Had a person coming back today. A friend I’ve known for a lot of years. They had ten years before going out. Now, returning, they are bankrupt, have a gambling problem they didn’t have before, have probably lost their job, and a whole lot more. But, the main thing, is that they have opened the door on the compulsion to drink again. With all the other stuff, I wonder if they know this last thing. Time will tell.
What happens to us that we return to the insanity? It’s always the same thing, isn’t it? Bill W. spelled it out early on in the BB. The first thing is in the Doctor’s Opinion. He says that we fail to be able to distinguish the true from the false. When that happens, it is very easy to slip back into the malaise of insanity. However, when we read Jim’s story we get a more complete picture of the process.
Jim’s story tells us that this was a man who failed to enlarge his spiritual life. That’s the first thing Bill tells us about him. Then Bill tells us that he had a resentment. He doesn’t say that in fact, but he tells us that he had lost his business and had to go to work for the man who bought it. On the day he drank again, he had words with this man, before he went out on a business call. Anyone of us, if we had been in that position, would have been burning up at the prospect…unless we had enlarged our spiritual life.
Bill, also, tells us that anger cuts us off from the sunlight of the spirit, the insanity returns, and we drink again. He tells us, too, that resentment has killed more alcoholics than anything else. It was true back when the book was written and it’s just as true today. Eventually we will drink again, unless something is done to change us.
Back a lot of years ago, I had a good friend, who drank after they were ten years sober. (Ten years must be a very precarious place.) When Joe came back he pulled me aside and told his story. He said that he picked the drink up five years before he drank it. He had stopped praying. He had stopped liking some peoople in his group. He began to have resentments toward them. Pretty soon he resented the whole group and stopped going to meetings. His wife left him. And he drank again. He said it didn’t happen all at once. It took years.
It began, he said, just like Bill pointed out, with the gradual erosion in his spiritual life. Then the erosion of his mental state. Finally, he was hanging on by his fingernails, until they too gave way. Joe died soon after that.
I have to ask myself at times, do I recognize the true from the false? What about my spiritual life? Am I enlarging it? This is a process after all. What about my anger? Do I have resentments? Do I resent questioning these things? How would I know? Do I talk to others about what’s really going on? Do I listen to what they say to me?
Looking at this person today and thinking about where they are brings up a whole lot of thoughts. Like, do I think I’m safe?