step Program of Recovery. In Chapter 2, I also promised to share a bit more about my personal story as we began to look at Bill Wilson’s (AA’s co-founder) story. So what follows is a bit of how my own story led me to a place that allows me to be part of this new program offering and what that program will hopefully entail.
During the end of my active addiction phase, I experienced what some refer to as the Gift of Desperation. What most AAer’s mean by that is that their disease had brought them so low they were already on their knees and so surrendering to someone or something outside of themselves did not seem at that point a difficult task. Being so low and broken, at the start of my sobriety journey, allowed me to experience that pink cloud in early sobriety. It also allowed me to take suggestions, get a sponsor and to attend meetings all of which made me feel much better. My restored physical condition, emerging mental clarity, the nascent trust from my family that this time I was really quitting for good, the overall recuperation that comes from no longer running toward or away from the next drink all made me feel so much better than I had been feeling in decades. Thanks to that much improved state, I did not bother to worry about if there was something more I could or should be doing to hold onto this Gift of Grace I had received.
While not realizing it at the time, I was voyeuristically drawing upon other AAer’s qualifications, their spiritual growth, and their Step work. I had very superficially done steps 1-5 but without any conviction or understanding. Today I refer to that as emotional vampirism whereby one feeds on the emotional and spiritual strength and growth of others as a proxy for one’s own stillborn or stunted emotional and spiritual growth. A more secular way of looking at it would be that I was making regular withdrawals from my AA sobriety bank account and if I did not start making more deposits, I was in danger of being overdrawn and picking up and starting the dreaded cycle all over again especially if a moment of crisis arose for which I was then not prepared. Well, such an event occurred when close friends lost one of their children in a sudden and tragic accident. I was devastated and began to think that this was the first time in my 5 years of sobriety when everyone would accept that I was perfectly entitled to take something to ease my pain. This state of mind is the classic insanity that precedes the first drink of which you so often hear in a qualification, and it seemed perfectly rational to my way of thinking at the time. Thankfully, I did what Bill Wilson did when he was in Akron that night he reached out to a clergyman (instead of reaching out for a drink) who helped him to ultimately connect with Dr. Bob Smith.
My sponsor at the time was going through frequent periods of his own difficulties and while he did not pick up, he would check out for long periods of time. This was the perfect kind of sponsor for me one who would allow me to work at my own pace, or at no pace, without the accountability and discipline I so dearly needed. During this very difficult time, I approached one of my sober brothers, who I and so many others trust and respect, and asked him if I could work with him as my interim sponsor. He graciously declined and said it would make more sense if we would work together supporting each other’s recovery and he suggested that we commit to do a 12-week Big Book Study together with someone in New York who was highly regarded and well-known for his unique study methodology. This individual made it very clear to whomever wanted to be placed on his waiting list that he considered the Big Book as the only primary reference tool of the AA 12-Step Program of Recovery. He believed too few people today in AA took the time to carefully go through the teachings in the Big Book with someone who had carefully studied it extensively themselves. He believed that as it says in the Big Book, you cannot pass on that which you do not already possess yourself. He also felt this lost way of sharing the program with a Newcomer was one of the reasons there were growing numbers of relapses and dissatisfied customers. I came to believe that if I wanted my own spiritual journey to begin in earnest, and if I wanted to be able to pass on what I had learned in these Big Book Studies as an informed and experienced Sponsor, I had to really understand the AA 12-Step Program of Recovery not just from the hearsay testimony of well-intentioned but often uninformed qualifications but rather from the original and primary source from which the Program was born.
After doing the study three times with this true expert, I began to feel confident enough that I could offer my own version of the Big Book Study thereby making sure more and more individuals would feel they had a solid grasp of both their own program as well as having a high degree of confidence in their ability to sponsor other Newcomers. My only change to the way I was taught is that I have brought into the Study itself some collective Step Work instead of having that Step Work be homework done outside of “class”. I have found that the shared Step work, especially Steps 1-3 create a special bond between the participants and a shared trust that allows for truly remarkable conversations throughout the rest of the Study.
I learned so much in these Studies (both as the student and as the teacher) and my spiritual journey was reignited in those studies. I worked the 12-Steps for the first time for real in my first Study and I understood what it meant to turn one’s life and one’s will over to a Higher Power of one’s own understanding (in my case I am longer embarrassed to say is God). I also realized if I took the 12th Step seriously and was going to make it a part of my everyday life, I could not transmit to others that which I did not already possess and understand. I had to walk the walk before I could talk the talk. More importantly, other’s lives were in jeopardy if I attempted to share what others had learned and experienced, but I had not. After all, when someone approaches us and asks if we can be their interim or permanent Sponsor, what they are essentially saying is can you help God help me save my life! I never know if I am that person’s first or last chance. So today when I speak to God, I make it clear that if it is His will that I be His instrument in helping to extend this Gift of Grace to the next Newcomer that crosses my path-I WILL NOT HALF ASS IT!
The first few studies I offered were in person in my New York apartment (often with a waiting list because of both space constraints and a desire to limit class size to encourage active discussion and participation) and then when COVID struck I had to move the study online. What was most helpful to my own sobriety was the fact that I not only continued to lead Big Book Studies but also used the same study format with each individual sponsee with whom I was then working. The downside to that approach was it limited the number of people I could Sponsor one on one, or the total number of people I could expose to the powerful impact of a Big Book Study. Thanks to Thanks for Letting Me Share, and the fact that COVID made Zoom a commonplace part of daily AA life, we are coming full circle realizing that Zoom may allow us to offer far greater access to a larger number of people who might benefit from our Big Book Study offering.
Let me clear at the outside as I do when I send out my instruction email to new study participants, these Big Book Studies are not official AA meetings, nor do they follow any of the normal meeting protocols like group conscience, crosstalk, or 7th Tradition breaks. What we do is read the Big Book together line by line page by page ensuring that each of us fully understands and appreciates exactly what the founders intended and exactly what the 12-Step Program of Recovery is and more importantly how the Steps should be undertaken. If something is not clear, we stop and try to reach a collective understanding. We take turns reading we frequent interruptions from me where we unpack what we just read, and I offer extensive highlighting suggestions. We debate meaning, we seek to understand explicit and implicit direction and we try to understand what the actual program of recovery is for us to pursue to experience spiritual growth and a life that can be genuinely happy, joyous, and free.
While I am confident this new offering will make our time together far more productive, and our respective recovery journeys far more therapeutic, it will require a reset and rethink of how this column will evolve to compliment this new program offering. It is my hope that this column will run as a companion piece between the airing of each episode of our new program. Given the complexity of producing a Big Book Study as a digital broadcast and archival resource, there may be some trial and error as we define and adapt the original Study format into one that takes maximum advantage of the online community we hope to build.
In the original draft of Chapter 3, I had written that from the perspective of a Newcomer, or someone who has tried to achieve sobriety in the past and failed, you may be asking yourself am I drinking beyond what is “normal social drinker”? I’ve place “normal social drinker” in quotes because I do not know what that really means nor was I ever one of those myself.
How does one best determine if they are indeed an alcoholic. Well, the stories we will explore in the first few sessions of the Study will explore how early AAer’s discovered how their drinking and its attendant consequences led them to conclude they were indeed alcoholics. Working on Step 1 together, we will all share our own stories seeing if we see patterns and similarities with those other story tellers who have concluded for themselves that they drink alcoholically. All these stories often have one thing in common, and that one thing may be something you will want to examine in your own story. The key is whether you are powerless over alcohol even if you still can exert will power over other aspects of your life and behavior. For many Newcomers, their ability to take that important Step 1, admitting they are powerless over alcohol, only comes after many failed experiments to control their drinking. It also usually requires having heard stories from other alcoholics who have had similar experiences to the Newcomer. This is something we will be keenly focused, and will return to repeatedly, as we progress through our Study. It is in identifying with those recovered alcoholics that Newcomers first come to realize that they do not drink like “normal” people.
Let us not prejudice ourselves, or anyone else who thinks they may have a problem with alcohol by seeking to define normal, let’s just acknowledge that there is alcoholic drinking and non-alcoholic drinking. Let us also be immediately comforted by the fact that alcoholism is a disease and not a moral failing or a sign of weakness. I would describe the difference between “non-alcoholic” and “alcoholic” drinking in the same way they do on pages 20-21 of the Big Book. “Moderate drinkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone.” However, in the case of the alcoholic drinker “he may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career, he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink.”
I cannot tell you how excited I am to be taking the Big Book Study to a wider stage and a larger audience. I hope you will find ways to engage with us and at some point join as a direct participant in one of our Studies. Until then sending you love, respect, gratitude, positive energy, patience, compassion, tolerance, understanding, self-esteem, self-restraint, and a heart filled with charity and a willingness to help others……
Your Sponsor
If you’d like to hear more about Tommy (“Your Sponsor”), there is an excellent episode of Breakfast with an Alcoholic right here for you!