Being Happy About Sobriety
How the Gang of Four Beat the S*** out of the Four Horseman of the Alcoholic Apocalypse
I’m grateful for a new start. I’m grateful for a day spent organizing. I’m grateful for ideas and inspiration. I’m grateful for a windy, cloudy morning. I’m grateful for 3x5 notecards. I’m grateful for really crazy things that actually happen. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I’ve been sitting here struggling with how to start this, not because there is something ominous to share, “here, sit down, we should talk.” No, it’s not like that, at all. I’m just kind of happy. And, as I explore some of the reasons for said budding happiness, one of the conclusions that is hard to ignore:
This shit actually works.
The last time I was out with the Sponsees, one of them said something really insightful, actually they probably both did, and the alcoholic thought that popped into my head was :
Are we sure we wanted to get this sober?
I joke because the prospect does actually make me a little uneasy. I can remember sitting in that room on the top floor of the Dupont Circle Club, the room with the old, donated, huge vinyl-clad throne, actually put on a riser because of the un-evenness of the floor. That’s where the speaker would uncomfortably sit at those meetings. I’d look around the room and think, “I do not want to be one of these people.” I knew I needed to stop, it’s just that a lot of my putative “fellows” seemed so intense, it seemed like it was a really dark burden they carried. No one seemed really happy.
I had a lot of respect for that, those were people who were really fighting for their lives and you could tell it was pretty hard. I heard a lot of really profound, meaningful, sometimes really tragic, hard things. The real truth is, I didn’t think I could hack that. You’re talking to the grasshopper, not the ant. I lost a lot and there was plenty of tragedy in my life, but I didn’t want to be tragic. I wanted to get better. And if that wasn’t in the cards, which it did not appear to be, well, drinking the remains of my life away didn’t seem like the worst thing.1
I have no idea if what I just wrote would hold up under scrutiny. One of the things I’ve come to understand is how much of what I think is “objective,” or “true,” turns out to be “subjective” or “made-up.” The way I heard things in that room during those horrible olden days was probably tinged with the thought I couldn’t shake, that life was over, that this was the Quiet Study Hall I’d be consigned to for the rest of my life.2 That I was irreparably damaged goods, sentenced to sipping club sodas through a straw with a “no, really, this is so great” look on my face in perpetuity.3 By the way, my face would start hurting about five minutes in from all of the serenity and peace I was feeling. Actually, it was kind of like this:
We’re reading “A Vision for You,” in the “Anyone Anywhere” meeting, the last chapter of the Big Book, which tells the completely nuts and insane story of how Bill W. and Dr. Bob met and actually started AA—but that’s for Friday. The part I fixated on last night starts on page 151 and is Bill telling the story of the “serious drinker who’s been dry for a little bit.4 He is telling himself,
“I don’t miss it all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time.”
Big Book, p. 151
That guy is undoubtedly clenching his teeth with a bite strength just under the diamond-creation threshold while posting meaningful quotes on Instagram with pictures of soul-refreshing sunrises at the beach. Or maybe they’re sunsets. Been there, done that and pretty much always drank when the redemptive power of social media narrowed to a trickle and I was left with just me again.
Bill compares this person to a “boy whistling in the dark to keep his spirits up.” That’s a pretty tragic and accurate image of the serious drinker trying to find the way in. It still doesn’t work often enough, which also counts as tragic. But, here’s the kicker about our proto-alcoholic friend,
He fools himself. Inwardly, he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them. He will presently try the old game again, for he isn’t happy about his sobriety. He cannot picture life without alcohol.
Big Book, p. 152
Is that spot on? Not a drink, a “half-dozen,” and the very important kicker, “and get away with them.” Right? We know who we are and what we are doing. We keep up the barrage of lies to make those moments of recognition more difficult to hear, but we know. That’s why we’re so defensive. We know and we can’t picture life without it, so yes, I’d like about six drinks and then get away with it, have no consequences and repeat the stopping drinking charade again in a day or two. Or maybe we’ll just start again next Tuesday.5
So what happened? What changed? For me, this sounds kind of corny, but it was realizing that the Big Book was a true story. To be honest, for a long time, I treated the Big Book like the Bible, full of very meaningful and inspirational passages, but was it all that true? Did Jonah spend time in a whale’s stomach and live to tell the tale? Were there really two of every species in the ark? A pillar of salt that used to be Lot’s wife?
Here’s the thing: I realized the Big Book is actually a true story. Improbable, bizarre, corny and convoluted, but true. The things that happened in that book, well, they mostly happened. Bill met a proctologist by happenstance in Akron, Ohio and that’s how AA was formed. A random friend from Bill’s past shows up at the precise moment when Bill is finally ready to listen and that’s how he got sober. That shit all actually happened. And you know what else happened? They got sober. They stayed sober.
I feel kind of stupid these days when I talk about how it took me ten years to come in. I used to tell that story to invite the unspoken admiration in the room, “wow, ten years, that must have been hard.” Now, I can’t figure out what the f*** was wrong with me, because this seems pretty obvious now. The problem was that I read the words but continued to lead my same life of self-direction. How could anything change? I’d even throw off lots of spiffy quotes to buttress the idea that my version of sobriety was the best and also the toughest to get. I wasn’t “happy in my sobriety.” Truth be told, I wasn’t really sober.
What changed? I did. I saw that Bill W. and Dr. Bob were not semi-mythical people. They not only existed but they got sober by doing the stuff they helpfully describe in great detail in the book they wrote. What changed? I finally saw that I just needed to “DO” what it said in those pages, the way they did.
What changed? I did. I finally saw that when I accepted where I had been placed and saw my purpose was simply to find ways of placing myself in a position of maximum service to whatever it is that keeps the Universe spinning around, things got pretty easy. Things got groovy. The ball doesn’t always bounce my way. There are sad times and times I feel really lost. But I’m going to tell you this: My Gang of Four kicked the shit out of Bill W’s Four Horsemen of the Alcoholic Apocalypse. Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration and Despair, you guys played hard, but when the shots are are falling like rain, what are you going to do? Me and Gratitude, Empathy, Self-Honesty and Humility ran you guys off the court.6
Bye. Nice game. But you’ve got to go, we’ve got next.
This is the power of writing. It’s impossible to write that sentence and not see the complete insanity of it.
I’d be willing to wager a fair amount of money that the architect of Northwest Junior High in Iowa City (technically, Coralville) also designed prisons or jails.
We might call this the “Reverse Tantalus.”
The other thing that made me laugh was that it’s here where Bill W. trots out the “Four Horsemen of Alcoholism;” “Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration and Despair.” I’ll take my team anytime.
Getting sober on a Monday?
“Humility“ plays a nasty game. Do not f with humility unless you’d like humility to run off like four quick hoops and just stare at you.
It’s a good question: ‘do we actually want to be sober?’
Do we really want our freedom?
Do we really want to be responsible for our own lives?
Do we really want happiness?
Do we really want sobriety? (Grounded ness - not just from alcohol).
Because it all requires letting go do who we think we are, and how we think the world is.