I was talking to a man, who just is returning from going back out. I was also talking to a woman, who, also, just returned recently. The common denominator in all of this was this business of thinking. I know we’ve all gone through this. I can’t stop thinking. Of course we can’t. It’s the way we’re made. We have a mind and we think. Even when we think we’re not thinking, we’re thinking about our not thinking.
Don’t think! Don’t think! That’s what we’re told at the very beginning. At least that’s what the old timers used to tell us. Don’t think. It almost drove me crazy, when I heard this, because I couldn’t shut that damn noise off in my head. I know I’ve belabored this theme a number of times, but it helps me to hear this stuff from people coming back. I need to be reminded of what it was like, when I came in. How fortunate to be exposed to such people. It’s so valuable and healthy for what I am hopefully doing…staying sober a day at a time.
I realized later that it wasn’t the process of thinking that was the problem, but of what I was thinking. All of my thoughts were negative. I couldn’t get a handle on positive thoughts. And when I finally did, I couldn’t maintain them.
The man couldn’t understand why he would go back to drinking, when it made him so sick. Cunning, baffling, and powerful. Especially the baffling. He was baffled. But, it was the thinking which preceded the drink. He had fallen prey to his feelings, which then controlled what he was thinking. It wasn’t that he wasn’t aware of the consequences, but his emotionally controlled thoughts superceded everything else.
We can tell people not to think, but maybe we should also tell them not to feel or to pay any attention to what they feel. Dr. Bob tells us in his story, that he thought about a drink everyday for the first few years. He felt like drinking. But, as we all know, he didn’t drink. He prayed and thought about what he should have thought about, as we all should think about; the program and working with others.
That’s one of the things, which helped me so much at the very beginning. My first sponsor would come over, pick me up and take me on a twelfth step call. He did that everyday for I don’t know how long. We were constantly going out and talking to other drunks. At least he was. I just sat there and listened. But, it was what I was listening to. I was listening to the solution everyday. Without my knowing it, I was already into action and learning what I should be thinking about. I was learning that action was the name of the game. I didn’t know that then. I was beginning to act my way into a new way of thinking.
I remember a friend of mine telling the very same story about his sponsor doing the same thing for him. He would go out everyday and sit there, while his sponsor would talk to a new prospect. Unlike me, he once asked his sponsor what good he was doing just sitting there and not saying anything. His sponsor said to him that he was doing the most important job. He asked his sponsor what that was. HIs sponsor replied that, when he talked to each prospect, he would say to the man, “You see that man over there? Well, if you keep on drinking, you’re going to end up just like him.”
This business of thinking…what am I to think?