It is good to be back, standing here on the precipice of Season Three of Breakfast with an Alcoholic 1(BWAA—because it gets to be a lot of keystrokes to type that out). I (we) hope you’ll excuse the long-ish hiatus; quite a bit has transpired in the interim, and now, here we are again.
You may correctly ask, why should I invest any percentage of my free time to listening to all of this talk about the Planet of the Apes and what-not? That’s a very fair question, especially given the content of the newsletter, the best answer I can give you, which also has the benefit of being true, is that we are going to try to share “precisely how we have recovered.” These are are also some of the opening words in the Big Book.
Who is the “we?” The “we” is me and two faithful and pretty sober Sponsees, Daniel and
. They’ve been on the podcast before, and writes the Wednesday newsletter, and lo and behold, they both have more than two years of sobriety. As we were batting around ideas for “Season Three: Love Among the Willows,”2 we hit upon the idea of walking through exactly how we got sober again. We thought going through the Steps and some of the more important parts of the Big Book, maybe even re-doing some of the work we did along the way, might set a good example, and it might also have the accidental effect of deepening and widening our spiritual lives.Now, it’s not going to be exactly like it was last time. Daniel is newly-married, Sean is happily living in Denver and I’m living La Vida Lawfirm—so there is significantly less of that desperate, lost, “how am I getting to tomorrow” feel to it. But, for sure, going over the work I did to get sober, looking at the things I wrote and thought back then, and seeing where I am now, demonstrates the power of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Our plan is to march through the Steps, we’ll share some of our work and we would love it if you’d like to share some of yours. It’s also completely cool to follow along at home, or with some alcoholic friends and loved ones (I’ll include outlines to make that easier and also copies of some of the the templates for 4th Step Inventories, etc). For this first episode, here was the outline we followed. I think these make for pretty good writing/discussion prompts:
Episode 1 (10.8.24) Topic: Coming In
How did you come in?
Brief history of use
Brief history of terrible stuff we did
What happened? How did you come in the first time?
Did it work?
Why not?
How Were You Introduced to the Big Book?
Did you read the book on your own?
What were your initial thoughts?
Did you work the steps?
What happened?
And now?
Have things changed?
Has your view of the Book changed?
How has the Book changed you?
How did this happen?
That’s the ground we attempted to cover in Episode 1. Speaking of “Coming In,” you may not even know about the Field Sobriety Guide:
Episode 2, which we’re aiming to release in about two weeks, is going to focus on the first chapter of the Big Book, “Bill’s Story.” I know I write a lot about “Bill’s Story,” but there is a reason it’s the first thing in the Big Book. For me, really understanding Bill’s Story, and then setting his story against the outline of mine; Well, let’s just say the stories followed a pretty eerily-similar narrative arc.
I had read Chapter One aloud with my Sponsor, and was working on my homework: Outlining and then writing my story in the style and manner that Bill wrote his. That’s going to be where we start next episode. We’ll delve into Bill’s Story, talk about what we took from it and how it connected to our own sobriety. Ultimately, we’ll write our stories the way Bill wrote his (this refers to the style, not the pencil brand or typewriter or whatever) and then share them. This reading of the story aloud is very, very impactful.
mentions this in the podcast, how emotionally cathartic it was to share his story with other alcoholics.The assignment for Episode Two of “BWAA Season Three: The Great Dread,” is to read Chapter One of the Big Book (it’s available online), it’s only sixteen pages, but don’t speed-read it. The nuances of the story, the insane, implied details are what make this such a vivid, insight-producing bit of prose.
Understanding Bill’s Story is what helped me understand my own.
So there’s Episode One of Season Three. It’s great to be back, and we’re here to stay this time. We’d love your thoughts, comments, suggestions:
We desperately need a subtitle for Season 3. It needs to be kind of cool, but decisive—and it should be funny, but in a very non-obvious way. Your submissions go here: Name Season Three
That’s probably not going to be the title.
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