Step Two Is the Admission That You Can’t Heal a Sick Mind With a Sick Mind — Joe and Charlie
About This Speaker Tape
Joe and Charlie walk the room through Chapter 3 of the Big Book — More About Alcoholism — and press on one point until it lands: insanity is not craziness, it is less-than-wholeness of mind, the inability to see the truth about alcohol in the stone-cold-sober moment before the first drink. They use the pie metaphor (you are not all gone, you are just not quite all here) and line up four words Bill W. uses interchangeably — obsession, illusion, delusion, insanity — so the reader cannot miss that they all mean believing a lie.
The teaching moves through four case studies. The man of thirty stays dry for twenty-five years, retires, pulls out the carpet slippers and a bottle, and is dead in four. Jim, the car salesman, sits down for a sandwich and a glass of milk with no intention of drinking, then suddenly decides a little whiskey in the milk on a full stomach cannot hurt him. The jaywalker keeps stepping in front of fast-moving vehicles — fractured skull, broken legs, broken back — swearing each time he will stop. Fred, the successful accountant, on top of the world after a good day in Washington, crosses the threshold of the hotel dining room and thinks a couple of cocktails with dinner would be nice.
The pattern they hammer is identical in every case: the real problem is not the body that ensures we cannot drink, it is the mind that tells us we can. Whether low-bottom like Jim or high-bottom like Fred, the alcoholic drinks the same way — on a lie. The chapter closes on the crux: the alcoholic, at certain times, has no effective mental defense against the first drink, and that defense must come from a Higher Power. You cannot heal a sick mind with a sick mind.
Charlie closes with a personal turn. He was raised Southern Baptist on hellfire and brimstone, and at twelve or thirteen the preacher told him thinking about it was as bad as doing it. He had already been thinking about it long enough to be getting brain damage from it, so he decided if he was going to hell anyway he might as well go. He walked into AA at thirty-eight with the spiritual knowledge of a defiant twelve-year-old boy, and he says that is why Bill wrote the next chapter, We Agnostics — to give people with old ideas about a Higher Power new information they could actually make a decision on.
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Full Transcript
You know, step two says we came to believe that a power greater than ourself could restore us to sanity.
Well, if we've got to be restored to sanity, that indicates we must be insane.
And many alcoholics are highly offended when you bring this...
Well, if we've got to be restored to sanity, that indicates we must be insane.
And many alcoholics are highly offended when you bring this...
You know, step two says we came to believe that a power greater than ourself could restore us to sanity.
Well, if we've got to be restored to sanity, that indicates we must be insane.
And many alcoholics are highly offended when you bring this up.
They say, oh, don't tell me I'm insane.
Yeah, I do some pretty crazy stupid things when drinking.
But when I'm sober, I'm much like normal people.
Other alcoholics say, well, I don't have any trouble with this insanity
because I remember the crazy stupid things I did while drinking.
In either case, they're referring to the stupid things we do while drunk.
No, that's not insanity.
The stupid things we do while drunk, that's caused by a mind that is filled with alcohol,
which lowers the inhibitions.
And if your mind is filled with something that lowers your inhibitions, look out.
You're going to do some pretty crazy stupid things.
That's why they give all that free booze downstairs.
That's not insanity.
That's caused by alcohol itself.
In order for us to understand this, we finally had to go back to the dictionary again
and to look up the word sanity or the word sane.
And it's defined in the dictionary as wholeness of mind or completeness of mind.
If your mind is whole, if your mind is complete,
that means you can see the truth about everything around you.
You'll normally make decisions then based on truth,
and life turns out to be pretty good.
An insane mind is one that is less than whole.
A mind that is less than whole cannot always see the truth about everything around it.
Sometimes makes a decision based upon a lie,
and then life becomes pretty lousy.
To be insane does not mean you're crazy.
If you're crazy, that means you've lost more than half your marbles.
And you've got to be locked up somewhere to protect you and society from you.
That's craziness.
But insanity is just less than whole.
I think one of the best ways I know to illustrate it is let's take a pie.
Set it here in front of us.
Let's cut that pie into ten pieces.
You come along and I give you a piece.
My pie is now less than whole, but hell, I've still got 90% of it.
Somebody else comes along, I give them a piece of pie.
My pie is now more or less than whole, but I've still got 80% of it.
Insanity does not mean you're all gone.
It just means you're not quite all here.
And when it comes to alcohol, from time to time,
it seems as though we're not quite all here.
Because we can't always see the truth.
We can't always see the truth about alcohol.
We make a decision based upon a lie.
Then we run into the truth and life becomes an absolute living hell.
So let's look within the mind of we alcoholics.
Just before we take the first drink, stone cold sober,
can we or can we not see the truth?
If we can see the truth, we're sane.
If we can't, we're insane.
Now Bill is going to show us this by a series of examples.
He's going to give us.
He's the man of 30.
He's going to look at Jim.
He's going to look at the jaywalker.
And he's going to look at Fred.
And each time we're going to look into the mind to see if we can or cannot see the truth about alcohol.
Let's look at it in just a few minutes.
This chapter is called More About Alcoholism.
It could be called More Truth About Alcoholism.
I've heard all my life, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free.
And if you're not free, it's because you don't know the truth.
And this chapter here is to give me more truth.
So I can base my life upon truth rather than upon things that are not true.
He said,
Most of us have been unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics.
No person likes to think that he's bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
Therefore, it's not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized
by countless vain attempts to prove that we 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 the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The persistence of this illusion is the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The persistence of this illusion is the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The delusion is astonishing.
Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
Now, 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're like other people or presently may be has to be smashed.
Now, be careful.
In these two paragraphs that Joe just read,
he has used four different words that all mean the same thing.
And if you catch him at it, you know what he's doing.
And if you don't, you'll think,
you'll think he's talking about something else.
He said,
The idea that somehow, someday, he will control and enjoy his drinking
is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.
Now, we know an obsession is an idea that is so strong
it can make you believe something that's not true.
It can make you believe a lie.
The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.
We know what an illusionist is.
An illusionist is a magician.
An illusionist is a magician.
And they can stand in front of you and with a sleight of hand and a few props,
they can make you believe something that's not true.
So, illusion also means to believe something that's not true or to believe a lie.
Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
Insanity is to believe something that's not true.
The next paragraph, he said,
The delusion that we are like other people or presently may be has to be smashed.
Delusion means the same thing.
If you've deluded yourself,
it means you've come to believe something that's not true.
So, you may see him using any one of four terms.
Obsession, illusion, delusion, or insanity.
All four mean exactly the same thing,
to believe something that is not true or to believe a lie.
Let's go over to page 32, second paragraph.
Let's look at the lie the man of 30 believed.
It said,
A man of 30 was doing a great deal of spree drinking.
He was very nervous in the mornings after these bouts and quieted himself with more liquor.
He was ambitious to succeed in business,
but saw that he would get nowhere if he drank at all.
Once he started, he had no control whatever.
He made up his mind that until he'd been successful in business and retired,
he would not touch another drop.
An exceptional man.
He remained bone dry for 25 years and retired at the age of 55.
After successful and happy business,
he had a life of his own.
He was a successful man.
He had a great business career.
Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has,
that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.
Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle.
In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated.
Now he tried to regulate his drinking for a while,
making several trips to the hospital in the meantime.
Then gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found that he could not.
Every means of solving his problem, which money he could buy, was at his disposal.
Every attempt failed.
Though a robust man in retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years.
Now, this case contains a powerful lesson.
Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could thereafter drink normally.
But here is a man who at 55 years found we had just left off at 30.
We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we're in a short time as bad as ever.
Now, if we're planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind,
nor any lurking notion that someday we'll be immune to alcohol.
Now, we know the truth to be this.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
We've never seen one single case where one of us was able to go back to successful drinking.
Now, to believe anything different than that is to believe something that is not true or to believe a lie.
This guy believed that after 25 years of sobriety,
he could now drink like normal people.
Now, based upon that belief,
he took a drink, triggered the allergy, couldn't stop.
Four years later, he's dead.
Now, is his real problem, though,
the fact that he has a physical allergy to alcohol
or a form of insanity that tells him it's okay to drink alcohol after 25 years of sobriety?
The real problem, then, is in our mind,
telling us we can't.
We can't drink, rather than in our body, that ensures that we can't drink.
Let's go over to page 34, second paragraph.
For those who are unable to drink moderately, the question is how to stop altogether.
We are assuming, of course, that the reader desires to stop.
Whether such a person can quit upon a non-spiritual basis
depends upon the extent to which he's already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not.
Many of us felt we had plenty of character.
We had plenty of character.
There was a tremendous urge to cease forever, yet we found it impossible.
This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it,
this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.
How, then, should we help our readers determine to their own satisfaction whether they are one of us?
The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful,
but we think we can render an even greater service to alcoholic sufferers
and perhaps to the medical fraternity.
So we shall describe some of the mental states
that precede a relapse into drinking,
for obviously this is the crux of the problem.
What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time
the desperate experiment of the first drink?
Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree,
which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy,
are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon.
Why does he?
Of what is he thinking?
Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim.
Now we're going to look in a little bit more detail about Jim.
We're going to look in old Jim's mind, just before he gets drunk.
And we're going to see whether he is sane or insane.
Joe loves Jim.
Yeah, I love old Jim. I identify with Jim.
Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim.
This man has a charming wife and family.
He inherited a lucrative automobile agency.
He had a commendable World War record.
He's a good salesman. Everybody likes him.
Typical alcoholic, isn't he?
Hmm?
We can see.
Oh, except for a nervous disposition.
Now, he did no drinking until he was 35.
In a few years, he became so violent and went intoxicated that he had to be committed.
On leaving the treatment...
On leaving the asylum, he came into contact with us.
Now, we told him what we knew of alcoholism.
They told him about step one, the physical allergy,
the obsession of the mind, the powerless condition.
And the answer we had found.
They told him about step two, the power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Now, he made a beginning.
A little later on, the book says step three is just a beginning.
So, apparently, Jim took steps one, two, and three.
And immediately, things started to get better for him.
His family was reassembled, and he began to work as a salesman for a business he'd lost through drinking.
And all went well for a time.
But he failed to enlarge his spiritual life.
The book's going to tell us the only way we enlarge on step three is four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.
And Jim didn't do any of those.
One, two, and three.
To his consternation, he found himself drunk a half a dozen times in rapid succession.
Now, on each of these occasions, we worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened.
Oh, these were good AA members.
Jim got drunk six times in a row.
Each time, they went over there and worked with him, carefully reviewing what had happened.
You get drunk six times in a row today, they probably won't have anything to do with you.
These were good, solid AA members.
He agreed he was a real alcoholic and in serious condition.
Now, he knew he faced another trip.
He would have gone to the asylum if he kept on.
Moreover, he would lose his family, from whom he had deep affection.
Yet, he got drunk again.
And we asked him to tell us exactly what happened.
They're getting a little tired of Jim now.
They said, they said, my God, Jim, this is seven times in a row.
Let's don't go through this anymore.
You sit down here, and you tell us exactly how this has happened.
Now, on page 36, we're going to see where Jim was sane, and then we're going to see where he went insane.
Well, this is his story.
I came to work on Tuesday morning.
And we read this book for years before we saw this.
I came to work on Tuesday morning.
Where was he all day Monday, you know?
God, we're bad about Mondays.
Bad about Mondays.
Now, he said, I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once don't.
Now, I don't think that's insanity.
That's probably nonsense.
That's normal, sane thinking.
I think any of us that had to be a salesman for a concern we once owned would probably be a little irritated by that fact, too.
That's normal, sane thinking.
He said, I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious.
The boss probably said, say, Jim, by the way, where were you all day yesterday anyhow?
Nothing serious, just enough to irritate him.
He's a little restless and a little irritable and a little discontented.
He said, then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car.
That's normal, and if you're a car salesman, you want to get away from the shop for a while, drive out in the country, see somebody we already know that we're trying to sell a car to.
That would be normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
He said, on the way, I felt hungry, so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar.
I had no intention of drinking.
I just thought I'd get a sandwich.
What's more normal than if you're hungry, to stop in a roadside place to get a sandwich, the fact that they got a bar there is beside the point.
We have no intention of drinking.
We're hungry.
We're going to get a sandwich.
Normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
I also had the notion I might find a customer for a bar at this place which was familiar, but I'd been going to it for years.
I'd eaten there many times during the months I was sober.
We're not going in there to drink.
We've eaten there many times during the months we're sober.
We're going to go in there and get a sandwich and maybe sell a car while we're in there.
Normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
He said, I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk.
Still no thought of drinking.
What's more normal than to sit down at a table and order a sandwich and a glass of milk?
Normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
He said, I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.
If you're hungry enough, there's nothing wrong with two sandwiches and two glasses of milk.
Unless you're a member of Overeaters Anonymous, you'd better look at it.
But that would be normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
Two sandwiches, two glasses of milk.
Now comes the squiggly writing.
That's italic.
He said, suddenly.
That means right now.
Suddenly.
The thought crossed my mind that if I would put an ounce of whiskey in the milk, it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach.
This is absolute insanity, isn't it?
For this guy to believe that he can take whiskey, mix it with milk, and take it on a full stomach, and it won't hurt him.
Now, based on that, I'm going to tell you a story.
Now, based on the insane idea, he makes a decision and takes some action.
He said, I ordered whiskey and poured it into the milk.
And I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart.
I felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach.
Now, we've got it inside of ourselves.
The physical allergy takes over.
Now then, we can't stop.
The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into the milk.
That didn't seem to bother me, so I tried another.
Can you imagine how he's going to feel with whiskey and milk back and forth?
What a hangover he's going to have.
Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim.
Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and possessions, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him.
Now, he had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic.
Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk.
Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity.
How can such a lack of a portion of the ability to think straight be called anything else?
And if you were looking for a definition of insanity, that would be it right there.
The lack of a portion of the ability to think straight to be called anything else.
Now, is Jim's real problem the fact that he has a physical allergy to alcohol?
Or that he has a form of insanity that tells him it's okay to drink alcohol mixed with milk on a full stomach?
The real problem centers in the mind telling us we can drink rather than the body that ensures that we can't.
Page 37, last paragraph.
Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jaywalking.
He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles.
Now, I don't understand this guy at all.
But I can see him out here on the interstate.
Waiting for a truck or a bus to come down through there.
Jumps out in front of it.
Spins around two or three times.
Sees how close it can come to hitting him without actually hitting him.
For some reason, he gets a thrill out of it.
Don't understand him.
But I can see him doing it.
He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings.
People say, hey Bill, you better quit doing that.
You're going to get yourself hurt.
Up to this point, you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun.
Luck then deserts him and he's slightly injured several times in succession.
He's getting a little older now.
He can't move as fast.
They begin to hit him once in a while.
Nothing serious.
He just kind of bounces off of them.
You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out.
But presently, he's hit again, this time as a fractured skull.
Now, he got hurt bad this time.
Within a week after leaving the hospital,
a fast-moving trolley car broke down.
He gets hurt bad again.
Now, he sings our national anthem.
He tells you he's decided to stop jaywalking for good.
He said, man, I'll never do that again as long as I live.
But in a few weeks, he breaks both legs.
On through the years, his conduct continues,
accompanied by his continual promises to be careful
or to keep off the streets altogether.
Finally, he can no longer work.
He's just a beat-up now.
He can't hold a job.
His wife gets a divorce.
She stops working.
He's tired of supporting him and the kids and the hospital bills.
And he's held up to ridicule.
He tries every known means to get the jaywalking idea out of his head,
not his body, his head.
He shuts himself up in a treatment center,
hoping to mend his ways.
But the day he comes out,
he races in front of a fire engine which breaks his back.
Such a man would be crazy, wouldn't he?
Now, you may think our illustration is too ridiculous, but is it?
We who have been through the ringer,
have to admit,
if we substituted alcoholism for jaywalking,
the illustration would fit us exactly.
However intelligent we may have been in other respects,
where alcohol has been involved,
we've been strangely insane.
Strong language, but isn't it true?
Oh, I think that's so appropriate today.
You know, once again, because of education,
many, many people are getting to us
before they have to lose everything.
Occasionally, you see somebody come in here that's still married.
Once in a while, they come in and they've got a job.
Believe it or not, I saw one come in about a month ago,
and he still had an automobile.
And we start talking to those people about insanity.
They say, man, don't tell me I'm crazy.
I haven't lost anything.
I've got my job.
I've got my blah, blah.
No, uh-uh.
We're not talking about that at all.
We're talking about one thing and one thing only.
Can we or can we not see the truth about alcohol?
If we can, we're sane.
If we can't, we're insane.
Now, the low-bottom drunk like Jim,
it's probably easier for him to see his insanity
because he lost everything that he had, period.
A high-bottom drunk who hasn't lost a lot of stuff,
sometimes it's a little more difficult for them to see it.
But I'll tell you,
whether you're low-bottom or high-bottom,
if you get drunk, you're going to get drunk the same way,
believing something that is not true.
Let's go to page whatever the next one is, 39.
My old page is just tore up.
I can't read it anymore.
And we're going to look at a guy named Fred.
Now, Fred is the opposite of Jim.
Fred is high-bottom.
Fred never lost anything.
Jim didn't feel too good today.
He got drunk.
Fred is on top of the world the day he gets drunk.
Yet he got drunk the same way he believed a lie.
Let's look at Fred's lie.
Page 39 said,
Fred is a partner in a well-known accounting firm.
His income is good.
He has a fine home.
He is happily married and father of promising children of college age.
Now, he has so attractive a personality that he makes friends with everyone.
If ever there was a successful businessman, it's Fred.
Now, to all appearance, he is a stable, well-balanced individual.
Yet he's alcoholic.
Now, we first saw Fred about a year ago in a hospital where he'd gone to recover from a bad case of the jitters.
It was his first experience of this kind, and he was much ashamed of it.
Far from admitting he was an alcoholic, he told himself he'd came to the hospital to rest his nerves.
We see lots of nerve resters in AA today, just like old Fred is.
The doctor intimated strongly that he might be worse than he realized.
For a few days, he was depressed about his condition.
Now, he made up his mind to quit.
He made up his mind to quit drinking altogether.
It never occurred to him that perhaps he could do so in spite of his character and standing.
Fred would not believe himself an alcoholic.
He would not take step one.
Much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem.
If you can't take one, you can't take two.
We told him what we knew of alcoholism.
They told him about step one and step two.
And he was interested and could see that he had some of the symptoms.
He said, I'm a little bit alcoholic.
Borderline case.
Now, he was a long way from admitting he could do nothing about himself.
Now, he was positive that his humiliating experience plus the knowledge he had acquired would keep him sober the rest of his life.
Self-knowledge would fix it.
Now, we heard no more of Fred for a while.
One day, we were told that he was back in the hospital.
This time, he was quite shaky.
He soon indicated he was anxious to see us.
The story he told is most instructive.
For here was a chap absolutely convinced he had to stop drinking, who had no excuse for drinking,
who exhibited splendid judgment and determination in all his other concerns, yet was flat on his back nevertheless.
Well, let him tell you about it.
He said, I was much impressed with what you fellows said about alcoholism.
I frankly did not believe it would be possible for me to drink again.
And I rather appreciate your ideas about that subtle insanity which precedes the first drink.
But I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned.
I reasoned I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows,
that I had been used as successful in licking my other personal problems,
and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed.
I felt I had every right to be self-confident.
It would be only a matter of exercising my willpower and keeping on guard.
Now, in this frame of mind, I went about my business, and for a time all was well.
I had no trouble refusing drinks and began to wonder if I had not been making too hard a work of a simple matter.
We think Fred began to get drunk right here.
He began to say, Now, this staying sober is easy. Nothing to this.
One day I went to Washington to present some accounting evidence to a government bureau.
I had been out of town during this particular time.
I had a particular dry spell, so there was nothing new about that.
Physically I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries.
My business came off well. I was pleased and knew my partners would be too.
It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.
Everything is on top of the world for old Fred.
He is doing great, making lots of money, family happy, business associates happy.
Everything is good in Fred's life.
He said, I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner.
As I crossed the threshold of the dining room,
the thought came to mind, it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails and go back to the hospital.
Now, that's the truth, isn't it?
No way could he drink on the truth.
His mind said it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner.
That was all. Nothing more.
Now, based on the insane idea,
he makes a decision, takes some action.
I ordered a cocktail in my meal.
Then I ordered another cocktail.
We got it inside ourselves now.
The allergy takes over.
After dinner, I decide to take a walk.
When I returned to the hotel, it struck me a highball would be fine before going to bed,
so I stepped into the bar and had one.
I remember having several more that night and plenty next morning.
I have a shadowy recollection of being in an airplane bound for New York
and finding a friendly taxi cab driver at the landing field instead of my wife.
The driver escorted me about for several days.
I know little of where I went or what I said and did.
Then came the hospital with unbearable mental and physical suffering.
As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington.
Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink.
This time, I had not thought of the consequences at all.
I had commenced to drink as carelessly as though the cocktails were ginger ale.
Now, is Fred's real problem the fact that he has a physical allergy to alcohol
or that he has a form of insanity that tells him it's okay to have a couple of cocktails with dinner?
The real problem centers in the mind, telling us we can drink rather than the body that ensures we can't.
Page 43, last paragraph.
You know, Bill,
I had the idea that self-knowledge would fix it.
Roland had the idea that self-knowledge would fix it.
Fred had the idea that self-knowledge would fix it.
Bill's trying to show us through here.
They all have the obsession of the mind.
And he's trying to show us through the illustrations of Man of 30, Jim, Jay Walker, and Fred to tell us one thing.
And the last paragraph says, once more.
See, he just went through all this to say once more,
the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink.
Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense.
His defense must come from a higher power.
And that is the solution.
See, you can't heal a sick mind with a sick mind.
Self-knowledge won't get it.
The more we try to think our way out of it, the deeper into it we get.
We must come from a higher power.
Our defense must come from a higher power.
And you notice he didn't say the practicing alcoholic or the drinking alcoholic.
He just said the alcoholic.
Now what that means to me today is that I have no effective mental defense against the first drink.
Left on my own resources.
Invariably, I'm going to go right back to drinking again.
Without the aid of a power greater than human power.
Now if you're the kind of alcoholic that I am,
and if you were raised in the church setting that I was raised in,
by the end of chapter 3,
you are now faced with one hell of a dilemma.
Because he's convinced me in chapter 3,
without the aid of a power greater than I am, I'm going back to drinking.
But I also felt that even though that was true,
it wouldn't be possible for me to get the aid of a power greater than I am.
Because you see, like Joe, I was raised in a good old Southern Baptist church.
Now I've got nothing against a good old Southern Baptist church.
It's a great church.
But when I was a kid growing up, I'm sure that from time to time they talked about a kind and a loving God.
But if they did, the message never got to the pew I sat in.
Because all I ever remember hearing about God when I was growing up in church
was hell, fire, and brimstone,
and going to hell for lying and cheating,
and stealing, and drinking whiskey,
and committing adultery.
By the time I got to AA, I'd been doing that for about 20 some odd years.
And I know that God had already told St. Peter,
when that little four-eyed sucker gets up here,
send him downstairs, we'll not need his kind.
And I knew that if God had anything to do with me,
it wouldn't be anything good.
It would certainly be something bad.
I remember so clearly when I separated from God.
In that Baptist church I grew up in, they gave me the rules.
They said if you do this, this, and this, you'll be okay.
If you do that, that, and that, you're going to hell just sure as anything.
Now I didn't have any trouble with their rules at all
until I got to be about 12 or 13 years old.
And one day it seemed to me that the preacher looked me straight in the eye,
and he said,
Son, to think about doing it is just as bad as doing it.
And I said, Oh, shit.
I've had it now because I'd been thinking about doing it for a long time.
In fact, I'd been thinking about doing it long enough,
I was starting to get brain damage from it.
And I said, If you're going to hell for thinking about it,
then you might as well go to hell.
He said, Well, let's go ahead and do it.
And I did.
And I didn't go to hell immediately.
And I said, That sucker has been lying to me all along.
I said, He and my parents and my teachers have formed together in a conspiracy
to keep me from having any fun.
And I said, From this day on,
I do not intend to pay any attention to what they have to say.
I don't have any intention of following God's rules,
their rules, or anybody else's rules.
From this day on, I'm going to do it my way.
And I'm going to do it whenever I want to,
and if they don't like it, to hell with them.
Now, when I got to AA, I had that attitude
of a 12-year-old boy who had defied God, his parents, and his teachers.
And when I first walked into AA, I was 38 years old.
With the spiritual knowledge of God of that 12-year-old boy.
No wonder we have trouble with this God thing when we get to AA.
Anybody else ever have those kind of feelings about God and people?
And I think Bill recognized that.
And I think he said sooner or later,
I'm going to have to ask these people to make a decision about God.
And I think he said in his mind that they're not going to be able to make that decision.
Based upon old ideas.
And that's what I had when I got here, old ideas.
And I think he said, I believe I need to give them some new information about God.
Where they might be able to discard some old ideas,
pick up some new ideas,
and then they'll be able to make a decision about this God thing.
And he wrote another chapter called, We Agnostics.
Which I think is one of the greatest pieces of spiritual information I've ever read in my life.
As I read that and studied that, I could see where some of my old ideas,
old prejudices about God and religion, were wrong.
And when I could see where they were wrong, then I could discard them.
And then I could accept some new ideas about God.
And then I could make a decision.
But based on hellfire and brimstone,
based on a God of justice,
no way could I have ever made the decision about God.
Well, if we've got to be restored to sanity, that indicates we must be insane.
And many alcoholics are highly offended when you bring this up.
They say, oh, don't tell me I'm insane.
Yeah, I do some pretty crazy stupid things when drinking.
But when I'm sober, I'm much like normal people.
Other alcoholics say, well, I don't have any trouble with this insanity
because I remember the crazy stupid things I did while drinking.
In either case, they're referring to the stupid things we do while drunk.
No, that's not insanity.
The stupid things we do while drunk, that's caused by a mind that is filled with alcohol,
which lowers the inhibitions.
And if your mind is filled with something that lowers your inhibitions, look out.
You're going to do some pretty crazy stupid things.
That's why they give all that free booze downstairs.
That's not insanity.
That's caused by alcohol itself.
In order for us to understand this, we finally had to go back to the dictionary again
and to look up the word sanity or the word sane.
And it's defined in the dictionary as wholeness of mind or completeness of mind.
If your mind is whole, if your mind is complete,
that means you can see the truth about everything around you.
You'll normally make decisions then based on truth,
and life turns out to be pretty good.
An insane mind is one that is less than whole.
A mind that is less than whole cannot always see the truth about everything around it.
Sometimes makes a decision based upon a lie,
and then life becomes pretty lousy.
To be insane does not mean you're crazy.
If you're crazy, that means you've lost more than half your marbles.
And you've got to be locked up somewhere to protect you and society from you.
That's craziness.
But insanity is just less than whole.
I think one of the best ways I know to illustrate it is let's take a pie.
Set it here in front of us.
Let's cut that pie into ten pieces.
You come along and I give you a piece.
My pie is now less than whole, but hell, I've still got 90% of it.
Somebody else comes along, I give them a piece of pie.
My pie is now more or less than whole, but I've still got 80% of it.
Insanity does not mean you're all gone.
It just means you're not quite all here.
And when it comes to alcohol, from time to time,
it seems as though we're not quite all here.
Because we can't always see the truth.
We can't always see the truth about alcohol.
We make a decision based upon a lie.
Then we run into the truth and life becomes an absolute living hell.
So let's look within the mind of we alcoholics.
Just before we take the first drink, stone cold sober,
can we or can we not see the truth?
If we can see the truth, we're sane.
If we can't, we're insane.
Now Bill is going to show us this by a series of examples.
He's going to give us.
He's the man of 30.
He's going to look at Jim.
He's going to look at the jaywalker.
And he's going to look at Fred.
And each time we're going to look into the mind to see if we can or cannot see the truth about alcohol.
Let's look at it in just a few minutes.
This chapter is called More About Alcoholism.
It could be called More Truth About Alcoholism.
I've heard all my life, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free.
And if you're not free, it's because you don't know the truth.
And this chapter here is to give me more truth.
So I can base my life upon truth rather than upon things that are not true.
He said,
Most of us have been unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics.
No person likes to think that he's bodily and mentally different from his fellows.
Therefore, it's not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized
by countless vain attempts to prove that we 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 the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The persistence of this illusion is the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The persistence of this illusion is the greatest obsession of every abnormal drinker.
The delusion is astonishing.
Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
Now, 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're like other people or presently may be has to be smashed.
Now, be careful.
In these two paragraphs that Joe just read,
he has used four different words that all mean the same thing.
And if you catch him at it, you know what he's doing.
And if you don't, you'll think,
you'll think he's talking about something else.
He said,
The idea that somehow, someday, he will control and enjoy his drinking
is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.
Now, we know an obsession is an idea that is so strong
it can make you believe something that's not true.
It can make you believe a lie.
The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.
We know what an illusionist is.
An illusionist is a magician.
An illusionist is a magician.
And they can stand in front of you and with a sleight of hand and a few props,
they can make you believe something that's not true.
So, illusion also means to believe something that's not true or to believe a lie.
Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
Insanity is to believe something that's not true.
The next paragraph, he said,
The delusion that we are like other people or presently may be has to be smashed.
Delusion means the same thing.
If you've deluded yourself,
it means you've come to believe something that's not true.
So, you may see him using any one of four terms.
Obsession, illusion, delusion, or insanity.
All four mean exactly the same thing,
to believe something that is not true or to believe a lie.
Let's go over to page 32, second paragraph.
Let's look at the lie the man of 30 believed.
It said,
A man of 30 was doing a great deal of spree drinking.
He was very nervous in the mornings after these bouts and quieted himself with more liquor.
He was ambitious to succeed in business,
but saw that he would get nowhere if he drank at all.
Once he started, he had no control whatever.
He made up his mind that until he'd been successful in business and retired,
he would not touch another drop.
An exceptional man.
He remained bone dry for 25 years and retired at the age of 55.
After successful and happy business,
he had a life of his own.
He was a successful man.
He had a great business career.
Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has,
that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.
Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle.
In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated.
Now he tried to regulate his drinking for a while,
making several trips to the hospital in the meantime.
Then gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found that he could not.
Every means of solving his problem, which money he could buy, was at his disposal.
Every attempt failed.
Though a robust man in retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years.
Now, this case contains a powerful lesson.
Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could thereafter drink normally.
But here is a man who at 55 years found we had just left off at 30.
We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we're in a short time as bad as ever.
Now, if we're planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind,
nor any lurking notion that someday we'll be immune to alcohol.
Now, we know the truth to be this.
Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
We've never seen one single case where one of us was able to go back to successful drinking.
Now, to believe anything different than that is to believe something that is not true or to believe a lie.
This guy believed that after 25 years of sobriety,
he could now drink like normal people.
Now, based upon that belief,
he took a drink, triggered the allergy, couldn't stop.
Four years later, he's dead.
Now, is his real problem, though,
the fact that he has a physical allergy to alcohol
or a form of insanity that tells him it's okay to drink alcohol after 25 years of sobriety?
The real problem, then, is in our mind,
telling us we can't.
We can't drink, rather than in our body, that ensures that we can't drink.
Let's go over to page 34, second paragraph.
For those who are unable to drink moderately, the question is how to stop altogether.
We are assuming, of course, that the reader desires to stop.
Whether such a person can quit upon a non-spiritual basis
depends upon the extent to which he's already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not.
Many of us felt we had plenty of character.
We had plenty of character.
There was a tremendous urge to cease forever, yet we found it impossible.
This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it,
this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.
How, then, should we help our readers determine to their own satisfaction whether they are one of us?
The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful,
but we think we can render an even greater service to alcoholic sufferers
and perhaps to the medical fraternity.
So we shall describe some of the mental states
that precede a relapse into drinking,
for obviously this is the crux of the problem.
What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time
the desperate experiment of the first drink?
Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree,
which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy,
are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon.
Why does he?
Of what is he thinking?
Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim.
Now we're going to look in a little bit more detail about Jim.
We're going to look in old Jim's mind, just before he gets drunk.
And we're going to see whether he is sane or insane.
Joe loves Jim.
Yeah, I love old Jim. I identify with Jim.
Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim.
This man has a charming wife and family.
He inherited a lucrative automobile agency.
He had a commendable World War record.
He's a good salesman. Everybody likes him.
Typical alcoholic, isn't he?
Hmm?
We can see.
Oh, except for a nervous disposition.
Now, he did no drinking until he was 35.
In a few years, he became so violent and went intoxicated that he had to be committed.
On leaving the treatment...
On leaving the asylum, he came into contact with us.
Now, we told him what we knew of alcoholism.
They told him about step one, the physical allergy,
the obsession of the mind, the powerless condition.
And the answer we had found.
They told him about step two, the power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Now, he made a beginning.
A little later on, the book says step three is just a beginning.
So, apparently, Jim took steps one, two, and three.
And immediately, things started to get better for him.
His family was reassembled, and he began to work as a salesman for a business he'd lost through drinking.
And all went well for a time.
But he failed to enlarge his spiritual life.
The book's going to tell us the only way we enlarge on step three is four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.
And Jim didn't do any of those.
One, two, and three.
To his consternation, he found himself drunk a half a dozen times in rapid succession.
Now, on each of these occasions, we worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened.
Oh, these were good AA members.
Jim got drunk six times in a row.
Each time, they went over there and worked with him, carefully reviewing what had happened.
You get drunk six times in a row today, they probably won't have anything to do with you.
These were good, solid AA members.
He agreed he was a real alcoholic and in serious condition.
Now, he knew he faced another trip.
He would have gone to the asylum if he kept on.
Moreover, he would lose his family, from whom he had deep affection.
Yet, he got drunk again.
And we asked him to tell us exactly what happened.
They're getting a little tired of Jim now.
They said, they said, my God, Jim, this is seven times in a row.
Let's don't go through this anymore.
You sit down here, and you tell us exactly how this has happened.
Now, on page 36, we're going to see where Jim was sane, and then we're going to see where he went insane.
Well, this is his story.
I came to work on Tuesday morning.
And we read this book for years before we saw this.
I came to work on Tuesday morning.
Where was he all day Monday, you know?
God, we're bad about Mondays.
Bad about Mondays.
Now, he said, I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once don't.
Now, I don't think that's insanity.
That's probably nonsense.
That's normal, sane thinking.
I think any of us that had to be a salesman for a concern we once owned would probably be a little irritated by that fact, too.
That's normal, sane thinking.
He said, I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious.
The boss probably said, say, Jim, by the way, where were you all day yesterday anyhow?
Nothing serious, just enough to irritate him.
He's a little restless and a little irritable and a little discontented.
He said, then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car.
That's normal, and if you're a car salesman, you want to get away from the shop for a while, drive out in the country, see somebody we already know that we're trying to sell a car to.
That would be normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
He said, on the way, I felt hungry, so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar.
I had no intention of drinking.
I just thought I'd get a sandwich.
What's more normal than if you're hungry, to stop in a roadside place to get a sandwich, the fact that they got a bar there is beside the point.
We have no intention of drinking.
We're hungry.
We're going to get a sandwich.
Normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
I also had the notion I might find a customer for a bar at this place which was familiar, but I'd been going to it for years.
I'd eaten there many times during the months I was sober.
We're not going in there to drink.
We've eaten there many times during the months we're sober.
We're going to go in there and get a sandwich and maybe sell a car while we're in there.
Normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
He said, I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk.
Still no thought of drinking.
What's more normal than to sit down at a table and order a sandwich and a glass of milk?
Normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
He said, I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.
If you're hungry enough, there's nothing wrong with two sandwiches and two glasses of milk.
Unless you're a member of Overeaters Anonymous, you'd better look at it.
But that would be normal, sane thinking for an alcoholic car salesman.
Two sandwiches, two glasses of milk.
Now comes the squiggly writing.
That's italic.
He said, suddenly.
That means right now.
Suddenly.
The thought crossed my mind that if I would put an ounce of whiskey in the milk, it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach.
This is absolute insanity, isn't it?
For this guy to believe that he can take whiskey, mix it with milk, and take it on a full stomach, and it won't hurt him.
Now, based on that, I'm going to tell you a story.
Now, based on the insane idea, he makes a decision and takes some action.
He said, I ordered whiskey and poured it into the milk.
And I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart.
I felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach.
Now, we've got it inside of ourselves.
The physical allergy takes over.
Now then, we can't stop.
The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into the milk.
That didn't seem to bother me, so I tried another.
Can you imagine how he's going to feel with whiskey and milk back and forth?
What a hangover he's going to have.
Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim.
Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and possessions, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him.
Now, he had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic.
Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk.
Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity.
How can such a lack of a portion of the ability to think straight be called anything else?
And if you were looking for a definition of insanity, that would be it right there.
The lack of a portion of the ability to think straight to be called anything else.
Now, is Jim's real problem the fact that he has a physical allergy to alcohol?
Or that he has a form of insanity that tells him it's okay to drink alcohol mixed with milk on a full stomach?
The real problem centers in the mind telling us we can drink rather than the body that ensures that we can't.
Page 37, last paragraph.
Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jaywalking.
He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of fast-moving vehicles.
Now, I don't understand this guy at all.
But I can see him out here on the interstate.
Waiting for a truck or a bus to come down through there.
Jumps out in front of it.
Spins around two or three times.
Sees how close it can come to hitting him without actually hitting him.
For some reason, he gets a thrill out of it.
Don't understand him.
But I can see him doing it.
He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings.
People say, hey Bill, you better quit doing that.
You're going to get yourself hurt.
Up to this point, you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun.
Luck then deserts him and he's slightly injured several times in succession.
He's getting a little older now.
He can't move as fast.
They begin to hit him once in a while.
Nothing serious.
He just kind of bounces off of them.
You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out.
But presently, he's hit again, this time as a fractured skull.
Now, he got hurt bad this time.
Within a week after leaving the hospital,
a fast-moving trolley car broke down.
He gets hurt bad again.
Now, he sings our national anthem.
He tells you he's decided to stop jaywalking for good.
He said, man, I'll never do that again as long as I live.
But in a few weeks, he breaks both legs.
On through the years, his conduct continues,
accompanied by his continual promises to be careful
or to keep off the streets altogether.
Finally, he can no longer work.
He's just a beat-up now.
He can't hold a job.
His wife gets a divorce.
She stops working.
He's tired of supporting him and the kids and the hospital bills.
And he's held up to ridicule.
He tries every known means to get the jaywalking idea out of his head,
not his body, his head.
He shuts himself up in a treatment center,
hoping to mend his ways.
But the day he comes out,
he races in front of a fire engine which breaks his back.
Such a man would be crazy, wouldn't he?
Now, you may think our illustration is too ridiculous, but is it?
We who have been through the ringer,
have to admit,
if we substituted alcoholism for jaywalking,
the illustration would fit us exactly.
However intelligent we may have been in other respects,
where alcohol has been involved,
we've been strangely insane.
Strong language, but isn't it true?
Oh, I think that's so appropriate today.
You know, once again, because of education,
many, many people are getting to us
before they have to lose everything.
Occasionally, you see somebody come in here that's still married.
Once in a while, they come in and they've got a job.
Believe it or not, I saw one come in about a month ago,
and he still had an automobile.
And we start talking to those people about insanity.
They say, man, don't tell me I'm crazy.
I haven't lost anything.
I've got my job.
I've got my blah, blah.
No, uh-uh.
We're not talking about that at all.
We're talking about one thing and one thing only.
Can we or can we not see the truth about alcohol?
If we can, we're sane.
If we can't, we're insane.
Now, the low-bottom drunk like Jim,
it's probably easier for him to see his insanity
because he lost everything that he had, period.
A high-bottom drunk who hasn't lost a lot of stuff,
sometimes it's a little more difficult for them to see it.
But I'll tell you,
whether you're low-bottom or high-bottom,
if you get drunk, you're going to get drunk the same way,
believing something that is not true.
Let's go to page whatever the next one is, 39.
My old page is just tore up.
I can't read it anymore.
And we're going to look at a guy named Fred.
Now, Fred is the opposite of Jim.
Fred is high-bottom.
Fred never lost anything.
Jim didn't feel too good today.
He got drunk.
Fred is on top of the world the day he gets drunk.
Yet he got drunk the same way he believed a lie.
Let's look at Fred's lie.
Page 39 said,
Fred is a partner in a well-known accounting firm.
His income is good.
He has a fine home.
He is happily married and father of promising children of college age.
Now, he has so attractive a personality that he makes friends with everyone.
If ever there was a successful businessman, it's Fred.
Now, to all appearance, he is a stable, well-balanced individual.
Yet he's alcoholic.
Now, we first saw Fred about a year ago in a hospital where he'd gone to recover from a bad case of the jitters.
It was his first experience of this kind, and he was much ashamed of it.
Far from admitting he was an alcoholic, he told himself he'd came to the hospital to rest his nerves.
We see lots of nerve resters in AA today, just like old Fred is.
The doctor intimated strongly that he might be worse than he realized.
For a few days, he was depressed about his condition.
Now, he made up his mind to quit.
He made up his mind to quit drinking altogether.
It never occurred to him that perhaps he could do so in spite of his character and standing.
Fred would not believe himself an alcoholic.
He would not take step one.
Much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem.
If you can't take one, you can't take two.
We told him what we knew of alcoholism.
They told him about step one and step two.
And he was interested and could see that he had some of the symptoms.
He said, I'm a little bit alcoholic.
Borderline case.
Now, he was a long way from admitting he could do nothing about himself.
Now, he was positive that his humiliating experience plus the knowledge he had acquired would keep him sober the rest of his life.
Self-knowledge would fix it.
Now, we heard no more of Fred for a while.
One day, we were told that he was back in the hospital.
This time, he was quite shaky.
He soon indicated he was anxious to see us.
The story he told is most instructive.
For here was a chap absolutely convinced he had to stop drinking, who had no excuse for drinking,
who exhibited splendid judgment and determination in all his other concerns, yet was flat on his back nevertheless.
Well, let him tell you about it.
He said, I was much impressed with what you fellows said about alcoholism.
I frankly did not believe it would be possible for me to drink again.
And I rather appreciate your ideas about that subtle insanity which precedes the first drink.
But I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned.
I reasoned I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows,
that I had been used as successful in licking my other personal problems,
and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed.
I felt I had every right to be self-confident.
It would be only a matter of exercising my willpower and keeping on guard.
Now, in this frame of mind, I went about my business, and for a time all was well.
I had no trouble refusing drinks and began to wonder if I had not been making too hard a work of a simple matter.
We think Fred began to get drunk right here.
He began to say, Now, this staying sober is easy. Nothing to this.
One day I went to Washington to present some accounting evidence to a government bureau.
I had been out of town during this particular time.
I had a particular dry spell, so there was nothing new about that.
Physically I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries.
My business came off well. I was pleased and knew my partners would be too.
It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.
Everything is on top of the world for old Fred.
He is doing great, making lots of money, family happy, business associates happy.
Everything is good in Fred's life.
He said, I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner.
As I crossed the threshold of the dining room,
the thought came to mind, it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails and go back to the hospital.
Now, that's the truth, isn't it?
No way could he drink on the truth.
His mind said it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner.
That was all. Nothing more.
Now, based on the insane idea,
he makes a decision, takes some action.
I ordered a cocktail in my meal.
Then I ordered another cocktail.
We got it inside ourselves now.
The allergy takes over.
After dinner, I decide to take a walk.
When I returned to the hotel, it struck me a highball would be fine before going to bed,
so I stepped into the bar and had one.
I remember having several more that night and plenty next morning.
I have a shadowy recollection of being in an airplane bound for New York
and finding a friendly taxi cab driver at the landing field instead of my wife.
The driver escorted me about for several days.
I know little of where I went or what I said and did.
Then came the hospital with unbearable mental and physical suffering.
As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington.
Not only had I been off guard, I had made no fight whatever against the first drink.
This time, I had not thought of the consequences at all.
I had commenced to drink as carelessly as though the cocktails were ginger ale.
Now, is Fred's real problem the fact that he has a physical allergy to alcohol
or that he has a form of insanity that tells him it's okay to have a couple of cocktails with dinner?
The real problem centers in the mind, telling us we can drink rather than the body that ensures we can't.
Page 43, last paragraph.
You know, Bill,
I had the idea that self-knowledge would fix it.
Roland had the idea that self-knowledge would fix it.
Fred had the idea that self-knowledge would fix it.
Bill's trying to show us through here.
They all have the obsession of the mind.
And he's trying to show us through the illustrations of Man of 30, Jim, Jay Walker, and Fred to tell us one thing.
And the last paragraph says, once more.
See, he just went through all this to say once more,
the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink.
Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense.
His defense must come from a higher power.
And that is the solution.
See, you can't heal a sick mind with a sick mind.
Self-knowledge won't get it.
The more we try to think our way out of it, the deeper into it we get.
We must come from a higher power.
Our defense must come from a higher power.
And you notice he didn't say the practicing alcoholic or the drinking alcoholic.
He just said the alcoholic.
Now what that means to me today is that I have no effective mental defense against the first drink.
Left on my own resources.
Invariably, I'm going to go right back to drinking again.
Without the aid of a power greater than human power.
Now if you're the kind of alcoholic that I am,
and if you were raised in the church setting that I was raised in,
by the end of chapter 3,
you are now faced with one hell of a dilemma.
Because he's convinced me in chapter 3,
without the aid of a power greater than I am, I'm going back to drinking.
But I also felt that even though that was true,
it wouldn't be possible for me to get the aid of a power greater than I am.
Because you see, like Joe, I was raised in a good old Southern Baptist church.
Now I've got nothing against a good old Southern Baptist church.
It's a great church.
But when I was a kid growing up, I'm sure that from time to time they talked about a kind and a loving God.
But if they did, the message never got to the pew I sat in.
Because all I ever remember hearing about God when I was growing up in church
was hell, fire, and brimstone,
and going to hell for lying and cheating,
and stealing, and drinking whiskey,
and committing adultery.
By the time I got to AA, I'd been doing that for about 20 some odd years.
And I know that God had already told St. Peter,
when that little four-eyed sucker gets up here,
send him downstairs, we'll not need his kind.
And I knew that if God had anything to do with me,
it wouldn't be anything good.
It would certainly be something bad.
I remember so clearly when I separated from God.
In that Baptist church I grew up in, they gave me the rules.
They said if you do this, this, and this, you'll be okay.
If you do that, that, and that, you're going to hell just sure as anything.
Now I didn't have any trouble with their rules at all
until I got to be about 12 or 13 years old.
And one day it seemed to me that the preacher looked me straight in the eye,
and he said,
Son, to think about doing it is just as bad as doing it.
And I said, Oh, shit.
I've had it now because I'd been thinking about doing it for a long time.
In fact, I'd been thinking about doing it long enough,
I was starting to get brain damage from it.
And I said, If you're going to hell for thinking about it,
then you might as well go to hell.
He said, Well, let's go ahead and do it.
And I did.
And I didn't go to hell immediately.
And I said, That sucker has been lying to me all along.
I said, He and my parents and my teachers have formed together in a conspiracy
to keep me from having any fun.
And I said, From this day on,
I do not intend to pay any attention to what they have to say.
I don't have any intention of following God's rules,
their rules, or anybody else's rules.
From this day on, I'm going to do it my way.
And I'm going to do it whenever I want to,
and if they don't like it, to hell with them.
Now, when I got to AA, I had that attitude
of a 12-year-old boy who had defied God, his parents, and his teachers.
And when I first walked into AA, I was 38 years old.
With the spiritual knowledge of God of that 12-year-old boy.
No wonder we have trouble with this God thing when we get to AA.
Anybody else ever have those kind of feelings about God and people?
And I think Bill recognized that.
And I think he said sooner or later,
I'm going to have to ask these people to make a decision about God.
And I think he said in his mind that they're not going to be able to make that decision.
Based upon old ideas.
And that's what I had when I got here, old ideas.
And I think he said, I believe I need to give them some new information about God.
Where they might be able to discard some old ideas,
pick up some new ideas,
and then they'll be able to make a decision about this God thing.
And he wrote another chapter called, We Agnostics.
Which I think is one of the greatest pieces of spiritual information I've ever read in my life.
As I read that and studied that, I could see where some of my old ideas,
old prejudices about God and religion, were wrong.
And when I could see where they were wrong, then I could discard them.
And then I could accept some new ideas about God.
And then I could make a decision.
But based on hellfire and brimstone,
based on a God of justice,
no way could I have ever made the decision about God.
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