After we got plowed we got smashed

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. - Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30

I my last post I quoted a dictionary definition of "delusion." Actually, that paragraph never uses the term. I guess I was getting ahead of myself. There is a difference between illusions and delusions, but it's really not important in this context. In both cases, Bill is talking about a state of mind that denies reality. And in addressing the stronger term "delusion," Bill uses a very vivid image: it has to be smashed!

When I persisted in the belief that I was like other people or soon (presently) would be, I was laboring under a self-inflicted break with reality. I never was like other people in regards to alcohol. Well, I was like some people, namely other alcoholics. But I think Bill means temperate drinkers here. And this persistent and astonishing illusion was not going to melt away slowly. It was not going to gradually yield to the force of logic. No, it would have to end with a bang.

I have heard many times around meetings the truism "as long as I don't take the first drink I am working the First Step perfectly." I don't believe that, not in light of what this paragraph clearly says. There were many times in my drinking career that I was not taking the first drink, but I could not have been further away from the First Step if I tried. I had not even begun admitting to my outermost self that I was anything like an alcoholic.

What does Bill mean by "our innermost selves?"  To me, it implies that we operate in varying degrees of self-awareness, that our sense of self can be more or less deep at any given time. We've all heard stories of people who have had life-changing experiences. I believe these are occasions in which the innermost self is exposed by some experience, either traumatic or ecstatic. That's why I think that "hitting bottom" is often the result of some crisis. The innermost self is forced to confront reality. That's probably why very few people make it to Alcoholics Anonymous because it was a nice day and they thought they would try something new.

So, for me, the First Step is really a radical upheaval of self-perception, the world turned upside-down, if you will. External circumstances (like the flashing blue lights in your rear-view mirror) can precipitate it, but in the end it is really a crisis of self.

It is a crushing victory.



 

Somehow, someday

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. - Alcoholics Anonymous, p.30

We speak of the hopelessness of the alcoholic, but that word implies that there was something originally hope for. We find it here in this paragraph. Most of us remember the golden moment, that magical first rush of alcohol to our brains. Yet for all the drinking I did, I never again experienced that same first rush. So I settled into a period of happy and successful drinking, never allowing control to interfere with enjoyment. I could get away with it because at that point I could drink as much as I wanted without any dire consequences.

Then, as it says elsewhere, "gradually things got worse." Gradually, I needed to control my intake, but that began to interfere with the enjoyment. So I started to look forward to occasions when I could drink without interference. I encouraged my wife to visit her family in Michigan without me so I could party on. I would go away by myself for weekends, visiting places she wasn't interested in seeing. But most of my sightseeing was done in my motel room, drunk in front of the TV. (I did drive through some lovely scenery getting there, though.) Eventually I began to tell everyone to leave me alone, and one by one they did.

I refused to admit that my reaction to alcohol was changing, that I was becoming less and less like normal drinkers, bodily and mentally. I began to cling to the hope that "some new miracle of control" would return me to those happier times when I could control and enjoy it. This is the obsession of every alcoholic. I could enjoy it if I didn't have to control it, but I couldn't have it both ways. It became my obsession. My fondest hope was becoming more and elusive until I was left with nothing but hopelessness.

The book calls this a "delusion" of astonishing persistence. Here's a dictionary definition of delusion:

An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

Can anyone relate to that? Delusions are by their very nature persistent. But the alcoholic delusion is so immune to reason that any outside observer would be astonished. It is a delusion characterized by countless vain attempts to do the impossible.

The last sentence is a telling one. I have a mental image of the alcoholic running into a burning building to retrieve something that is no longer there.We pursued it to the gates of insanity and death, and the closer we got to Hell, the harder we ran.

None of us liked the leveling of pride

Another comment about this paragraph. No matter how attractive the AA message may be to the new person, it is common knowledge that many if not most reject it out of hand.

As I noted in an earlier post, when I began drinking I liked the effect "produced" by alcohol. It never occurred to me that a similar state of happiness was achievable by hard work. It is not surprising that when confronted by a way out that required effort on my part I wanted nothing to do with it.
That's why it's so critical to notice that Bill starts with this assumption then says "But we saw that it worked on others..." New people need to see the undeniable reality that it works in others. We have an obligation to show that.

Plowing the soil

There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.  - Alcoholics Anonymous, p.25

They that are whole have no need of a physician. - Matthew 9:12

There is no need for a solution when there's no problem. From the very beginning, when I inwardly knew that my drinking was far from normal, I would comfort myself in the knowledge that alcohol wasn't causing me any problems. And I harbored the delusion that if it ever did become a problem I would start drinking "normally." But it never did. Not that alcohol wasn't creating havoc and hurting everyone around me. I just made the definition of "problem" a moving target that was always conveniently worse than what happened to be going on at the moment.

In his Guest House talk, Bill talks of the soil, the climate and the light. And by the soil, I believe he refers to the receptiveness of the alcoholic mind. The image is like that in the parable of the sower and the seed. The seed only takes root in soil that has been prepared by being broken. (I guess you could say that we actually were getting "plowed".) But it's a brokenness that is of no value unrecognized. The alcoholic has to finally come to the realization that he has passed beyond the point of human aid, that all the resources he can bring to bear on the problem fail utterly. And it is in that state where the soil can receive the seed.

Bill spends most of the chapter up to this point doing precisely that. It's a sweeping survey of the utter hopelessness of the alcoholic condition. And it is a strategy that he and the other early AAs utilized in approaching a new prospect. They made certain that any hope the new man might have of solving the problem on his own was thoroughly destroyed as they recounted their own futile attempts to pull off the impossible. Bill recounts that, when Roland returned to Karl Jung after his horrible relapse, Jung's admission that he had nothing further to offer him added "agony to despair."

But then, suddenly, a sliver of light penetrates this intolerable darkness There is a solution!  Bill recounts that it swept through him like a mighty wind. But those "moments of clarity" we have experienced are no less valid and by no means less profound.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. - Isaiah 9:2

You must excuse me for getting so biblical on you, but I only do so to point out that we alcoholics are not experiencing something new. God's been doing this from the beginning. If I were more conversant in other religions, I might be inclined to cite examples from those traditions. I'm sure there are many.

We saw that it worked in others. There is the source of the light. My friend Bruce M. would paint this picture. A ship sinks and I am struggling to stay afloat. And around me people are clinging to big hunks of concrete but I refuse to do so because logic tells me that concrete doesn't float. Yet it works for them. So I think to myself "to hell with reason, I'm finding me a piece of concrete."

I remember vividly the moment in Sacred Heart when the idea entered my mind that this might work for me. And the feeling that I got was that it was going to be OK. And it was.




 

A show of hands

There are times when the absence of comments leads me to believe that no one is reading this. I got an email that assured me that at least two other people were reading it.

If you are reading this, please let me know by leaving a comment or emailing me at sclarkaz@gmail.com. An audience if two is okay with me, but I would like to know who else is out there.

Thanks.

My head is out to get my ass

These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body.. - Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 23

 AA can't get you sober. That's a medical issue for which we have no resources.

AA can help you stay sober under the right circumstances.

The most insane thing I can do is to start drinking, and I must be sober to do it. In other words, every AA that has gone back out did it while sober. This may seem obvious, but there is a crucial fact emerging from that: AA is here to protect the minds of sober alcoholics from themselves.

 As Bill found out all too well, the tremendous self-knowledge he had acquired from his time with Dr. Silkworth was useless because this self-knowledge was operating from within an insane mind.

We are all familiar with the stock definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, yada yada. But that's really a definition of neurosis, a mild and very common form of unhealthy thinking. A psychotic, on the other hand, is reacting perfectly rationally to the distorted reality in which he finds himself. And most people suffering from psychoses are quite convinced of their own sanity. So which side of that wall do you think the alcoholic stands? That's why we'll find words like "delusion" in chapters to come.

I love to recount an episode in my own life. (Many of you have heard it, probably too much. Apologies.) I was in treatment back in 1981 at a place called Sacred Heart run by a recovered alcoholic priest in downtown Detroit. The center was mainly for low-bottom drunks. I did not, by the way, think I belonged there, but how I ended up in that place is a story in itself.

We received rudimentary medical workups by nurses who probably did it for nothing. As my blood was being drawn for liver enzyme tests, I mentioned that I would be interested in the results since I was worried about the condition of my liver. Her reply was simple and profound: "Your problem ain't your liver, honey. It's your thinker you need to worry about." That is exactly what that quote from the Big Book is saying.

I remember the "Forty Questions" pamphlets which I think the National Council of Alcoholism put out. I though I was doing pretty good because I only answered "yes" to half of them, until I found out that two or three "yes" responses were enough for a positive diagnosis. But some years later I heard a speaker make the following observation. If you substitute the word "think" for "drink" it is also a good barometer. Have you ever lost a job because of thinking? Does thinking interfere with your relationships? Has anyone ever told you that you should stop thinking, or that your thinking had become a problem?

Eventually we will be told that we can use our God-given minds because sanity will have returned, but a lot of work will have been done by the time we reach that happy point.

Reasons Yet Obscure

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. - Alcoholics Anonymous, p.24

If you've ever attended a "Joe and Charlie" Big Book study, you know that you are supposed to pay attention to the "squiggly writing."  So, even though I haven't been particularly inspired to comment on this chapter, I feel duty bound to discuss this squiggle.

To this day, with all the powers of science and medicine being brought to bear on this question, the reasons are "yet obscure." And I certainly make no claim to understanding the roots of alcoholism per se. But I can make some very specific observations about my own case.

I drank because, as Dr. Silkworth says in his "opinion," I liked the effects of alcohol. From the moment I took my first drink, I knew that this was something that was going to become a permanent part of my life. It would be inaccurate to say that I was "addicted" to alcohol at this point. I simply knew that drinking made me feel better. And who didn't want to feel better all the time?

Now what is really strange about that last paragraph is the unstated assumption that not drinking felt bad. I didn't know I felt bad until alcohol made me feel better. So it was obvious that I was born with a deficiency, one that I was not aware that I had. I was truly born with an alcohol deficiency. And drinking made me whole, made me right.

I make the analogy of someone who, from the day they are born, has a burning sensation over their entire body. They don't know they have it because they have never know anything else. Then one day they get a shot of Novocaine. Suddenly that part of their body feels indescribably better, and they make the decision that this Novocaine is some good stuff. They're going to use it every day they can.

So what kind of pain was I in before alcohol came along to relieve it? I don't know. To say that my pain was the kind that a sedative would cure simply begs the question. But I strongly suspect that most alcoholics can relate to that condition.

However, as I became more and more caught up in this obsession, those around me began to be affected, mildly at first but worse and worse each passing year. And I was a witness to this tragedy. But to acknowledge it would threaten my drinking. So I needed to become more and more selfish in order to protect the only source of happiness I knew.

For me, alcoholism was an abnormal state of mind and body coupled with an ever intensifying selfishness needed to relieve it. It would be a long time before I developed true physical dependency on booze, but I would never have gotten to that point if I hadn't started out this way.

Thus was my denial cemented into place. And when the sad day came when I could no longer hide from the miserable truth, I had no resources to cope with it. I could only imagine a life stretching dismally before me, of one binge after another with no relief in sight.

I don't know if any of that sheds light on alcoholism in general. But when enough of us get together and begin describing that inward experience of being a drunk, the mystery of "why" becomes increasingly irrelevant. We become caught up in the glorious reality that "there is a solution."