I’m grateful for yet another beautiful spring morning. I’m grateful to have seen the actual sunrise. I’m grateful for knowing today is another chance. I’m grateful for what I left behind. I’m grateful to be sober today.
The first thing I want to remind you of is tonight’s “Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s an “open” meeting and focused on reading and discussing the Big Book, there’s no requirement to participate or anything, if you want to observe with your camera off, that’s very cool. Not a lot of rules, just a lot of recovery.1
One of the things that unlocked the Big Book for me, helped me see how closely aligned my own story was with the story told in Chapter One, was seeing that story as a series of turning points and realizations. When Bill wrote out his story, it wasn’t a detailed drunkalogue, “then there was this time at band camp” listing of crazy and repellent behavior. When read closely, the vignettes he shares are designed to illustrate some of the common inflection points in addiction and recovery. He starts the story with the chilling realization, very early on, that he’s an alcoholic. As a young officer in the Army, he visits Winchester Cathedral and is struck by the inscription on a headstone that suggests a death by drinking:
Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier
Who caught his death
Drinking cold small beer
A good soldier is ne’er forgot
whether he dieth by musket
or by pot.
Big Book, p. 1
I very much identify with that. It brings to mind my own realization that I was a “problem drinker,” when I was 18 years old sitting in a booth upholstered with cheesy black Naugahyde listening to “Strange Magic” on the jukebox:
Oh, I'm never gonna be the same again Now I've seen the way that it's got to end Sweet dream, sweet dream
Except, I didn’t see how it could possibly end, it was already such an important part of my life. It took me forty years to imagine a way out.
Bill doesn’t provide a blow-by-blow of his childhood or explain in great detail exactly how he started drinking, his story starts with the realization he’s an alcoholic. Though, of course, that was not the word that probably popped into his mind. I’m guessing it was the kind of realization that just runs you through, turning the substance running through veins into something like a 7-11 Slurpee. Nothing but cold fear and the sensation of falling. In that moment, my thought was “how will this ever end?” I couldn’t imagine how it ever could.
Keep in mind, nothing that disastrous had happened yet. I’d managed to win state debate championships through horrific Saturday hangovers, was doing pretty well in college, had a job and was on my way to law school. But I knew I was doomed.
Not in some overdramatic way, but that night at Magoo’s I knew there was day of reckoning out there, a day when the wheels were going to come off. I didn’t understand any of this, my parents rarely drank, so why was I sneaking out of the house to go to bars and drink by myself on school nights? Why was I getting seriously drunk (blackout drunk) at high school debate tournaments every weekend? What was so different about me? Why was this the main thing in my life? Why did I feel “IT” was already calling the shots?
I was an alcoholic. That’s why. I don’t think I brought it on myself. I don’t think I deserved it or that it was a punishment for evil-doing in elementary school or junior high. I think I was walking around with a certain jumble of genetic predispositions, emotional responses mapped onto my infant brain by others, potentially problematic neural wiring (tendencies to spin wildly with no shut-off switch) and then a set of experiences that made me feel a sense of “apartness,” a feeling that grew and grew and, in my case, eventually required substantial anesthesia.
Newcomers to AA meetings are often advised to try and find points of identification in the stories being shared. It’s intended to be a way of internalizing that story, applying it to oneself and learning something. This process is often thwarted however, because people prefer identifying with the “before” part of the story, the part that’s fun and exciting to relate. I’ve heard people at meetings listen to a story of someone’s horrible descent into addiction, living for years in unimaginable circumstances, losing everything and everyone, then shoot their hands up and say “I identify with cocaine!” That gets a laugh and then they proceed to share their “coke-a-logue.” I don’t think that’s really the point.
The identification part is critical, it help establishes that we suffer from the same disease that produces similar symptoms in us, that we face similar challenges and lets us see that it has taken us pretty far from where we ever imagined we’d be. But the critical element of identification is with the solution. Identifying with another alcoholics’ apogee, the story of how they tried to reach escape velocity from themselves, is the first step (literally), but it’s seeing that the same thing that worked for them might just work for me that results in recovery.
Bill’s Story ought to be the model for how stories are shared at AA meetings. Light on the how you got there, heavy on how you got out. The newcomers who are sitting on those folding chairs don’t need advice on how to develop a drinking problem, they need some help imagining a future without alcohol and illuminating the first few steps on the path is also pretty helpful. Bill W’s story is not compelling because he was a crazy alcoholic with a devil may care attitude and the kind of cool that only comes to those who know they’re doomed. No, his story is compelling because he found the way out.
When I finally saw Bill W’s story was my story, I realized it meant his path out could be mine, too.
I made that up, not ChatGPT.
So thoughtful. So insightful. So compassionate and kind. Really enjoyable read. You are definitely a writer. Thanks for sharing.
You have helped me fall in love with Bill's Story. Thank you.