Someone, who recently came into the program, made me stop and think today about the process of getting sober.
They recounted all their losses. No job, breakup with a boy friend, and all kinds of misery, which brought them to tears. Just suppose, I thought, that, if they came in and said that not only had they a good job, but had just got a raise, and that their relationship was on solid ground, and that the rest of their story was positive, the sober alcoholic would say, that’s bad! On the other hand, listening to all that life full of calamity, most sober alcoholics would have to say, that’s good!
The other night I was thinking about the two great disciplinarians we have in this program, great suffering and great love. To me this person’s suffering is great and just the thing we alcoholics need desperately, if we are to get sober. Sounds a little harsh. I don’t think so. Like Dr. Silkworth said in the Doctor’s Opinion, frothy emotional appeal rarely works. We need something to knock us off our high perch and cut us down to size, to wake us up to the fact that alcohol is destroying us. If everything was working out for us, we probably would miss the opportunity to get sober and probably eventually die from its effects.
What got me here? Pain. Great pain and suffering. It drove me to the willingness to go to any lengths to get sober. That seems to me to be the reason so many, who come here, go back out again and again. Sometimes we have to lose everything to get honest with ourselves about our drinking and what it is doing to our lives.
Anyway, I didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for this person. In fact, I was actually glad that they were having the bottom they seemed to have reached. This person doesn’t know it yet, but it was this type of bottom, which opens the door to the 2nd Step and all the Steps, which follow. All I know is that it worked for me and today I am so grateful. I sometimes think the tough love I was given is that second great disciplinarian; great love. I never heard or got that frothy emotional appeal. Anything but and it saved my life.