One of the great gifts of this program is There Is A Solution. Not just the chapter itself in the BB, but the very fact. I know it has worked for me.
This morning I opened the BB and reread that chapter, which I have gone back to again and again in here. I can’t help but love the description of alcoholics like myself. The sketch of the chronic alcoholics is so powerful. I could almost believe that they were talking about me personally. I really could identify.
However, when they move into the description of that young man, whom I could identify with, is amazing. This young man was the one, who had gone to Europe and sought out the famous psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung. He had spent a long time with this doctor and seemed to be “cured”. He was on his way back home and drank again. So he desperately went back to Dr. Jung for help. And then that’s when Jung got this young man to seek a spiritual experience.
What stirs me all the time about this was not only did that experience work, but it’s really what got this program into reality. Later in his life, Bill W. wrote a letter to Dr. Jung, telling him how the young man had lived a sober life until he died. And then he attributed the birth of AA to what Dr. Jung did for that young man. It does seem to be true.
Anyway I love that chapter in the BB, because it so describes what has happened to so many of us in here. Not just the descriptions of our alcoholism before we came in, but what has happened to so many of us. The spiritual experiences or awakenings, which got us sober. I look back in gratitude and also wonderment. How this program is still working over and over and over again and again. Makes me so grateful. I know from experience how there are so many I have met, who feel the same way.
Just a reminder to me this day what I need to be reminded of again and again. My need to stay sober a day at a time. And the fact that I have has not only changed who I am, but it helps me to be grateful to my Higher Power, the program itself, and all those who have helped me. Within me my thanks is a reality. I have been given so much. Not just the freedom from drinking alcohol, but so great a way of life. For me it’s a miracle.