I’m grateful for the dark blue and red sunrise. I’m grateful for basketball. I’m grateful for seeing how faith is built. I’m grateful for a chance to believe. I’m grateful for Muji 0.7mm pens. I’m grateful for graph paper. I’m grateful to be sober today.
The “Mystery Button” (above), offers an opportunity that comes around less rarely than we would like: A chance to improve life for free and with no real work of any kind required. Also, did I mention it was free? If you read our humble newsletter on regular-ish basis, as, improbably, some of you do, this is intended to just make life a little better and easier. And will accomplish those modest goals. As they say, in other parts of the world, “Click! What’s the worst that could happen?”1
As I bask in the glow of yet another 60th birthday, I would be remiss if I failed to point out the birthday of a fellow Sagittarian and alcoholic: Bill W (Nov. 26th). As I often remonstrate, even using the heel of my shoe on my podium (desk), it was Bill W’s story that finally led me out of the wilderness. I mean, it took a few re-tellings to get the job done, but that blame is more properly ascribed to the reader than the writer in my case.
The bolt of lightning that knocked me off the donkey of relapse was simply recognizing that Bill W’s story was true. Bill W was an actual person who lived, an actual alcoholic who get sober. I didn’t get to meet him, but I understand this is probably what he was like:
Bill W’s story is true, that’s the realization that helped set me free. I don’t mean literally, actually true; the dates in the story are a little off and the vision from the mountaintop might possibly be the consequence of excessive belladonna consumption. However, this is the true part and the part that mattered:
Bill W. was a hopeless alcoholic who couldn’t stop drinking on his own, and then he got sober.
I feel like a slightly-insane dog, what with the obsessive tail-chasing on the topic of willingness, faith and belief. I only repeat myself on this topic because I’m realizing just how important it is to get the sobriety engine running on a sustainable set of beliefs. It’s easy to bite off more than can be chewed in the belief category, so at a very elemental level, and leaving the God/Higher Power/Ouija Board philosophy questions for next Tuesday, what if all you had to believe, to make a start, was that Bill W was an alcoholic who got sober the way he described?
I, personally, have believed in way more nonsensical ideas than that. Also, the “Mystery Button,” right there, should be avoided if you don’t prefer moving, emotional experiences. But seriously, when phrased that way, like what’s so hard to believe? Bill W was a real guy, maybe a little nutty and out there, but he got sober. Here’s the next part: The way he did it, well, it’s pretty replicable.
I may have mentioned that I was a Boy Scout. I didn’t last that long, I think I retired having attained the rank, “First Class.” That seemed liked enough. I joined a troop with two friends, who then promptly moved away, and I was left amidst an interesting, but mostly unknown group of “young men,” doing close order drills in the basement of the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church.
I very much enjoyed earning merit badges, and had excelled at this in the Webelos. The Boy Scout Handbook laid out the requirements for each merit badge and I wanted to earn as many as I could. But, I would carefully read the requirements and realize that some of these were going to take way more effort than I had available to me. So, I didn’t get those. I didn’t even try, the requirements seemed too daunting.
This is the point I’m trying to make: This doesn’t really take that much faith or belief to start. Now, the problem develops downstream, when the current takes hold and you realize you’re going places. As I joke with the Sponsees,
“Are you sure you wanted to get this sober?”
But that’s not a real problem. The only real problem is what might hold someone back from simply believing that there is a way out that worked for at least one other actual live person. Or to say it in a less confusing way, all that was necessary to make a beginning is to believe that one other actual person got sober this way.
The foreword to the Big Book says:
We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of our book.
But there’s only one story in the first 164 pages. Does everyone have to follow the example of a white guy from the 1930s? No—that’s why there are a zillion stories in the back of the book and AA meetings. But, for this alcoholic, it only took believing that this AA thing worked for one other alcoholic, and that it seemed like something I could replicate.
By the way, the next “Mystery Button” might, potentially have application in this scenario. Someone you love, or care about, or who has been afflicting your dreams and your sanity, maybe has an issue with the drinking and you’d like to gently point this out in a loving, kind, non-confrontational way—that could also be seen as a holiday gift. Check and check.
It turns out that I do some things differently than he did, have my own version of a Higher Power, my own take on some of the inventories, my own views of how this works. And that’s what is completely cool about this—I’m not living Bill W’s sober life, I’m living mine. I tend to favor Baroque music and sure like complicated things to think about. So, I make this more complicated and over-thought than it needs to be:
But the nugget at the bottom, the important part to the “precisely how we have recovered,” is believing that this worked for one other sober person. If Bill’s story isn’t grabbing you, then there are a zillion more in the back of the Book. This has become the focus of our Tuesday night AA meeting:
We pick a different story every week, if the issue is that Bill’s story seems too homogenized, well, there’s quite a bit of diversity in the back of the Book. And, believing just one of those stories is also probably enough.
Here’s the point: Willingness is a very low bar and that’s all that is necessary to make a beginning. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.
All you have to do is want to stop and believe one story. Even I could do that.
This “worst that could happen” scenario is discussed below, or above, depending on your view.
Good one! As they say in the rooms, recovery ain’t for folks that need it...only for those that want it.