AA Comes of Age

by Alcoholics Anonymous

the obsession of the mind that compels us to drink and the allergy of the body that condemns us to go mad or die.

“No, Bill,” he had said, “you are not hallucinating. Whatever you have got, you had better hang on to; it is so much better than what you had only an hour ago.”

“Stop preaching at them,” Dr. Silkworth had said, “and give them the hard medical facts first. This may soften them up at depth so that they will be willing to do anything to get well. Then they may accept those spiritual ideas of yours, and even a higher Power.”

It was soon evident that a scheme of personal sponsorship would have to be devised for the new people. Each prospect was assigned an older A.A., who visited him at his home or in the hospital, instructed him on A.A. principles, and conducted him to his first meeting. But in the face of many hundreds of pleas for help, the supply of elders could not possibly match the demand. Brand-new A.A.’s, sober only a month or even a week, had to sponsor alcoholics still drying up in the hospitals.

The Cleveland pioneers had proved three essential things: the value of personal sponsorship; the worth of the A.A. book in indoctrinating newcomers, and finally the tremendous fact that A.A., when the word really got around, could now soundly grow to great size.

But the important thing is this: the early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else.

Such is the paradox of A.A. regeneration: strength arising out of complete defeat and weakness, the loss of one’s old life as a condition for finding a new one. But we of A.A. do not have to understand this paradox; we have only to be grateful for it.

The Oxford Groups’ absolute concepts—absolute purity, absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love—were frequently too much for the drunks. These ideas had to be fed with teaspoons rather than by buckets.

“We took A.A.’s Twelve Steps over to the largest Buddhist monastery in this province. We showed them to the priest at the head of it. After he had finished looking over the Twelve Steps, the monk said, ‘Why, these are fine! Since we as Buddhists don’t understand God just as you do, it might be slightly more acceptable if you inserted the word ‘good’ in your Steps instead of ‘God.’

He will finally see that alcoholism is a quest for survival in which the good is sometimes the enemy of the best, and that only the best can bring the true good.

Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps of recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. Drunkenness and disintegration are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they are results of personal disobedience to spiritual principles. We must obey certain principles, or we die. The same stern threat applies to the group itself. Unless there is approximate conformity to A.A.’s Twelve Traditions, the group too can deteriorate and die.

I have a feeling that if I ever find myself in Heaven, it will be from backing away from Hell. At this point, Heaven seems as boring as sobriety does to an alcoholic ten minutes before he quits.

Oh, we know the story of an alcoholic’s flight from God, and his movement toward Him. “Lord, give me sobriety, but not yet!” “Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!” I don’t think there’s an A.A. in this room who isn’t worrying about one of those steps. “Lord, let me make that step, but not yet!” The picture of the A.A.’s quest for God, but especially God’s loving chase for the A.A., was never put more beautifully than in what I think is one of the greatest lyrics and odes in the English language. It was written by a narcotic addict, and alcohol is a narcotic. It’s a poem by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven.” Let me just give you a few of the lines and I’ll sit down. I fled Him down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him and under running laughter Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated Adown titanic glooms of chasmèd fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. And here’s his description of God: But with unhurrying chase And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet— “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

Prayer, in ways which to me are theoretically quite unfathomable but which are always open to us actually, turns on the switch, opens up the power by closing the circuit. We do not so much “get what we want” as find out what we should do. Awakening—in the individual or in companies or in nations—always includes discovering the power that is in prayer.

Characteristic of the so-called typical alcoholic is a narcissistic egocentric core, dominated by feelings of omnipotence, intent on maintaining at all costs its inner integrity.

Sillman recently reported that he felt he could discern the outlines of a common character structure among problem drinkers and that the best terms he could find for the group of qualities noted was “defiant individuality” and “grandiosity.” In my opinion, those words were accurately chosen. Inwardly the alcoholic brooks no control from man or God. He, the alcoholic, is and must be master of his destiny. He will fight to the end to preserve that position.

In this statement, the patient manifests a different attitude toward God, and he also shows that he has become aware of the fact that, as he ceases the effort to maintain his individuality, he can relax and enjoy life in a quiet, yet thoroughly satisfying way. Such feelings are, as he intimates, distinctly spiritual in quality, and he was correct in their appraisal, because he has been able to remain dry for a period of nearly a year. The change to objectivity and the altered feeling tone have proved to be what he needed to stay sober. Despite this relatively brief period of sobriety, the patient feels that he is on much firmer footing. Hitherto, during periods of dryness, he was constantly fighting liquor. Now he has real peace of mind, because he knows what it takes to keep thinking soberly.