What’s the truth? A fairly new man brought up the code he had read in the BB about love and tolerance. He said he hadn’t seen that. All he felt was that he was getting was insults.
If I had quit and gone out again, when I came in, because people were not expressing love and tolerance, I would have been dead a long time ago. I was told to sit down and shut up and listen. Wow! That got my attention. I was told I knew nothing about staying sober and only knew about drinking.
I came in knowing nothing about the truth. And I needed the truth, if I was to have a chance to get sober. In the Doctor’s Opinion, he says that the alcoholic cannot distinguish between the true and the false. How true that was. Later on in the BB it tells us something else that’s true. It says that we lied to doctors and others about our condition. That’s a paraphrase, but it’s an indication of how I was in the beginning. I was a liar. I knew nothing about the truth.
Something else that the doctor says in the front of the book, that frothy emotional appeal rarely works. Most of those I know, who are sober for a long time, will tell you that they had to get a dose of “tough love” in order to get the message. My sponsor told me that it took a two by four up by the side of my head to get my attention. And he was right, it was the truth.
I wanted sympathy and didn’t get it. Sympathy just doesn’t work. It usually gets people drunk. It’s the truth we need and hopefully get. It’s rarely sugar coated. I remember one person telling me how they called their sponsor and said they were thinking about drinking again. The sponsor replied, “Why are you calling me?” and hung up. The person told me that it snapped them out of their dry drunk and kept them sober. They didn’t like it, but they saw the truth in what their sponsor did.
The truth doesn’t come easy to any of us, I don’t believe. It didn’t to me. I had to hang in and take what was being handed to me in order to get it. I’m glad I did and am grateful for all those old timers, who were willing to tell me the truth about myself. They opened the door to the solution to my disease of alcoholism and showed me a new way of life and how to live.
I was told that I needed to put a sign on my mirror that said “Don’t lie to me”. That was ugly, but it was the truth. I had lied so much to myself, that I believed everything I thought and said. It was time to stop and learn the truth.
One thing I learned early on that was the truth, it was when my sponsor told me that alcoholics like me were insecure, immature, and oversensitive. That was me. I’m glad I was able to learn the truth. I’m sober and grateful because I did.
Isn’t it something else, that the “new” people want to talk about their problems instead of the solution? And what is the solution? It’s spiritual. It’s the 12 Steps, the 12 Traditions, and the rest of the program. That’s the truth.