I’m grateful that being up early is almost always rewarded with beautiful sunrises. I’m grateful for the Big Book and the amazing story it tells. I’m grateful for staying close to the signal. I’m grateful for finally being comfortable with myself. I’m grateful for movie popcorn and peanut M&Ms. I’m grateful to be sober today.
As you may have gathered, I really, really love writing about the Big Book. I mean, I’ll give you a thousand-words on the Gritty Weltanschauung of David Cassidy and the Partridge Family pretty happily, too. But for some reason, i think this a better use of everyone’s time.
For me, the strange magic that attended the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous is part of what brought and keeps me in. I mean the whole story is just fantastical. A drunk, you say “wall street analyst,” I say “Flim-Flam man,” with no medical training other than what he gleaned from his various stints in rehab, comes up with the most widely-used treatment for alcoholism and addiction, even more than 80 years later. If you want to go check, there have been pretty significant advances in how a lot of other diseases are treated since 1939.
I was at sleep-away rehab the first time the ludicrousness of seeking treatment for alcoholism in the pages of the Big Book really struck home. I had been at a lecture on the “Disease Model of Alcoholism,” and it seemed odd to me that no one else found it odd that after this very detailed, scientific explanation of our understanding of addiction, the treatment prescribed was reading a book written in the 1930s.
So, yes, I was a bit skeptical and it turns out that skepticism cost me a lot. That skepticism kept me on a stool at Logan Tavern or The Commissary or Red Light on 14th Street.1 When I washed up here in New York, beaten up enough to stop arguing with myself, beaten up enough to finally give this simple program a chance, the thing that struck me was the ridiculousness of Bill’s Story. Not in the sense of him getting it wrong, but in the sense of how completely improbable the entire story is.
So, this pretty insane drunk from the 1930’s knows that alcohol is ruining his life. He’s tried everything and spent a lot of money trying to get sober and nothing has worked. He’s a smart guy and certainly capable of understanding the import of the doctors’ grave prognosis—imminent horrible impairment and/or death—even the appearance of the grim reaper him or herself can only inspire this response:
Fear sobered me for a bit.
All of the time, effort and education Bill invested in treating his alcoholism basically built a pretty shitty, small speed bump. He began his last relapse immediately after explaining his theory of treating alcoholism to a newly-met golf buddy on Armistice Day. I can’t imagine there was much of a question about where things were headed for Bill at that point.
Then the phone rings. Fellow alcoholic from the olden days, Ebby T., wants to have dinner. Bill retrieves the bottle of gin reserved for special occasions from the toilet tank and then proceeds to get knocked off his spiritual saddle. Please note, Bill was drinking during his dinner with Ebby, he continued drinking for some time after his dinner with Ebby, and it took him a last four beers to make the trip to Towns Hospital for that last time.
Why do I mention this? While the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous is a highly-effective treatment for addiction and alcoholism, the paradox is that it is geared to appeal to the drunk version of you. The sober version of me never questioned whether there was a problem that needed to be fixed, he just didn’t believe we (that’s a royal we) were capable of it. All of “Sober Me’s” best efforts and good intentions dissolved into the mist whenever Mr. Hyde or the Groundhog or Wile E. Coyote or whomever, came out to play. The trick is you have to hook that guy, the drunk version of me, with the Program. Bill understood that telling an alcoholic to just go and do something is not productive; it had roughly never worked on him. That’s why he advocates a sly approach, light on the God-talk, heavy on the “this can be whatever you need it to be.” That’s why it’s attraction, rather than promotion.
So he did some cutting and pasting from other groups pursuing treatments for alcoholism, sprinkled in his own, pretty eccentric and slightly condescending form of “religion,” 2 and while he was still in Towns Hospital asked for permission to start "talking" with the other guys. You could also describe this as: "treating alcoholics." Dr. Silkworth drily recounts how "with some misgivings, we consented." hahaha "Some Misgivings."
It didn’t work so well at first. Most of the guys Bill worked with, went back out, but Bill noticed a funny thing—he was staying sober, things were different for him. He kept at it, blocking and tackling, helping alcoholics here and there, in ones and twos, and suddenly there are 100, and then there are millions. Millions of people who have done what Bill W. did 85 years ago; followed his blueprint for living.
No one has come up with a more effective treatment in those 85 years
Bill says the pivotal moment was realizing all he had to do was to find the willingness to believe there might be a power greater than himself that could restore him to sanity. That willingness is not covert obeisance to some organized religion. It is regime change. That murky, space ghosty, higher power thing is just there to get you to send the shitty old dictator packing—the one that had been running this thing you call a life, this thing that just crashed into the ground for the nineteenth time. Shitty and incompetent.
Reading the Big Book, and particularly, reading it out loud, fostered my willingness. Desperation and a hard landing had produced a tiny, flickering flame, it was reading the Big Book and its completely improbable account of an alcoholic who not only found his way out, but helped millions of his fellows, that kept it burning. I finally realized Bill’s story was not a fable, it actually happened, he actually got sober and so did millions of others. Accepting all of the zany, near-impossible coincidences is what got me thinking that maybe the same thing could happen to me. I mean someone has to win the lottery, right? That’s willingness.
That was all that was necessary for me to make my beginning
Bill’s story is nuts and he was definitely insane. Reading it, coming to believe the real-ness of the story is what gave me the willingness to try what he tried. And guess what? It works.
At some level you could think of these places as my Torah Borah complex of alcoholic hideouts.
There were no Ouija Boards at Zion Lutheran Church. At least not at the 8am service. I heard the 10:30 service was a bit more of a party atmosphere, but I wouldn’t know about that.
Thank you for helping me Today!