Reading the stories in the BB I find is always a help I find in my staying sober. I was reading one today and was struck by what this woman had to say. She was talking about “act as if”. But she was talking about acting as if in a negative way.
She said she always acted as if she knew, when she didn’t, and acting as if she didn’t care. Wow, is that familiar. That was me, growing up and in my drinking years. And that’s exactly what I brought into the rooms with me. That unbelievable pride and arrogance, brought on by fear. Fear that others would know that I didn’t know.
She said that she never asked a question, because she was afraid of being found out that she didn’t know. I can remember sitting in meetings early on and hearing the members talking about the Big Book and the 12 Steps. I didn’t ask one person what those were. I just sat there and acted as if I knew. Meanwhile, in my fearful mind, I told myself that they were talking about the Bible and began to try to remember how many steps there were that led down to this room I was sitting in. Acting as if I wasn’t insane. All the while, my fears were insuring that I would stay stupid and crazy.
Fortunately for me, the old timers, sitting there, had already peeked my hole card. They had seen others just like me and challenged me openly in the meeting. In very few words they cut me down to size and told me that they knew that I didn’t know. They literally woke me up to the fact that I didn’t know what I thought I knew. That was my introduction to what I desperately lacked and what would insure that I would drink again. It was my lack of humility. I had none. It was exactly what I needed to insure that I would have a chance to stay sober.
That initial humiliation in front of all those people was a lightening strike. It literally blew up my life of faking and unmasked me for the phony I had become. All out of what Bill said caused our character defects to go into action: self centered fear. I was filled to the brim with that self centered fear. Later I was to become grateful for what they did. It opened me up to the program and allowed me to grow along spiritual lines.
For the first time I became able to ask those questions I needed to ask. I became able to learn what this program was all about. And one of the things my sponsor taught me was to “act as if”. Not in the negative, but in the positive. How to use that act in order to change me from the phony to the reality. When I acted as if, in the way he told me, I found out what I was doing began to come true. Act as if I was sober. He told me to watch others, who had worked this program and act as they did. He told me that when I was down to act as if I wasn’t. He showed me that if I acted as if I had faith and hope, I would begin to attain those virtues in my life.
After I read her words, I had to sit and think about how all of this was true for me, but in how the same thing changed my life. How the new way of acting as if opened the door to this new way of life. A sober life.