I was thinking about Dr. Harry Thiebault today. I may not have spelled his last name right, but I know enough about him and that’s what’s really important. Dr. Thiebault had to speak at an AA convention one time. He said that as he was waiting to speak, he was struggling with what to say. The man, who was speaking before him, was an alcoholic. Finally Dr. T. decided he would listen to the man. And the man, as he spoke, opened the door for the good doctor. He said that when he came in he had been cut down to size. That gave the doctor what he needed. He said that he always wondered what it was that so affected the alcoholic that he would stop drinking and come into the program. He found it. It’s when we’re “cut down to size”.
I remember Tom talking to me one day about putting sponsors and others up on pedestals. Creating images in our minds that no one could live up to. Tom said he didn’t want that to happen to him. I know it happened to others and it inflated their egos to be so admired. Tom said that when the man on the pedestal fell, the fall could kill him.
I, also, remember that when I came in, I felt like I was the lowest form of humanity. I could certainly identify with the man who said that he had been cut down to size. I was totally deflated. I was at the bottom.
Dr. T. employed the threory in his practice as a psychiatrist of ego deflation in depth. That’s why I used the illustration of what Tom said to me. In the beginning it was like I had lost my ego. Almost the minute I entered into the program, I was swept up in the phenomenon of “cloud nine”. That state, where the will and the ego are suspended and we follow directions and do what is asked of us without argument or protest. It’s a state that carries us into the beginning of a spiritual life without the obstacle of our ego. In the seminary, which I attended, it was called “first fervor”. It’s like an invitation, an initiation, which eases us into a way of life, where we are going to spend the rest of our time.
The problem for the acoholic is that this state doesn’t last. It’s only temporary. It’s not supposed to last. It’s simply there to get us over the bumps on the road at the beginning. Sooner or later we fall down off the cloud and hit the bricks. That’s because the ego is back and self will takes over. Dr. T. was familiar with the process and encouraged those of us in the program to continue to practice ego deflation in depth.
Kathleen, the couselor I went to five years after I had come in, told me one day that I had an ego so big that there was no room on the earth for the rest of humanity. I was stunned that she could say such a thing to a nice guy like me. Her practice continued to be one of pricking my baloon and letting the gas out. She persiststed in the two years we were together in an effort to deflate this over sized ego. What a woman. God bless her.
But she wasn’t the only one, who kept after me. I must have really been a piece of work. Tom and other old timers would throw their two cents into the effort to bring me down to right size. I remember how much I resented their efforts, believing they had no idea of what they were talking about. There was a long period of time in which I could not laugh at myself. Rule 62 didn’t apply to me. It didn’t take much to refuel my gas tank. I was full of myself.
If I didn’t have a sense of humor, God did. As the seventh step in the 12&12 points out, it was going to take a series of humiliations to even get me familiar with the meaning of humility. I certainly wasn’t going to learn this on my own. And the truth is that I’m still in the process of learning, painful though it may be.
There are so many examples, good ones, who live around me everyday in the meetings. Men and women, who exhibit humility in a lot of what they do. There are those, too, who irritate the hell out of me, in whom I am able to see myself.
Back a number of years ago, I was sitting next to Tom, when someone quoted something I was supposed to have said. I told Tom, under my breath, that I never said such a thing. Tom looked at me and smiled and said to me, “Now you know how it feels”. Tom was someone that people were always giving credit to for things he never said. He was constantly trying to climb down from the pedestal people were placing him on. He knew only too well he had feet of clay and was trying to encourage me to look down at my feet.
I remember one plain spoken old timer, who would remind his pigeons, that no matter how cleaned up they got that they were always to look down at their shoes and remember the vomit.
That’s the point isn’t it. That unless I can tame this wild animal within me, it can devour me and take me back out into the world of alcohol. Pride is still the first on the list of character defects. Only God can protect me from myself. The last promise on the list is that God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
That’s what I was thinking today.