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.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Step 2 and the dictionary definition of sanity — wholeness of mind, the ability to see the truth
• 3:30 The pie metaphor — insanity does not mean you are all gone, just not quite all here
• 7:00 Four words, one meaning — obsession, illusion, delusion, and insanity all mean believing a lie
• 10:30 The man of thirty — twenty-five years dry, carpet slippers and a bottle, dead in four years
• 17:00 Jim the car salesman walks into a roadside place for a sandwich with no intention of drinking
• 22:00 Suddenly — whiskey poured into milk on a full stomach, plain insanity
• 28:00 The jaywalker parable — fractured skull, broken legs, broken back, still will not stop
• 34:00 Fred the high-bottom accountant, nerve-rester, sure self-knowledge will keep him sober
• 42:00 Washington hotel dining room — cocktails with dinner, taxi driver instead of his wife at the airport
• 48:00 Once more — the alcoholic has no effective mental defense against the first drink; defense must come from a Higher Power
• 52:00 Charlie's Southern Baptist childhood — the preacher, thinking about it, and walking into AA at thirty-eight with the spiritual knowledge of a twelve-year-old boy