Today I went back and read that chapter in the BB More About Alcoholism. Every time I have read that it still has a profound effect on me. I know that I fit right into what was being written and described. Once again proof of what is really wrong with me.
I am an alcoholic. I have a disease for which there is no cure. It will be with me the rest of my life. That’s why this chapter is so important to someone like me. It reminds me of what is wrong with people like myself. The feeble and insane excuses for picking up a drink again may not be obvious to me. But then they weren’t obvious to those described in this chapter. They might as well have written my story in there.
The obvious thing to me is what they say about what got them sober. The introduction of the spiritual way of life into their lives. Particularly reading Fred’s story and the results of his final stumble into a hospital and being introduced to a way of life, which ran counter to his thinking. Moreover is what he said about the results of his getting sober.
The story of the successful young businessman, who stopped drinking for about thirty years and then picked up a drink, when he retired. The loss of control and his early death as a result. I could well understand that. And then the young man, who lost his business, and ended up in an institution. His return to sobriety and then the crazy decision he made to take a drink, despite all he knew about what was wrong with his drinking and what the cost would be.
It made me think about what happened to me, after I came into this program. I had no argument with my being powerless over alcohol. I couldn’t stop drinking and almost killed myself as a result of that awful despair deep within me. Fortunately I was helped by someone who had met a man in the program and he told me there was a solution for what was wrong with me. That lit a light of hope within me. I finally asked God for help and got it. I stopped drinking and came into these rooms. It was here, to my surprise, I found out what was wrong with me. I read the Doctor’s Opinion and found I had a disease called alcoholism. I never knew that. Didn’t have a clue, but was willing to accept it as the truth.
However there in the last paragraph in that chapter is something I think I never ever want to forget, because it hit me about a year and a half after I came in. That thing about there may come a time in the life of the alcoholic, when he will have no mental defense against that first drink and that there is no help available except from his Higher Power. I hadn’t thought about a drink in all that time and was probably in a place where I thought nothing could ever get me to drink again. And then I was hit with the insanity once again without any warning. I suddenly wanted to drink so badly that I was willing to kill anyone who got in my way.
Fortunately for me someone asked me what was wrong with me. I told them and they told me I needed to step outside and say a prayer. That was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment, but I did. And it worked. I asked God to come to my aid and help me. And just as suddenly it was gone.
That return to insanity without any warning has always made me aware of what can happen to an alcoholic like me. I have no argument, when I read what happened to these people in this chapter or any of the other stories I have heard or read since I got sober. I can identify with each and everyone of them. That’s me. But like Fred and the young man in There Is A Solution, who was helped by Dr. Carl Jung, I was given the opportunity to open myself up and come to believe in a Power Greater than myself and that he could restore me to sanity. And that has happened. That too I never want to forget.
I always am reminded that, while working that Ninth Step, making amends, I had a spiritual awakening. I was restored to sanity. I knew at the moment it happened that I had stopped fighting everyone and everything, including alcohol. I had been placed in a position of neutrality, as far as alcohol was concerned. What I consider a miracle in my life.
I’m glad that I stopped today to do this reading. It made me sit and think about what has happened in my life since I came into this program. I have never had to take a drink since I came here. In fact I really never ever want to drink again. And I know that this program has done for me what I could never have even imagined when I stopped drinking and came here. It would have been unbelievable to someone like me. Yet here I am living a sober life. And all of this because of those Twelve Steps and especially that Second Step, which introduced me into this spiritual way of life. All I have to do is remember that night when He stopped me from taking that drink. Thanks.