I’m grateful for what happened after I gave up. I’m grateful for seeing what I couldn’t before. I’m grateful for those refrigerated cinnamon buns. I’m grateful for soft clouds drifting by on a Sunday morning. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I’m not writing much this morning because I’ve been finishing up “Bill W. Gets Sober” and recording it, too and will put that out very, very soon. I’m also excited to announce something new! If you’ve been around here for a while, you know something about my story and I’m going to summarize it this way:
I tried literally everything for ten years to try and stop drinking—including attending lots and lots of AA meetings. I didn’t get sober until I started reading the Big Book and working on incorporating those principles in my life.
With that in mind, we are excited to do a mini-Big Book study. We’ll focus on Chapter One, “Bill’s Story.”1 My Sponsor, Your Sponsor, tasked me to write my story in the same style that Bill wrote his in Chapter One and I found it to be an incredibly revealing exercise. I’ll go on in much greater detail,2 but I think Bill’s story is less focused on history and more on turning points and realizations. Which is what makes it such good writing, in my opinion. Bill’s writing style might not be for everyone, but it is certainly authentic, and if the greatest commandment for writers is “Show, don’t tell,” Bill is a master at that. I said I wasn’t going to do this, but here’s a quick example. This sentence at the end of the third paragraph on the first page:
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
Bill could have written about his outsized ego, his belief that he could master any situation, avoid every consequence, control every outcome. He could have written how he believed himself to be special, not bound by the rules that everyone else lived by, how he lived in a universe where he was at the center and believed he could bend everyone and everything to his desired end. I read that first page, which concludes with that sentence, and I know that young 22-year old Bill is a Proto-Alcoholic.
Anyway, the process of putting my story into Bill’s framework spurred a lot of realizations about my own history and the story that I concocted along the way to nurture and conceal my drinking. I’m working on another version of my story, in that style, and when we do the study, I’d highly recommend the same exercise. 3 That's coming down the pike, as is "Bill W. Gets Sober." Jane is on gratitude duty tomorrow, enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
People are often surprised when they see the strands come together. I was a Boy Scout and this is the motto: “Be Prepared.”
Did this even need to be said by me now?
Jane and one of my Sponsees are also going to participate and share their stories. If you wanted to share yours, well, that’s something that could very well be arranged.