I’m grateful for a really busy day. I’m grateful for checking things off lists. I’m grateful for the sense of ease and peace I have these days. I’m grateful for the library and notebook paper. I’m grateful for excellent coffee. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Welcome to the Daily Gratitude List “Ides of January” edition. Fortunately, nothing too terrible seems to happen during the Ides of January and this is the middle of a holiday weekend—so maybe the Ides of January is kind of pleasant? But we come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him. That has nothing to do with where we are going today, but it does lend a certain class? Or not.
I think working with other alcoholics and addicts is one of the most rewarding parts of sobriety. There is nothing like sharing the thing that saved your life and watching it catch hold, gain purchase to be fancy, in another person. I’m not 100% sure how that works, but it works. It works to deepen my own understanding of the Program. It shows me that the work I did, the faith I developed, is replicable in another human being. That makes the whole miracle a bit more believable, for sure.
I think “Working with Others,” like so much else in the Big Book, is not about mastery and achievement and self-aggrandizement: “Look at me, I’ve arrived, I’m sponsoring people!” It’s about humility and unselfishness. “Selfishness” in this context is not the crime of stealing another’s candy bar and holding it as your own, it’s being unable to recognize an agenda beyond your own; it’s the inability to see that helping another alcoholic is not just telling your “crazy things that happened at Band Camp” stories and commanding the still hapless alcoholic that they must walk in your footsteps exactly. I don’t think helping other alcoholics is best accomplished by doing a Parris Island Sober Drill Instructor impersonation and barking out commands and imperatives. Do this or you’ll stay drunk!
Like most everything else, the answer can be found in the pages of the Big Book. Surprisingly, the answer involves humility:
Tell her enough about your drinking habits, symptoms and experiences to encourage her to speak about herself.
Big Book, p. 91
The point is to get them to open up, not persuade them that you have walked through fire, have all of the answers, go to all of the best meetings and are the most sober of all the alcoholics.
If she is in a serious mood, dwell on the troubles liquor has caused you, being careful not to moralize or lecture…Tell her how baffled you were, how you finally learned you were sick. Give her an account of the struggles you made to stop. Show her the mental twist which leads to the first drink of a spree.
Big Book, pp. 91-92
Once that rapport beachhead is secured, then it’s on to convince the alcoholic that they suffer from a disease that no amount of self-knowledge or willpower will cure
Begin to dwell on the hopeless feature of the malady. Show her, from your own experience, how the queer mental condition surrounding that first drink prevents normal functioning of will power..Continue to speak of alcoholism as an illness, fatal malady.
Big Book, p. 92
But here’s where many efforts to help other alcoholics run aground: The exercise of our own self-will and our own failures to remain humble. The job of working with other alcoholics, according to the Big Book, is not about making a diagnosis and prescribing a specified course of action. It is not about making another person recreate your own recovery journey. It’s sharing just enough about your own story of disaster and redemption and putting the placidity and lack of chaos that sobriety can produce on display, in order to make them curious. But here’s the part that’s really hard for us alcoholics: We have to let the other person make up their own mind, come to the Program on their own terms. I think this is one of the last vestiges of the self-will-run-riot aspects of alcoholic personalities, the effort to diagnose other alcoholics and tell them exactly what they have to do to get sober—I may be powerless over alcohol, but not over my Sponsees or the people I lecture at meetings?
Of course, the Big Book instructs us to take the approach of humility:
Don’t, at this stage, refer to this book, unless she has seen it and wishes to discuss it. Be careful not to brand her as an alcoholic. Let her draw her own conclusion…[if] she has become very curious to know how you got well, [l]et her ask that question. Tell her exactly what happened to you…If the woman be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that she does not have to agree with your conception of God.
Big Book, pp. 92-93
There is a subtle difference between telling someone what they have to do to get sober and telling them what you did and letting them see what that might mean for them. AA is often criticized for its inflexibility and for the commands and judgments that are often in evidence at meetings and none of those attitudes or behaviors can survive even a cursory reading of the Big Book; It emphasizes over and over and over that AA does not have a monopoly on God, on spirituality, on recovery, really on anything:
He should not be pushed or prodded by you…If he is to find God, the desire must come from within. If he thinks he can do the job in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience. We have no monopoly on God; we merely have an approach that worked with us. But point out that we alcoholics have much in common and that you would like, in any case, to be friendly, let it go at that.
Big Book, p. 95
Bill W. was an inveterate, nearly incorrigible, OG alcoholic. He tried everything that was suggested to him by other people to get sober and nothing really worked until he saw an example of sobriety with his own two eyes that convinced him recovery was possible. He didn’t hear a really persuasive speech or really inspiring words; He saw an alcoholic who had been way down the scale and had managed to get sober. That sparked the idea that maybe he could get sober, too. It’s a pretty simple notion and it’s premised on the “show, don’t tell” model that is ultimately the most persuasive approach to sobriety.
And it’s very important to remember that, when done correctly, working with other alcoholics is the thing that helps keep us sober, helps keep us free.
Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.
Big Book, p. 89
There aren’t that many guarantees in life, but I’m here to tell you this one is for real. All it takes for this guarantee to kick in is showing another alcoholic my own missteps, my own mistakes and ultimately my own recovery, in an honest and authentic way. If recovery is about the addict finding the path back to themselves—well, then it has to be their decision and their journey. If I’m lucky, I don’t get to command that or supervise that, I get to just be a part of it which also helps keep me sober for another day or two. That’s how it works and it’s pure magic.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
'There is nothing like sharing the thing that saved your life and watching it catch hold, gain purchase to be fancy, in another person.'
I've written these perfect words down as a reminder to myself that there is stuff I can and should help others with. Thank you - powerful stuff!
Such an important point. No one has all the answers ever. There’s always space to grow, especially together.