“In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” (Page 44, Big Book)
“As finally expressed and offered, they [the Twelve Steps] are simple in language, plain in meaning. They are also workable by any person having a sincere desire to obtain and keep sobriety. The results are the proof. Their simplicity and workability are such that no special interpretations, and certainly no reservations, have ever been necessary. And it has become increasingly clear that the degree of harmonious living which we achieve is in direct ratio to our earnest attempt to follow them literally under divine guidance to the best of our ability.” (Dr Bob and the Good Oldtimers)
I once heard a person giving a talk on the ‘mental obsession’. They started off one sentence with the phrase, ‘For me, the mental obsession is …’, suggesting that there is no such thing as a mental obsession, objectively speaking, and that the words ‘mental obsession’ have nothing to denote, being merely an empty box you can fill with whatever you want. I wondered whether this was a slip of the tongue. The talk continued, and the person went on to describe how, once, they had had one drink and then became obsessed with having another one. In other words, they were describing the physical craving (as per the Big Book) but using the phrase ‘mental obsession’ to describe it.
The Big Book was written by people who wanted to give me information. They used words to mean definite things, and the terms ‘physical craving’, ‘mental obsession’, ‘alcoholism’, ‘meditation’, and so on have very definite meanings for their purposes. My job is to find out what they mean and see if those descriptions adequately match my thinking and behaviour. Words do not mean whatever I want them to. There is no ‘my truth’, any more than one can legitimately say, ‘for me, potassium has 19 electrons’ (as though it might have a different number of electrons for other people). If a word is an empty vessel that is lent the meaning I choose to give it, no communication at all is possible, because any of the words I use to give that first word meaning are subject to the same subjectivity—each will have a secret meaning not guaranteed to match or even overlap the meaning others give it.
The reason I love the Big Book so much is that it gives me a solid, unwavering framework for understanding what is wrong with me, and a solid, unwavering framework for acting to solve the problem. It also gives me a language I can use to communicate with anyone else in the world that has read the book and paid attention to its content.