I’m grateful for a gorgeous, cold morning. I’m grateful for sleeping and doing nothing. I’m grateful for Youtube. I’m grateful for minor worlds coming together again. I’m grateful for what comes next and what is now. I’m grateful to be sober today.
As a young lawyer, a litigator even, I was very fond of saying things like, “well, there’s only one way to find out for sure.” A lot of clients didn’t find this to be the most comforting of bedside manners, however, there is some basic truth to the proposition and it is very apt in this particular circumstance, what with a “Mystery Button” looming below.
It is December 12th and, according to our calendar system, that means yesterday was December 11th and that is a day that we alcoholics celebrate, although apparently not as much as Santa Con:
Bill W’s Sobriety Date: December 11, 1934
The Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza was all about Bill W and not to put too much dramatic emphasis on things, but the sixteen-page story of his drinking career and how he recovered is the most important thing I’ve ever read. It took me many readings and years (unfortunately) to grasp the simple concepts. It took a long time for me to recognize me in that story.
And here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be that story. The thing that sparks the magic in AA (yes, there is actually magic) is alcoholics and addicts honestly sharing about how they got sober and how they stay sober. That’s supposed to be the focus and the details about the years of insanity isn’t meant to be appreciated in a Gatsby-ish way, it’s supposed to set the stage for the miraculous thing that happened: We got sober.
And then even more improbably, in the face of the horrific challenges and difficulties that most other folks call “life,” we somehow stay sober. More importantly, we begin leading lives, not of unquiet desperation and fervent end-of-meeting shares, but of meaning and kindness and as much self-less-ness as can be managed at that particular time.1
There is a particularly horrid saying, at least in the opinion of this alcoholic, “share like your life depended on it.” When I hear someone say this, well, let’s just say I buckle-up for a couple of minutes of enforced nodding along. That saying gets a lot wrong, and I only mention it because there is a life at stake, the newcomer who might be sitting in the room trying to decide if this is for them, whether they can do this, whether they want to do this.
The point of sharing at a meeting really ought to be, “is there something that might help someone else find a way to do this?” I can assure you that I share the opinion that recovery is very hard sometimes, and sharing honestly about that struggle is important to everyone’s recovery. But you lose me, and a lot of newcomers I think, with the whole climbing the most challenging mountain in the world thing.
Bill W. was a salesman at heart. He also knew a thing or two about how to persuade people and he realized that the way to get people to want to get sober, to think that they could get sober, was a step at a time and a day at a time. He was not someone who described his recovery like a sea captain bravely riding out the storm by lashing himself to the mast. You know, the stories about the ocean rising and falling and the raging glory.
Bill W. didn’t tell you about being in the fight of your life, he said that a willingness to maybe believe this thing about a Higher Power is good enough to start. I think the point of sharing is to give other people glimpses of how I got sober, how I stay sober. The point of the story should be I did this, and if I could manage it, you definitely could. I think it’s the exact opposite of the sober conqueror we see too often. It’s an approach hopefully gilded with humility.
In movies, you sometimes see people scaling buildings and using things like suction cups or jet packs or whatever they use in movies. By contrast, there are people who can actually climb huge rock edifices one hand at a time. I’ve done a little rock-climbing and it is hard. Those people who climb those insane vertical rock faces, pounding in pitons to sleep on the face overnight (!), I have a lot of respect for that. You can’t do that with an office building, because the surface is too smooth. The only reason you can free-climb is because of the crags and crevices and handholds and what-not. The imperfections in the face of the cliff.
I think that’s the point of sharing in AA: Not to depict an epic battle or invite admiration for being a sober warrior, it’s to show the handholds in the cliff, so that someone else can make their way up. Talking honestly about the failures, and even more honestly about what finally worked and how it worked. The point of the first story (Bill W’s) is summarized on the title page:
When a newcomer is sitting in a meeting, they’re staring up a pretty impossible looking climb. I think it’s more useful to point out the potential handholds, than emphasizing the enormity of the undertaking. The day-at-a-time thing was not because Bill believed that 24-hour periods had special magic; it was because you need to be focused on the next handhold, where you are right now and what is the next right step.
Sharing honestly and with humility and a true desire to serve others means sharing the imperfections and failures, and how it was possible to go from a place where sobriety seemed completely impossible, to a thing that happened. That’s a journey every single one of us has made in recovery. The most amazing stories are the ones where you can literally feel the change of heart occurring. Bill W’s story was one of those for me—along with some truly beautiful, soul-exposing shares I’ve heard over the years.
The good stories show all the flaws and imperfections, because those are the handholds, the crags that allow someone to cling to the face of the rock as they make their way up. Okay, is that dramatic enough? I tend to favor a quieter approach to persuasion. It goes like this, “I made a hash of my life, hurt a lot of people and had to start over. But I did it and am doing it. Here’s how. If someone like me can manage this, you can definitely do it.” That’s what I saw in Bill’s Story, and letting myself see that, is what ultimately helped me get sober. When I share my story, I tell it like someone else’s life might depend on hearing that this is doable, that this imposing rock is climb-able, even by someone like me.
That’s the point of the stories in the Back of the Book. If Bill W’s doesn’t grab you, well, there is drama, romance, heartbreak, triumph and catastrophe aplenty back there. And every story ends the same way:
You can definitely do this.
I perhaps have recounted the many years of looking at a particular ad in the sports section of the Des Moines Register and wondering if the strange horsetrack right across the western border of the state bore an Native American derived name: Ak-Sar-Ben. It does not, I later discovered. I do like the multiple hyphen approach and have officially adopted it as the official spelling of the word: self-less-ness. That is all.