” Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity. Bathtub gin, two bottles a day, and often three, got to be routine. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars. And I would pay my bills at the bars and the delicatessens. This went on endlessly. And I began to wake up very early in the morning, shaking violently. A tumbler full of gin followed by a half dozen bottles of beer would be required, if I were to eat any breakfast. Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation.”
He says that with an earnestness because it was a real shift of intent. How many of you can bring to your mind right now, a time when you knew that you weren’t drinking or using because you wanted to, but you were doing it because you had to? Did it go back and forth? Did you think perhaps you had overreacted? Bill is telling the story of being in that place where, “I’m really not behaving like I want to in spite of my insistence that I’m drinking the way I want to.”
- Can you relate to what he’s talking about?
It’s a weird place where we find ourselves. Bill goes on to describe what it was like for him when he would wake up shaking. Notice the words he uses, “…were required.” Bill is talking about knowing that his drinking was killing him yet couldn’t manifest any outward action or ability to stop drinking.
- How far did you take it before you knew that you had to do something different?
- How many drugs or drinks did you take after you decided to stop?
- Did you have control over your drinking and drugging?
Bill is talking about the condition that is often seen when people come to this realization, and they think they’re going to will away their addiction. We come into fellowships, and they say, “Just play the tapes. Think it through. If you can’t remember your last drink, you haven’t had it yet.” I can remember my last one and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that. What do you got for me? Because it’s just making me thirsty all this thinking. I call that to your attention because he’s trying to describe the condition of the insane mind. We are the people who are insane, who do not believe ourselves to be insane, who think we’re doing what we want to do, when we know we’re not.
He says that with an earnestness because it was a real shift of intent. How many of you can bring to your mind right now, a time when you knew that you weren’t drinking or using because you wanted to, but you were doing it because you had to? Did it go back and forth? Did you think perhaps you had overreacted? Bill is telling the story of being in that place where, “I’m really not behaving like I want to in spite of my insistence that I’m drinking the way I want to.”
- Can you relate to what he’s talking about?
It’s a weird place where we find ourselves. Bill goes on to describe what it was like for him when he would wake up shaking. Notice the words he uses, “…were required.” Bill is talking about knowing that his drinking was killing him yet couldn’t manifest any outward action or ability to stop drinking.
- How far did you take it before you knew that you had to do something different?
- How many drugs or drinks did you take after you decided to stop?
- Did you have control over your drinking and drugging?
Bill is talking about the condition that is often seen when people come to this realization, and they think they’re going to will away their addiction. We come into fellowships, and they say, “Just play the tapes. Think it through. If you can’t remember your last drink, you haven’t had it yet.” I can remember my last one and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that. What do you got for me? Because it’s just making me thirsty all this thinking. I call that to your attention because he’s trying to describe the condition of the insane mind. We are the people who are insane, who do not believe ourselves to be insane, who think we’re doing what we want to do, when we know we’re not.
“I still thought I could control the situation. And there were periods of sobriety, which renewed my wife’s hope. Gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holder. My mother-in-law died. My wife and father-in-law became ill. Then I got a promising business opportunity. Stocks were at a low in 1932, and I’d somehow formed a group to buy. I was to share generously in the profits. Then I went on a prodigious bender and that chance vanished.”
We would like you to pay attention to what he thinks is gradual and then compare it to your own life. Because when we’re in addiction, what we think is gradual, other people see as catastrophic. Evictions, repossessions, and the like, usually don’t happen to people who are not in our class, the alcoholic. How many have you been asked to leave more than once? That’s an abnormal reaction. How many of you came into a brand-new business opportunity at the height of your addiction? What did you do with it? Now, we don’t use terms like prodigious bender, but you know what he’s talking about, right? How many of you just got on a sick one for a week and thought, “Gee, I wonder if that guy is still there to meet me?”
“I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business. And so, I did. Shortly afterward I came home drunk. There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn’t know. It hadn’t even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way, and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder, for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that.”
- How many of you really meant it this time and had someone in agreement with you?
Guys, it isn’t that I didn’t mean it. It isn’t that I wanted to let them down. I was powerless over the obsession to get free of me in the way that alcohol would free me of myself. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s what Bill is talking about too.
Bill then goes on to ask himself how he had found himself in such a plight. How many of you asked yourselves, “How did this happen again?” or “Why did I do that?” How many of you were asked those same questions by loved ones or probation officers who insisted that you know the answers to those questions? So usually what do we of the alcoholic variety do in those situations? WE MAKE SHIT UP.
How many of you got to that place where you questioned your own sanity? Wouldn’t it have been nice to know that there were actually physicians that were in agreement with you? Refer to the previous section and review the things the doctor wrote.
They’re telling us what alcoholic and addictive insanity is. It’s an appalling lack of perspective. The inability to see beyond. To tell me to look back or look forward has no meaning in the moment where I am in so much pain that I have to escape me. So, I medicate by using and drinking myself into oblivion.
“Renewing my resolve, I tried again. Some time passed, and confidence began to be replaced by cocksureness. I could laugh at the gin mills. Now I had what it takes! One day I walked into a cafe to telephone. In no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened. As the whisky rose to my head, I told myself I would manage better next time, but I might as well get good and drunk then. And I did. The remorse, horror, and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. The courage to do battle was not there. My brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity. I hardly dared cross the street, lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck, for it was scarcely daylight. An all-night place supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My writhing nerves were stilled at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn’t.”
How many of you got to that place of hopelessness? You might have started showing up in the meetings, got the 24-hour chip and were coming right up on the cusp of a 30-day chip? And then thought, “Well, perhaps I’ve overreacted.” Anyone know what I’m talking about? Do you see the logic? Bill does not realize that he’s lost the power of choice. The insanity had already started by the time he walked into the bar room. Insanity of the first drink started before, it didn’t happen after the first drink. We don’t know that until someone properly armed with the facts about themselves introduces us to the program of AA rather than the fellowship of AA.
- How many of you took a drink after some time in recovery or took a drug, and then all of a sudden, your mind is going crazy?
- What am I going to say?
- How am I going to cover this?
- I’m not going to have enough to get through the night.
Think about how Bill’s relapse had to feel. Attempt to align your relapse experiences to his. This is a guy who survived war. He was a war hero. He had been a genius on Wall Street. People spent millions of dollars on his advice. And suddenly, he’s looking at the markets. He’s got more faith in the collapsing market than he does in his own ability to stop drinking.
- How many of you took a drink after some time in recovery or took a drug, and then all of a sudden, your mind is going crazy?
That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No-not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Gin would fix that. So, two bottles, and-oblivion. The mind and body are marvelous mechanisms, for mine endured this agony two more years. Sometimes I stole from my wife’s slender purse when the morning terror and madness were on me. Again, I swayed dizzily before an open window, or the medicine cabinet where there was poison, cursing myself for a weakling. There were flights from city to country and back, as my wife and I sought escape. Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish, I feared I would burst through my window, sash and all. Somehow, I managed to drag my mattress to a lower floor, lest I suddenly leap. A doctor came with a heavy sedative. Next day found me drinking both gin and sedative. This combination soon landed me on the rocks. People feared for my sanity. So did I. I could eat little or nothing when drinking, and I was forty pounds under weight. My brother-in-law is a physician, and through his kindness and that of my mother I was placed in a nationally known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics. Under the so-called belladonna treatment my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much. Best of all, I met a kind doctor who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, I had been seriously ill, bodily and mentally.”
When Bill says, “That was a hard thought”, he is expressing an experience of powerlessness and unmanageability that I’m now having to internalize, as I read and begin to see how my experience is like his. When I make that admission, I’m talking about a sensory experience I have endured. Notice how Bill tied those two thoughts together. He went to people he trusted; he stole from them. He knew there was no other earthly explanation for what he had done. And then rather than face them, when he knew that he was going to lie and they knew he was lying, he’d rather kill himself. Bill is trying to describe a scene to get us to see the strange things going on in our minds and emotions, and addiction.
- How many of you find it funny to think of going to the doctor to get off one substance only to find yourself on both?
- Having the doctor prescribe something far more addictive like Methadone, Suboxone, or Adderall
But he was talking about trying to detox himself at home. How many of you have tried that little trick on the streets? It’s very dangerous. He’s talking about how sick he got, and he was self-destructive, so his wife finally called for a physician. The physician gave him a sedative. And then we found out, “Well, my alcohol problem is solved at last. I simply had a Valium deficiency.” Because that’s how we roll in our addictions.
Read the last sentence in the preceding big book section, again. We have to understand that, because that’s the most important piece of the puzzle. We addicts don’t seek a healer when we don’t think we’re sick. When you think you’re just selfish, when you think you’re just flawed, you’re not. I want you to know, if you’re reading this book, there is nothing wrong with you. That’s what the authors are trying to tell you. You’re sick bodily and mentally if you have this addictive disorder. BUT They have a solution. It’s not a synthetic solution. Man has not come up with a solution, not then and not now, but there is a solution. And we’re going to talk about that.
The authors go on to explain:
- How many of you find it funny to think of going to the doctor to get off one substance only to find yourself on both?
“It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months the goose hung high. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer-self-knowledge. But it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more.”
- How devasted were you when you realized that inevitably, you could not stop?
- What you are doing, you keep doing over and over again.
- Even when you don’t want to?
- What you are doing, you keep doing over and over again.
Though it often remains strong in other respects. How many of you held a job, kept things together, but couldn’t stop tearing everything else apart? It’s baffling. Isn’t it? Cunning, baffling, powerful. You can understand now why they use the words they use.
Did the authors help you understand your incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop? Did it help you to understand? Not only did they know how desperately you have wanted to stop, but they knew 80 years ago when they wrote the book, how impossible it was for you to stop, because it was impossible for them to stop. Bill wrote it in here so that we would have a picture of depth and weight, so we can level the playing field, so we could talk to you about a redemption experience that required something other than synthetic methods.
Bill then describes the situation as beginning to look better. He describes the answer as being one of self-knowledge. “I’m good, I got this”, “I don’t pick-up, NO MATTER WHAT.” Like Bill, what happened to you?
- How devasted were you when inevitably, you drank or used again?
- What had happened?
Had you been serious and meant it when you stated, “I’m good, no more dope for me?” Bill goes on to tell of his health beginning to decline; of having to be hospitalized again; of his wife learning from doctors that he would most likely die a terrible alcoholic death.
- Did you ever have a doctor give you such a prognosis?
- How impressed were you by the things they told you?
- How devasted were you when you realized that inevitably, you could not stop?
“The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski-jump. After a time, I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum. They did not need to tell me. I knew, and almost welcomed the idea. It was a devastating blow to my pride. I, who had thought so well of myself and my abilities, of my capacity to surmount obstacles, was cornered at last. Now I was to plunge into the dark, joining that endless procession of sots who had gone on before. I thought of my poor wife. There had been much happiness after all. What would I not give to make amends? But that was over now.”
Our families are devastated by that news or maybe they have ceased caring anymore. But I, the one they are talking about, it’s like they’re talking about somebody else. Don’t tell me what’s going to happen I already know, tell me when it’s going to happen? Bill was done. He just didn’t have the sense to lie down. He is trying to explain the sensation of how dead he was on the inside. Bill is painting a picture of wanting to die but being unable to pull the trigger.
- How many of you got to the point where you just knew there was no way to make it right?
- There’s no reason to even try.
- If I don’t try again, I can’t fail again.
- Have any of you gotten to that point?
- Have you ever got to the point of accepting your own death?
- If I don’t try again, I can’t fail again.
- There’s no reason to even try.
- How many of you got to the point where you just knew there was no way to make it right?
“No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn! In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence.”
- How many of you can feel the loneliness and despair, and were feeling like, “I’m going to die. I’m going to die alone, everyone hates me, I can’t do anything about it?”
- In fact, I don’t even want to do anything about it?
Notice here is Bill’s first admission of a Power greater than himself. Please don’t misunderstand this point. We’re not telling you, that you immediately must have a theology and to be risen and confessing Jesus at this point. What we are telling you is that if you don’t believe there’s a Power greater than you that is called alcohol, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, what are you doing here? You’re wasting valuable high time. Go forth and moderate your drug and alcohol consumption. The point we are making is that we’ll work on growing spiritually once we realize we can no longer safely take synthetic spirits.
- How many of you got sobered by fear for a bit?
- All of us at some point.
There it is again, the insanity of the first drink, the insanity precedes the drink. It doesn’t come after. What happens after the first drink is the silly shit that happens to drunk or high people.
Bill begins to paint a picture of hope. He describes it, so we don’t have to make it up. He’s going to tell us what he means by catapulted into a fourth dimension of existence. What he’s promising you is, at that darkest point in his life, he was just inches away from a new manner of living as a new creation that gave him purpose and filled him with peace. So, he’s trying to tell you, if you’re almost there… you’re almost there. Let us join with you and let’s take this journey together. Because there’s a new life coming and what you were living was not life, it was death.
- How many of you can feel the loneliness and despair, and were feeling like, “I’m going to die. I’m going to die alone, everyone hates me, I can’t do anything about it?”
Bill goes on to describe an experience that relates to where he is at emotionally.
“I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes. Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen. With a certain satisfaction I reflected there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it before daylight.”
Consider the situation as the author is describing it; he is sitting at home; he has enough booze to last the night, and no one is around to complain about the amount he is drinking. He is even planning ahead, because he knows that he’s going to get good and plastered, enough so that he will pass out. He knows that by morning he will be too sick to get out of bed without having to take a few tentative sips to stop the vomiting.
- Ever have to save a shot just so you could meet the dope man first thing in the morning?
- Ever hide your booze by the bed so you wouldn’t have to stumble to find it?
Bill is about to have the experience that catapulted him into that 4th dimension he was talking about earlier. He is about to be contacted by his old school friend Ebby. Ebby to Bill is that one guy that no matter how bad Bill got, at least he wasn’t that bad yet. Ebby is the guy who does not show up anywhere sober. Bill is wondering how Ebby had busted out of the asylum. When Ebby asked to have dinner, Bill mused that at least he could drink openly, even if Ebby was trying to be sober.