I’m grateful for an orange sunrise this morning. I’m grateful for left-over pancake batter. I’m grateful for the Haydn Cello Concerto. I’m grateful for the way my keyboard clicks. I’m grateful for a new way of life. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Happy Tuesday and here’s to the official beginning of Spring! I would be entirely remiss if I did not point out that, it being Tuesday, there is a certain meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that I wouldn’t want to miss.
Last week, we covered the “Doctor’s Opinion,” which is not just a pretty transcendent thing for a doctor in the 1930’s to have written, but a pretty amazing overview of the foundation of AA. Of course, written by one of the pre-eminent doctors in his field, the “doctor who loved drunks,” William Duncan Silkworth.
Tonight, we begin Chapter 1, “Bill’s Story,” and I am super excited. Your Sponsor, My Sponsor will be leading the reading and discussion tonight—so it won’t just be my crazy ramblings. I have come to believe that “Bill’s Story” is the pivotal, keystone-type thing in the Big Book. I think that really understanding, really digesting the 16-pages of Bill’s Story tells you most of what you need to know about being an alcoholic and how to take the first few steps back to the life you were meant to lead.
When I speak at meetings these days, I don’t end up talking very much about my own drinking history. I mean, I think it’s pretty fascinating and there are some pretty funny stories. As interesting as it is to me, laying out the evidence of what a cool alcoholic I was, well, I’m not sure if that really counts as “carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers."1 I think the story that's worth telling is "Bill's Story." It's compelling, sneakily well written, layered and nuanced. One thing that impresses me about it is that Bill doesn't tell you what an alcoholic he was, he shows you.
That’s the great commandment of writing, “show, don’t tell.” I went to a lot of AA meetings and rehabs and IOP’s and therapist appointments during my years in the alcoholic wilderness. Sure, I read the Big Book. Definitely some solid insights, but I had a hard time getting past the idea that this new “blueprint for living,” was from a book published the year my Mom was born. I thought that “Bill’s Story” had about as much to do with my life as say, “The Box Car Children.”2
As I like to point out, during the period of time I held those opinions, I drank quite a bit. Want to know why?
I wanted to see myself, the way I wanted to see myself
I remember walking home really late one night during the bad old days. I was never really a night owl—drinking all day will do that to you. Most of my evenings in those days would end pretty early, me walking the couple of blocks home from whichever of my spots I’d been at and then falling asleep watching Law and Order.3 But sometimes there was too much emptiness to sleep, and for those evenings there was a place called "Stoney's" that was open really late--definitely past 3am most nights. Anyway, I was strolling home from one of those late night sessions and thinking that people in the neighborhood probably saw me as some kind of cute, thoughtful, semi-iconic, semi-noble, neighborhood alcoholic. hahaha
I was the old guy who drank Sauvignon Blanc with his pancakes
I say this part without reservation: The thing that really changed for me, was seeing how “Bill’s Story” was my own. Not the part where we’re both white guys who led pretty privileged lives and got sober later in life. If that’s all you get out of Chapter One then I think the scales might not have fallen from your eyes quite yet. What I found was the one of the best explications of how an alcoholic thinks, how they really see the world. When I finally stopped the ceaseless braying of the narrative I had constructed about myself, when I stopped insisting on seeing myself the way I wanted to see myself, I saw I thought like Bill did, I reacted the way Bill did, I had the same kinds of crazy self-delusions and the same blindness to my actual condition that Bill did.
Bill realized he was an alcoholic at a pretty young age, just like I did. The gauzy recollection of a day outside of Winchester Cathedral as a young officer in the Army, reading the inscription on a tombstone heralding a death by alcoholism (not by that name yet) and knowing that was somehow going to be a part of his story, but not understanding how. That struck a real chord with me.
Bill had a grandiose view of himself:
My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance.
Big Book, p.1
It reminds me of a certain young lawyer who listened to this on the way to the office in the mornings:
Bill casually throws off details of his insane way of life:
We gave up our positions and off we roared on a motorcycle, the sidecar stuffed with tent, blankets, a change of clothes, and three huge volumes of a financial reference service. Our friend thought a lunacy commission should be appointed.
Big Book, pp.2-3
Ummm yes. Alcohol gave Bill the ability to ignore the consequences all around him. As Bill’s drinking escalated he began to revel in his “lone wolf” status. Constant conflict in his life and constant escalation in his drinking, more and more episodes of incomprehensible, tragic behavior. The one-way transit to the grim side:
Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity.
Big Book, p. 5
Relapse after relapse after relapse. Short periods of sobriety, just enough to give Lois another chance to believe in the lie. The final, crushing realization, but of course, coming when it was too late to do anything:
No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.
Big Book, p. 8
Check, check and check. I think it was reading the Big Book aloud with My Sponsor (Your Sponsor!) that finally let me see that “Bill’s Story” was my story. Ignore the white guy in the 1930’s part—it was the way he thought, the progression of the disease, the way he approached things and, of course, the way he used alcohol as a tool to manage his life. It was the way he occupied the empty spiritual compartment in his life. When you read it aloud and slow down and let the words hit you—it was impossible for me to ignore the parallels and intersections in our stories.
Bill was an alcoholic just like me.
You could tell me that 1000 times in row and I could very easily ignore you. I know this because that experiment was conducted many times over on me. That’s the other thing I saw from “Bill’s Story”—it wasn’t going to happen until I let it happen. No one could convince me until I could convince myself. No lecture on consequences, no impact letters from loved ones I’d hurt, no amount of angry scrawling in my journal was going to get me sober. It has to come from within. Fortunately, Bill being a considerate alcoholic, showed me this bar was set pretty low:
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
Big Book, p. 12
Reading “Bill’s Story,” was what finally let me see myself the way I was. It was finally what let me have a few moments of self-honesty and let me see just how far away I had gone; just how lost I was. That sounds pretty tragic, but it’s not, because you can’t find your way home again until you figure out you’re lost. That’s what I found in the first 16 pages of the Big Book—when I was finally able to see that it wasn’t just“Bill’s Story,” it was mine, too.
See you tonight!
I think there should be an official corollary to the 5th Tradition along the lines of “so pay attention to what you are saying at AA meetings, because someone there might actually think you know what you’re talking about.”
I did actually love those—but it’s kind of odd to romanticize young orphans living in abandoned train cars. I think we technically call that being “homeless” these days.
It did not escape my notice that there were constant references and plot lines and whole characters dedicated to alcoholism in the show I watched every single night. Sure seems like someone was trying to get something through to me.