The Spiritual Dilemma That Laid the Seedbed for His Alcoholism – Tom I.
About This Speaker Tape
Tom I. from Aberdeen, North Carolina speaks at the Pacific Group in 1990 with 33 years of sobriety (sober since February 2, 1957, his first meeting). He is a member of the Big Book Group in Southern Pines.
He traces his alcoholism not to drinking but to a spiritual dilemma that began in childhood. Raised in the Bible Belt of South Carolina, he went through the motions of his parents' faith but never felt what they seemed to feel. The seeds of doubt created enormous fear and guilt. That deep-seated conflict — feeling one way inside, acting another way outside — spread into every area of his life and made him a sitting duck for alcoholism.
His drinking story is swift: the first drink changed everything. He loved what alcohol did — the warmth, the daring, the tingling from head to toe. He loved the people who drank. He never once clearly dealt with the idea that alcohol might be a problem. He describes waking up in jails, draped around the porcelain, trying to get that first drink down — hold your breath, feel it jumping like a Mexican jumping bean, pray it stays down.
He went to Jackson Prison and found AA there. Of 300 men who went through that prison AA group with him, two are sober today. He introduced himself to another old-timer as 94153, and the man responded 35888 — both numbers retired.
He challenges the notion that choice exists for the real alcoholic — what we deal with is not denial but delusion, an inability to differentiate the true from the false. Drinking is not an option. Surrender is what it is about. The adventure of recovery came from getting caught up in the movement of Alcoholics Anonymous — not just not drinking whiskey, which is not a new way of life and not an adventure.
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