In one of my last posts, I made reference to the decision to drink as a spiritual decision. This was an idea that came to me as I was writing about Jim. It was not a belief I had ever harbored until that time. It just seemed to make sense.
As I sat at coffee on Saturday and discussed this, the expression on the faces of some of my friends indicated anything but complete agreement with this idea.
I am not one to form my beliefs outside of the context of the fellowship. In fact, if I have anything meaningful to say it is because my knees have been under hundreds of AA tables over the years, not because I have been granted some unique revelation. There are a few that claim this for themselves and for the most part they are the cheerfully ignored. Heaven help me if that ever becomes my M.O. So I was forced to reconsider my position. If you can allow me to get over-analytical I would like to offer some of my additional thoughts on the matter.
The term "spiritual" has very positive connotations, both in AA as well as in the larger culture. To speak of such an insane decision as being spiritual in nature is therefore very jarring to the ears. How do I put this in words that are more in harmony with the general tenor of the Big Book?
When Bill says that we "... may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer," I think there is a strong implication that we do not so much "lack" a spirit as we possess a diseased spirit. This leads to the question as to whether our spirit is entirely dormant. The term "spiritual awakening" does seem to imply that our spirit is present but not functioning. (I think I may have heard mine snoring a couple of times.) But the term can also imply a moment of enlightenment. Frankly, I don't think Bill gave it anywhere this much thought. But I will.
An analogy might be useful. I own a print shop, and the world of color is sometimes my personal hell. Trying to get color right is a delicate balancing act between CMY and K (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). If one of these is missing, the resulting color is skewed away from the missing color. For example, an image deficient in yellow will appear purplish. Now, the thought life of someone whose spirit is diseased will result in thinking that is skewed heavily toward the mental and physical, in other words toward "an allergy of the body" and an "obsession of the mind." If we turn that around, you can say that alcoholism is the "color" of someone with a diseased spirit.
Therefore (finally) I can say that the insanity of alcoholism can only be understood as a fundamentally spiritual condition. The decision to drink is a fundamentally spiritual one. If that makes any sense, God bless ya.
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