In reading the BB and other AA literature, one thing that keeps coming back to me is how much I identify with people’s stories. Especially Bill W. Except for his hospitalizations. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get treatment for it. The last six years of my drinking the doctors where I worked periodically detoxed me. I didn’t know what they were doing at the time. I only found out later what that was.
Bill’s drinking and thinking is what got to me. It was almost like he had read my life. Even the story of the young man, who was treated by Dr. Carl Jung. When Jung said to him that he had the mind of a chronic alcoholic and alcoholics like that never got better, it was like he was talking to me.
I need to periodically read these kinds of stories. Not that I don’t know what they all said, but to remind myself that I’m just like the rest of the alcoholics, who came here and recovered. I’m no different. There’s nothing special about me. And because I did what they did, I too have recovered. I belong here.
I was glancing through the BB today, when one sentence jumped out at me. It was the perfect description of why I couldn’t stop drinking and my life was so unmanageable. It was talking about how a code of morals or philosophy “might” have helped us to overcome our alcoholism. That wasn’t to be. No matter how hard someone like me tried, everything failed. Our human resources, marshaled by the will, were not sufficient, they failed us utterly.
That sure was the case with me. In the end I was hopeless and helpless. Nothing had worked. I couldn’t stop drinking and I was going insane. Then someone gave me hope in the face of my despair. Hope lifted me up enough to try faith in a power greater than myself. I asked for help from my higher power and stopped drinking at last and came into this program, where I found more hope and a faith that works.
I was thinking of these things today, because I felt off track. I’ve been distracted by the material world and needed to get back into the right frame of mind. And that’s to think about my sobriety and this way of life I have found in here. What better way than to take a quick glance over the lives of those who went before me and recovered. To relate to their drinking and their recoveries. Their hope, their faith, their spiritual awakenings. And then to look at mine.
It always restores my hope and my faith. It puts me in touch with my higher power and gets me back on track. I find firm ground on which to stand. I am so grateful for all those old timers and the God of my understanding.