Page 43 of the Big Book:
"What you say about the general hopelessness of the average alcoholic’s plight is, in my opinion, correct. As to two of you men, whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help. Had you offered yourselves as patients at this hospital, I would not have taken you, if I had been able to avoid it. People like you are too heartbreaking. Though not a religious person, I have profound respect for the spiritual approach in such cases as yours. For most cases, there is virtually no other solution."
It was three years from deciding to give up drinking permanently to actually giving up drinking permanently. My last drink was on 24 July 1993.
Why was there this three-year delay?
- Whilst I was in charge of my decision-making, I was doomed to drink, because my mind was programmed to periodically want to drink.
- This was true no matter how bad the consequences got.
- Just because I firmly wanted, at times, to stay sober did not mean I would, because my brain would 'flip' and suddenly want to.
- Even once I recognised I was alcoholic, I was never going to be able to drink moderately, and I would have to stop forever, I kept slipping.
- Why? Because I thought I could handle a relapse; I calculated I could get away with it.
- That reservation had to go. Why?
- I might die on a slip.
- I might never want to come back.
- So, there was no such thing as a safe slip.
- The only power available 24 hours a day is the Higher Power: I needed to depend on that Power firstly for my decisions and secondly for the power to carry them out, which really meant withstanding the pain of doing so and resisting the objections of my own brain.
- I had to waive the right to be the final judge of 'what do do next'.
- Relapse was only possible if I was still the final judge, the final authority, the decision-maker.
- Trouble is: before I did the Steps and in the early stages of the Steps, the 'Higher Power reception' was patchy.
- I needed a short-term solution as well.
- The short-term solution was to give the decision-making for the day, the week, etc. over to AA and the people in it.
- I could not be trusted to make the decisions, but they could.
- All I had to do was structure the day, the week, etc. according to what people in AA suggested, and get on with it.
- This was the Higher Power's reserve channel.
- I had to do this, regardless of what 'I' thought about it, and regardless of what 'I' felt.
- Sometimes the 'I' was the 'real' me, and thought AA people's suggestions were great.
- Sometimes the 'I' was the alcoholic me, and thought AA people's suggestions were terrible.
- That's why the 'I' had to be taken out of action.
- Over time, and with the programme, I reacquired the right to 'make decisions'.
- What that really meant was making decisions by turning my life over to the Higher Power (God), 100%.
- The only real decision is to turn to God and then ask for the decision.
- Until the Twelve Steps opened and cleared that channel, doing what AA people suggested worked as a temporary measure.