The hell of drinking and the hell of not drinking. That was brought up today, as the group talked to a woman who had been drinking and still smelled of fresh alcohol.
I couldn’t help but think of The Doctor’s Opinion. This woman had stopped and started over and over. She was suffering from both the hell of drinking and not drinking through the years.
That reminded me of what was said in that introduction to the BB. What is the hell of not drinking? To me it’s the physical aspect of alcoholism and why some of us have to get right to making the necessary changes we find in the steps. It tells me that one of the first things the alcoholic must believe. That we are as physically abnormal as we are mentally.
This is first a physical disease. That’s what the phenomenon of craving is all about. The alcoholic takes a drink and the result is craving for the next drink. And the doctor tells us that this only happens to this class of people; the alcoholic. That’s why the alcoholic, when he comes in must start the change, which will restore us to sanity, as quickly as possible. Chances are that the memory of craving, if not the physical craving still survives and so the hell of not drinking. And soon drinking again.
I’m not knocking the mental and emotional problems we have. But what’s wrong with us physically cannot be discounted, when it comes to what’s wrong with many of us alcoholics. True, the intervention of our higher power can insulate us, but if I don’t follow that relief up in short order, the hell of not drinking may dominate me so strongly that I’ll be back out the door in short order.
The desire not to drink and admission of powerlessness may be present, but the next step is so important; the coming to believe in a power greater than ourselves, who can restore us to sanity.
God and the group and then on to the rest of the Steps.
I looked back at the history of this program and what it was like for those in the first and second wave of coming to this program. Men so desperate that they were willing to do anything to get sober. Bill recognized from his own experience that there was a need to change as quickly as possible. Men plagued with the hell of not drinking.
Of course the spiritual answer to our alcoholism is obvious to me. God could and would, if he was sought. That was so true for me that I can never forget it. But I had to go through the process we all need to go through. Steps One through Three and then on down the line. Those first three quickly. That was my experience. I can only hope that something got through today. The freedom from that hell.