CHAPTER 1, BILL'S STORY

Chapter 1

BILL'S STORY

War fever ran high in the New England town to which we new, young officers from Plattsburg were assigned, and we were flattered when the first citizens took us to their homes, making us feel heroic. Here was love, applause, war; moments sublime with intervals hilarious. I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement I discovered liquor. I forgot the strong warnings and the prejudices of my people concerning drink. In time we sailed for “Over There.” I was very lonely and again turned to alcohol.

Fever: the unreal, the gripping hallucination.

The transient, illusory, and lifeless flattery of the ego: the heroes’ welcome, ‘love’, applause, war, sublimity, hilarity, excitement.

Life presented as a swirl in the material world: if you’re part of the swirl, you’re part of life.

Part of life “at last”: he was previously not part of life; separate; lost.

The forgetting of the warnings: the first signs of intelligence being submerged in the tide of emotion.

Except the warnings were not forgotten: they were drowned.

But note: none of the heroes’ welcome, ‘love’, applause, war, sublimity, hilarity, excitement work.

He is not just lonely but very lonely. He is not, in fact, part of life at all. He is entirely separate.

He then attempts to solve a living problem with a chemical.

We landed in England. I visited Winchester Cathedral. Much moved, I wandered outside. My attention was caught by a doggerel on an old tombstone:

“Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier / Who caught his death Drinking cold small beer. / A good soldier is ne’er forgot / Whether he dieth by musket or by pot.”

Ominous warning—which I failed to heed.

Being moved, he does not stay in the cathedral with the altars, the stained-glass windows, the images of Christ, the prayerbooks, the hymnals. He leaves the building. He leaves the house of God. He runs away from God.

It appears, however, that God follows him out.

He does not give his attention to something: his attention is “caught”.

This runs through the whole book: thoughts crossing the mind, thoughts striking a person.

We don’t think: the thoughts think themselves at us.

Note the rest of the doggerel:

Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall / And when ye’re hot drink Strong or none at all.

The soldier died because he drank beer that was so weak the alcohol did not kill the bacteria, and he developed an infection.

Bill heard this as a warning against strong drink, when it was a warning against weak drink.

God gets through to us even if we’re hearing the opposite of what we need to hear.

In God’s hands, the mind twists the wrong to the right.

In the ego’s hands, the mind twists the right to the wrong.

If someone wants to get well, you can’t say anything wrong.

If someone doesn’t want to get well, you can’t say anything right.

Twenty-two, and a veteran of foreign wars, I went home at last. I fancied myself a leader, for had not the men of my battery given me a special token of appreciation? My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance.

Taking a small compliment—the special token—and extrapolating wildly.

I will take small breakthroughs and small setbacks to be the single datapoints from which the whole of reality is to be discerned.

Folly.

I have learned to be particularly sceptical of any interpretation of an event that flatters me or places me at the centre of things.

Vast. Utmost.

I am wiser to downplay rather than up-play.

I’m much more likely to hit the truth, that way.

Fancy. Imagine. Would.

The world of speculation.

I’m wiser to stick to reality than fantasy.

I’m much more likely to hit the truth, that way, as well.

I took a night law course, and obtained employment as investigator for a surety company. The drive for success was on. I’d prove to the world I was important. My work took me about Wall Street and little by little I became interested in the market. Many people lost money—but some became very rich. Why not I? I studied economics and business as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals I was too drunk to think or write. Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife. We had long talks when I would still her forebodings by telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived.

The drive for success—his sense of success is love and applause, but, as indicated above, the third element of that trio is war.

What he thinks is success is not success at all.

The drive … “Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity” (Page 62)

When I’m driven, I’m not in the driving seat; selfishness and self-centredness are in the driving seat.

“Many people lost money—but some became very rich. Why not I?”

If money is the by-product of success, he wants the by-product without the success, the love without the sacrifice, the applause without the performance. This is the castle in the air.

I identify: the cartoon character with the dollar signs instead of the pupils and irises.

“Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals I was too drunk to think or write.”

Something that is potential is not yet the thing itself. If I might potentially be called up to the army, that means I have not been called up. If I might potentially fall pregnant, that means I am not presently pregnant. Someone who is a potential alcoholic is not an alcoholic. Non-alcoholics are not too drunk to think or write during the day. Only alcoholics fit that bill (Bill).

Whenever Bill says, ‘potential alcoholic’, he really means someone that is an actual alcoholic but has been one only for a few years. Alcoholic but pre-cirrhotic, pre-Korsakoff’s. “Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife.” His sense, even years into AA, is that if you’re not yet drinking continuously you’re not yet alcoholic. Wrong. If one is compelled to drink against one’s interests and then compelled to continue against one’s interests, you’re not in control, it’s in control.

As was recently said of a ship in a shipping channel that hit a bridge, “It lost power and therefore control.” (If I’m powerless, I cannot manage my own life, and so my life is unmanageable; Step One short-circuits this three-part sequence into two, which is why people get so confused about the nature of unmanageability and fail to see that the two parts are logically connected, part of a single relationship of entailment.)

The delusion I had as an alcoholic was that things might get really bad if I carried on, whereas the faces of the people around me revealed that they had already been really bad for a very long time indeed.

“We had long talks when I would still her forebodings by telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived.”

Here we’ve got the awful credulousness of the Al-Anon. I, too, have listened mesmerised as the alcoholic did justifying, explaining, and defending, and expressed good past and future intentions (JEDI); I would nod sympathetically, buying the snake-oil, even though, as Jim says on page 36, “I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart.” Whenever I’m on the other side of the table, JEDI-ing, I’m justifying the unjustifiable, explaining the inexplicable, defending the indefensible, and hiding facts with contrary intentions. If I did it, I intended to do it. One expresses future intentions only with regard to what is uncertain or even impossible.

On the subject of men of genius: the notion that Brunel and Kant were out of their gourds—and necessarily so—when they built their bridges and constructed their philosophies, apart from being untrue, reveals Bill’s own hubris: the idea that the idea itself is sufficient, that nothing more is required but to rip back the curtain to reveal the secrets of the universe, from whence the great idea can be plucked, Prometheus stealing the fire of the Gods, Icarus flying towards the sun. No intellect, industry, or patience required; just the spark.

Although my arguments were different, my notion was essentially the same: I could hustle the universe for the moment of applause, which was the whole point of the Best Project and Majestic (note: majesty = royalty) Construction. I never wanted anything for its own sake but only for how it would elevate me in others’ eyes to majestic, magisterial heights.

By the time I had completed the course, I knew the law was not for me. The inviting maelstrom of Wall Street had me in its grip. Business and financial leaders were my heroes. Out of this alloy of drink and speculation, I commenced to forge the weapon that one day would turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but cut me to ribbons. Living modestly, my wife and I saved $1,000. It went into certain securities, then cheap and rather unpopular. I rightly imagined that they would some day have a great rise. I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and I decided to go anyway. I had developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of markets. I discovered many more reasons later on.

“The law was not for me”: when I get from the world, I realise that whatever it is is not for me. Why, how? Because it does not work. Nothing fits (for long); nothing works (for long); nothing lasts (for long)—in the plane of the material.

The error, when something fails to deliver, in other words when the promised happiness and satisfaction cannot be wrested from the world or some department thereof or turns out to be an illusory prize, is to look elsewhere in the world, as if one mouthful of sawdust is going to be better than another.

“Maelstrom”: “… originally the name of a giant whirlpool off Norway in the Arctic Ocean which was said to destroy all ships that came close to it, likely the actual tidal pool system of Moskstraumen in Lofoten.”

Poor Bill, not realising that maelstroms are deadly: he is invited and accepts the invitation.

I’m wary of invitations. Best to be driven by God from within rather than attracted from without.

His heroes are leaders, not doers. He wants to be in charge of others doing, not to do the doing himself. I, too, wanted the position, not the work the position entailed. The work was the means to the end, and shortcuts were valid.

Speculation: “An investment involving higher-than-normal risk in order to obtain a higher-than-normal return.”

Cheating the system.

Alcoholic drinking: also cheating the system; trying to get an inflated return whilst dodging the inflated risk.

They’re the same thing, and, in both cases, the house always win.

“I had developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of markets”: a presage of what comes later—with alcohol, self-knowledge, though necessary, is insufficient.

“I discovered many more reasons later on.”

Why did my materialism—the practice of attempting to wrest happiness and satisfaction from the material world—fail?

The material world is not a mechanism that can be managed by cleverness and industry.

My plans are confounded by the billions of other wills in operation, by the intervening will of God, by the phenomenon of chaos, by the butterfly effect, by tipping points, by the complex interaction of countless factors in the juggernaut–leviathan of cause-and-effect that is the world. Even if I were perfectly clever and perfectly industrious, the system’s still bigger than me, ungovernable, implacable.

But it’s worse: I’m far from perfectly clever and far from perfectly industrious.

And, on those rare occasions I pull off a minor coup, I discover there’s nothing inside the fortune cookie but a slip of paper with a cryptic clue. Whatever is delivered will not do what it is meant to do.

We gave up our positions and off we roared on a motorcycle, the sidecar stuffed with tent, blankets, a change of clothes, and three huge volumes of a financial reference service. Our friends thought a lunacy commission should be appointed. Perhaps they were right. I had had some success at speculation, so we had a little money, but we once worked on a farm for a month to avoid drawing on our small capital. That was the last honest manual labor on my part for many a day. We covered the whole eastern United States in a year. At the end of it, my reports to Wall Street procured me a position there and the use of a large expense account. The exercise of an option brought in more money, leaving us with a profit of several thousand dollars for that year.

Honest manual labour vs profit:

Labour (work): the performance of useful actions.

Honest manual labour: the action that is its own reward.

What would dishonest manual labour be?

Manual labour for profit.

The point of labour is really the usefulness, not the profit.

As soon as the point becomes the profit …

… the usefulness is confounded.

… the labour is no longer honest.

Useful to whom?

God—and therefore others, directly or indirectly.

Might one discern the usefulness?

One might but need not, necessarily.

What does one do in the meantime?

Honest manual labour.

For the next few years fortune threw money and applause my way. I had arrived. My judgment and ideas were followed by many to the tune of paper millions. The great boom of the late twenties was seething and swelling. Drink was taking an important and exhilarating part in my life. There was loud talk in the jazz places uptown. Everyone spent in thousands and chattered in millions. Scoffers could scoff and be damned. I made a host of fair-weather friends.

“I had arrived.” Compare this to: “I was part of life at last”. He arrived before, but it turned out he had not arrived at all, or, rather, having arrived, another destination was plotted; he was not happy and wanted to be elsewhere. He’s arrived again, but he won’t be happy.

As Jacques Brel sang:

“J’arrive, bien sûr j’arrive / Mais ai-je jamais rien fait d’autre qu’arriver?”

“I have arrived, of course I have arrived / But have I ever done anything but arrive?”

Wherever I was, I wanted to be somewhere else. As soon as I got there, I was momentarily excited, and then I wanted to be somewhere else. Nothing satisfied. With each drink, I was momentarily excited, and then I wanted another one. Nothing satisfied.

The money and applause are thrown his way by fortune: not earned. The image is one of a dancer at a nightclub having money thrown at them. When I’m after money and applause, that’s precisely what I’m doing. The money and applause were not earned as a reward for honest manual labour (see yesterday’s reading). They’re the quid pro quo in a baser transaction. But fortune is fickle. Material sources of money are taps that can be turned off (in contrast to the infinite source of God). Material sources of applause are sources also of condemnation: behind the applause is an array of scoffers. If weather can be fair, it can also be foul.

The language of the overheated system: seething (which means boiling), swelling (beyond its normal size), loud (beyond its normal volume), spending in thousands (beyond their true means). The paper millions are merely the currency of chatter, of loud talk (not the correlate of substance).

The system is doomed:

“… followed … to the tune of …”

The Pied Piper of Hamlyn, leading the children to under the mountain.

I contrast this to the ideal I pursue today (from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions):

“Practically every boy in the United States dreams of becoming our President. He wants to be his country’s number one man. As he gets older and sees the impossibility of this, he can smile good-naturedly at his childhood dream. In later life he finds that real happiness is not to be found in just trying to be a number one man, or even a first-rater in the heart-breaking struggle for money, romance, or self-importance. He learns that he can be content as long as he plays well whatever cards life deals him. He’s still ambitious, but not absurdly so, because he can now see and accept actual reality. He’s willing to stay right size.”

What is the ambition?

Play the cards dealt.

Which cards?

The cards of the day.

Which ones?

The ones right in front of me: right now; that’s it.

My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf. There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness, kept me out of those scrapes.

When I had to choose between friends and alcohol, alcohol won.

Wealth does not save.

There had been no real infidelity.

That means there was infidelity.

If drunkenness was required for loyalty to be upheld, there was no loyalty.

In 1929 I contracted golf fever. We went at once to the country, my wife to applaud while I started out to overtake Walter Hagen. Liquor caught up with me much faster than I came up behind Walter. I began to be jittery in the morning. Golf permitted drinking every day and every night. It was fun to carom around the exclusive course which had inspired such awe in me as a lad. I acquired the impeccable coat of tan one sees upon the well-to-do. The local banker watched me whirl fat checks in and out of his till with amused skepticism.

The ego always sets out to deflect responsibility, so that one does not realise that one is making one’s life by following its prompts.

So Bill did not decide to play golf a lot: he contracted golf fever. No responsibility.

This is the third applause (after “love, applause, war”, “fortune threw money and applause my way”); the ego construct requires an audience, and the Al-Anon’s preoccupation with the alcoholic (“my wife to applaud”) provides that audience.

When I’m engaged in an ego pursuit, I’m interested not in the thing itself but in my speculation as to the impression it’s making on others. That’s the goal, the reflection in others’ eyes, but a reflection taking place in my own mind. C. S. Lewis exemplifies pride as wanting something so that someone else will not have it or wanting to be top dog; Bill wants to overtake Walter Hagen, not to play golf itself.

“Golf permitted drinking every day and every night.” More deflection. Golf’s in charge. But he was already drinking that way: “My drinking assumed more serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night.” The only progression is from “almost every night” to “every night”. Golf, a daytime pursuit, has nothing to do with that.

Awe—which is properly reserved for God. Carom—like a billiard ball bouncing round a billiard table, and rebounding off the cushions. Whenever I’m worshipping something else, two things are happening: I’m not at peace; I’m caroming around; the second thing is that I’m trapped like a billiard ball on a billiard table. Too much energy for the small space.

Worshipping God, by contrast, gives me two things, too: peace and space.

The coat of tan: the disguise.

The local banker’s amused scepticism—Bill’s gaze is on the banker’s gaze. “The local banker watched me …”. He has become a spectacle, but the spectacle is the purpose of the endeavour.

When I’m in an ego state, I’m vigilant to others’ responses and reactions; scanning the room; always alert for attention; little eyes darting everywhere; completely unaware of myself and what I’m actually thinking, feeling, or doing. There is no rest in this, no peace.

Abruptly in October 1929 hell broke loose on the New York stock exchange. After one of those days of inferno, I wobbled from a hotel bar to a brokerage office. It was eight o’clock—five hours after the market closed. The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. It had been 52 that morning. I was finished and so were many friends. The papers reported men jumping to death from the towers of High Finance. That disgusted me. I would not jump. I went back to the bar. My friends had dropped several million since ten o’clock—so what? Tomorrow was another day. As I drank, the old fierce determination to win came back.

Hell. Inferno. Death.

If he hadn’t been operating with margins, he wouldn’t have been finished: the particular forms of speculation that investors were engaging in meant that, with one dollar of investment, they might end up with a two-dollar gain or a two-dollar debt: they might lose more than they even staked to start with.

This is the difference between speculation (high risks, high returns) and the honest manual labour referred to above. With honest manual labour, the labour performed cannot be taken away: there is no gambling. Whatever labour I perform is in the bag, because the reward is the act of labour itself.

The inflated risks and the inflated returns are the economics of addiction: trying to get something to which I’m not entitled and risking the hell, inferno, death that are the inevitable flipside.

Every bubble bursts.

The determination: not to work, love, seek God, do something useful, do something worthwhile, but win.

What one wins is not the prize; the fact of winning is the prize.

The desire to win is never satisfied because there is always someone who has more.

This, too, is an addiction.

At the top of the ladder is God, who is the real enemy to beat.

All ambition is the desire to kill God and take His place.

In the place of ambition, the programme offers an alternative.

“If you have decided want what we have …” (Page 58, Big Book):

What do we have? A relationship with God. What sort of relationship? One of self-abandonment to His will.

Self-abandonment is the end of ambition.

Next morning I telephoned a friend in Montreal. He had plenty of money left and thought I had better go to Canada. By the following spring we were living in our accustomed style. I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba. No St. Helena for me! But drinking caught up with me again and my generous friend had to let me go. This time we stayed broke.

Napoleon did not ‘return’ from Elba. He escaped Elba, to repeat the offence (costly, failed war, previously with Russia, now with Britain). When he returns, things go from bad to worse, so he is exiled even further away, in a place from which, unlike Elba, he could not escape, namely St Helena, where he died.

This is alcoholism.

Rock-bottom. Sobering-up. Then self-congratulatory, triumphant escape, to reattempt the desperate experiment.

The experiment is always an escalation of the previous one: the attempt to solve the problem with the same means that failed before, by raising the stakes, upping the ante, and putting more muscle behind it.

But failure is inevitable.

And behind the last rock-bottom is death.

He cannot see it: he does not realise that behind every Elba is a St Helena; that St Helena is the natural consequence of the series of sprees with their well-known stages; that, without a psychic change, St Helena is the inevitable final outcome.

Every time I started drinking again I thought I would fix it and tread the fine line between drinking what I wanted but avoiding the consequences.

Inevitable, repeated failure.

Each period was a step down from the previous one.

There’s no clambering back up.

Finally, the land ran out, and there was the precipice towards which I was hurtling: death or airlift—the jumping-off point.

The only way left was forward, and that was forward off the cliff, to plunge downwards, with the possibility that, as in those scenes in the Lord of the Rings films, a great prehistoric eagle (which is God or His emissary) might swoop in, arrest the fall, and take me to safety.

The eagle flies above all storms.

Meanwhile: drinking caught up with him.

Drinking always catches up: just like the ego, it’s had every experience I’ve had; it knows the cards the dealer has dealt me, but it has cards of its own; in the poker game, it has a structural advantage; in sobriety, the ego has read every spiritual book, even about the ego itself, and, having an IQ about 20 points above mine, can use that knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge, to outwit me.

Drinking’s nature is like time’s arrow, which works in one direction only, increasing in momentum, picking up speed. It cannot be outrun.

We went to live with my wife’s parents. I found a job; then lost it as the result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years, or hardly draw a sober breath. My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk. I became an unwelcome hanger-on at brokerage places.

Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity. “Bathtub” gin, two bottles a day, and often three, got to be routine. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars, and I would pay my bills at the bars and delicatessens. This went on endlessly, and I began to waken very early in the morning shaking violently. A tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast. Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation, and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife’s hope.

Gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holder, my mother-in-law died, my wife and father-in-law became ill.

Then I got a promising business opportunity. Stocks were at the low point of 1932, and I had somehow formed a group to buy. I was to share generously in the profits. Then I went on a prodigious bender, and that chance vanished.

I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business. And so I did.

Shortly afterward I came home drunk. There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn’t know. It hadn’t even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way, and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder, for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that.

Renewing my resolve, I tried again. Some time passed, and confidence began to be replaced by cocksureness. I could laugh at the gin mills. Now I had what it takes! One day I walked into a cafe to telephone. In no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened. As the whisky rose to my head I told myself I would manage better next time, but I might as well get good and drunk then. And I did.

Opportunity; opportunity spoiled.

Deterioration.

Uselessness.

Delusion the situation can be mastered.

The Al-Anon’s parallel delusion.

Spontaneous realisation of the nature of the physical craving: I saw I could not take so much as one drink.

Logical conclusion: “I was through forever.”

Resolve.

Sobriety.

The insane moment.

Resumption of drinking.

Spontaneous realisation of the nature of the mental obsession: “crazy” … “appalling lack of perspective”.

With perspective, the mind adjusts the false appearance of the far (small) and the near (large) so that the true magnitude of objects is understood; the far (small) consequences of drinking are actually overwhelming; the near (large) reliefs of drinking are actually trivial.

Going round in circles, but now with the understanding of what is happening.

The remorse, horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. The courage to do battle was not there. My brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity. I hardly dared cross the street, lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck, for it was scarcely daylight. An all-night place supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My writhing nerves were stilled at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn’t. That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No—not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Gin would fix that. So two bottles, and—oblivion.

“unforgettable”: apparently not, because the deterrent memory did not show up when, a few paragraphs later: “the frightful day came when I drank once more.”

“do battle”: precisely the thing that does not and will never work.

“Well, so had I.”: the alcoholic cry—but what about me?!

“My brain raced uncontrollably”: the precise problem; the brain (physical, part of the body) is in charge; the mind is shackled and impotent, barred from its proper operation: “mental fog”.

The mind and body are marvelous mechanisms, for mine endured this agony two more years. Sometimes I stole from my wife’s slender purse when the morning terror and madness were on me. Again I swayed dizzily before an open window, or the medicine cabinet where there was poison, cursing myself for a weakling. There were flights from city to country and back, as my wife and I sought escape. Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish I feared I would burst through my window, sash and all. Somehow I managed to drag my mattress to a lower floor, lest I suddenly leap. A doctor came with a heavy sedative. Next day found me drinking both gin and sedative. This combination soon landed me on the rocks. People feared for my sanity. So did I. I could eat little or nothing when drinking, and I was forty pounds under weight.

“flights from city to country and back, as my wife and I sought escape”: the shared insanity that the alcoholic drinking was to do with the geographical latitude and longitude, the sidewalks, or the cows.

“This combination soon landed me on the rocks.”: he was on the rocks already. This echoes the idea, presented on more than one occasion later in the book, that we’re in trouble way before we realise it.

“People feared for my sanity. So did I.”: he fears he will lose his sanity whereas, just a few lines earlier, he states he is already mad.

When I was maybe sixteen, I had a particularly unpleasant (although comical) incident that should have shown me that drinking is a bad idea. I then spent five years trying and failing not to repeat the experience. Fly banging up against a window pane. On the other side was the illusion of control-plus-enjoy.

My brother-in-law is a physician, and through his kindness and that of my mother I was placed in a nationally-known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics. Under the so-called belladonna treatment my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much. Best of all, I met a kind doctor who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, I had been seriously ill, bodily and mentally.

“nationally-known”: I identify with the desire to brag even at the nadir of my alcoholic career.

Mentally: the unbeatable compulsion to have the first drink.

Bodily ill: the unbeatable compulsion to continue.

Also:

Selfish.

Foolish.

These will both need to be dealt with, as well.

It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months the goose hung high. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer—self-knowledge.

When drinking, there is no combat to be had, because the physical craving reigns supreme. I must be separated before any combatting takes place.

The combatting of alcohol:

Making a sound decision to stay sober forever plus following it through.

The will to do this is what is weakened. The lies of the calling sirens distract and dissuade from the former; the nonchalant obedience of one’s own thinking prevents the latter.

The will is weakened because there are other voices in the mix: deceitful (cunning) and overriding (powerful).

They are also unfathomable (baffling), because no amount of careful thought can uncover definitively, once and for all, why they’re there and why they cannot be dislodged in the manner of other errors or false beliefs. They’re the stain that won’t wash out.

The strength of will in other respects (including, ironically, the strength of will to cling to drinking despite the effort, pain, and sacrifice) is what tells me that the problem is not a generalised lily-livered-ness, a generalised vacillation of mind, a generalised apathy, a generalised credulousness, a generalised lack of endurance.

The incredible behaviour: not what I do when I’m drunk but the fact of having the first drink.

“I drank because …”; “I drank when …”; “I drank in order to …” are revealed to be cover stories when I drink in the face of a desperate desire not to drink.

The understanding of the above is a prerequisite for the solution but is not the solution.

The solution is to be lifted above the system altogether and placed under the control of something of a higher order, not subject to the software faults of the lower system.

But [self-knowledge] was not [the answer], for the frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski-jump. After a time I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum.

When relying on my knowledge of myself, I am trapped in the downward spiral. I climb but tumble and tumble further.

This is true even when I am sober: things get worse however much I work on them unless I am being fed higher truth and higher strength.

The ski jump is a good image.

I slide all the way down. That can’t be helped. Momentum is increased. As I slide through the curve at the (rock-)bottom, the momentum shoots me off the ski-jump altogether, and I appear to be flying, with no effort whatsoever. This we might call the grace of God. However, unless I grow wings and start flapping them, I will tumble down to the ground, where there is the next ski jump waiting.

The steps bring about the growth of wings. God provides the strength to flap them and the direction to steer myself in.

“After a time I returned to the hospital”: He doesn’t say how long. In Chapter 3, there are two times the phrase “for a time” are used, with Jim and Fred who are not applying the programme rigorously (Jim) or at all (Fred) but are doing OK—for a time. One can’t tell how long one has got before the failure to work the programme is sufficient to allow the reassertion of alcoholism.

When I would resume drinking after a period of sobriety, there would be no knowing how long it would be before I would rock-bottom and stop again. There was then no knowing how long I would be able to stay stopped on my own before I drank again.

“… the finish, the curtain …” Life firstly as a race, secondly as a show, a spectacle. He’s actually hitting the nail on the head: the illusion of the world is that there is something to win, and there is also a higher reality from which we, the actors, are sent to play roles.

“My weary and despairing wife”: weary, yes, despairing, yes, but she’s nonetheless sufficiently motivated to stay, to prop him up. When I’m taking a ring-side seat to someone else’s gradual demise, I may be weary and despairing, but I ask myself whether I have any legitimate reason to be sitting there with my programme (in both senses) and popcorn, getting all caught up in the drama. It’s possible I’m rubber-necking because I’m actually enjoying the suffering vicariously: the relapser is relapsing on my behalf.

“… heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain …”

The two outcomes: death or madness.

“She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum.”

One’s going to have to let go of them anyway: better now while they’ve still got a chance to recover.

Rather than the undertaker and the asylum, the sponsor and AA. Let’s not dwell on the parallels between these pairs of ideas.

They did not need to tell me. I knew [she would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum], and almost welcomed the idea. It was a devastating blow to my pride. I, who had thought so well of myself and my abilities, of my capacity to surmount obstacles, was cornered at last. Now I was to plunge into the dark, joining that endless procession of sots who had gone on before. I thought of my poor wife. There had been much happiness after all. What would I not give to make amends? But that was over now.

“my pride”: The real culprit, the ego, the self.

“who had thought so well of myself and my abilities, of my capacity to surmount obstacles”: The human shell and its particular characteristics.

Pride takes the shell as its evidence and garment.

“Now I was to plunge into the dark”: The real self, now, taken down along with the shell into the dark by the pride, the ego, the self.

“the dark”: The final stages beyond the last staging-post of hope, before death and perhaps the endless procession after death, as well.

“What would I not give to make amends?”:

What one has to give (up) is the pride. I had to be separated from pride, the ego, the self (as I was separated from alcohol). It was pride, the ego, the self that was conditioning, navigating the plunge into the dark. If I was to survive, I had to abandon the ship of pride, ego, self. To make amends requires turning the gaze to myself and what I have done under the instruction of pride, ego, self, and rectifying it, resetting me at the square one of choosing between pride and God as my guide / Guide. From that reset point, now that the investment position has been unwound, and the diversionary tactic of resentment has been eliminated, and the guilt- and thus resentment-inducing roster of harms has been eliminated, I can make a new, valid choice, which is a no-brainer. Without the distortions created by pride itself, the choice is easy.

No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.

Words apparently can indeed tell of that.

Morass (which means ‘marsh’); quicksand: no foothold.

The ego is entirely logical within its own system, but the system is delusional: there is no foothold in reality.

The world—the whole network of perceptions and interpretations of reality conditioned by the ego—has no foothold in reality.

Like a morass, like quicksand, the world draws in but gives no orientation points for true navigation; there are road signs but there is no magnetic north; there are outdated maps but no compasses; everyone is lost.

There is going to be a master. The question is who that master will be. The ego (one manifestation of which is the imperious obsession to drink) or God?

Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn! In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.

The breaking of the alcoholic is only a temporary phenomenon. The man—the alcoholism—reforms. The alcoholism is stronger than self-interest and stronger than fear.

Insanity no. 1: having the first drink.

Insanity no. 2: shut up with Korsakoff’s syndrome (wet brain).

The darkness is necessary for the dawn.

Any light whatsoever—from enablers—prevents the darkness from becoming complete.

Only in complete darkness do I give up entirely, in order to be able to listen and really hear.

Catapult: the forward motion requires energy to be stored in a backward motion, with increasing tension until snapping point.

Any relief from that tension whatsoever—from enablers—prevents sufficient force being accumulated.

The fourth dimension: the realm of the spirit lying beyond but encompassing the material.

Usefulness: the attainment of purpose.

Peace: the lack of resistance to reality.

Happiness: the awareness of the above.

Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen. With a certain satisfaction I reflected there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it before daylight.

“That bleak November”: The internal state projected out onto the external. I’m sure the November, itself, was fine.

“… to carry me through that night and the next day”: The short-termism of alcoholism: the short-term gain ranked more highly than long-term considerations; kicking the can down the road.

“… to carry me …”: He’s not in charge; it’s in charge.

“… a certain satisfaction …”: The only thing left of satisfaction is the availability of alcohol to prevent the DTs.

“… enough gin concealed about the house … hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed …”: The only luxury left is the luxury of being able to drink from the bed rather than having to get up to get it. A limited ambition.

“I would need it before daylight”: Yet it is the gin that is preventing the daylight. Whilst the gin is the master, the daylight will never come. Gin can be defeated, but only by external intervention (cue tomorrow’s reading).

My musing was interrupted by the telephone. The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might come over. He was sober. It was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition. I was amazed. Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity. I wondered how he had escaped. Of course he would have dinner, and then I could drink openly with him. Unmindful of his welfare, I thought only of recapturing the spirit of other days. There was that time we had chartered an airplane to complete a jag! His coming was an oasis in this dreary desert of futility. The very thing—an oasis! Drinkers are like that.

“Muse”. The word is related to the following: Old Occitan “muzar” (to gape); Catalan “musar” (to dream away the time); Italian “musare” (to loaf around, or, of an animal, to hold up the snout and sniff about); classical Latin “musare” to stare, to waste time. It’s not related to the Greek Muses, the sources of inspiration. There is nothing coming from without or even within. This is not imagination but staring senselessly, boiled as an owl (as the phrase has it elsewhere), not the owl of Athena the wise. No, not an owl; a pig sniffing the air. The reduction by alcoholism to the primitive.

“Interrupted”: I do not halt my alcoholism; my alcoholism is halted from the outside. If I were to start, I would have to wait for it to be interrupted. I cannot interrupt it as an act of the will.

“Amazed”: The intrusion of God into my life is always accompanied by amazement. Later: amazed when I am half way through (the amends process).

“Alcoholic insanity”: This insanity is not the colloquial insanity of being a bit daft and erratic. This is a reference to wet brain. Want oblivion? That’s what one will get. As in Harry Potter: Obliviate!

Alcoholism—the universal awfulness (“dreary desert of futility”) extending in all directions, lifeless, combined with the hope residing anywhere but here: the spirit of other days; the oasis; the destination of the jag, the other end of the flight (Milton: “Which way I fly is Hell; my self am Hell”.

“Jag”: “As much liquor as a man can carry; a ‘load’ of drink. Also, a drinking bout; the state or a period of being drunk.” (OED) The original meaning: “A load (usually a small cart-load) of hay, wood, etc.” Such moves very slowly, pulled by a horse. The alcoholic, with the chartered airplane rather than the horse and cart, of course takes things to extremes, and quickly, and extravagantly, and showily.

Except the jag was not really completed: it later resumed after a break; the downward spiral is a single geometric figure. The entirety of one’s alcoholism is a single jag. The jag is really complete only once God intervenes and the surrender takes place:

“His coming”: Not an accident that “coming” is associated in the language with the coming of a messiah. Ebby is not the Messiah, proper, but is certainly a herald. What saves is God Himself.

“Oasis”: The spirit of other days, the oasis is what keeps one going, but the oasis is an illusion. As in films, the oasis is often a mirage. As one approaches, the mirage melts into nothing.

Amin Maalouf wrote:

“‘Here, it’s an oasis,’ I said, for want of a less trite image. ‘No, it’s the opposite,’ said my friend, correcting me firmly, as if he had already reflected on this comparison. ‘The world is an oasis, and here, we are in the immense expanse that surrounds it. In the oasis, you spend your time loading and unloading caravans. Seen from here, the caravans are just silhouettes on the horizon. Nothing is more beautiful than a caravan when you see it from afar. But, when you get closer, it’s noisy, it’s dirty, the camel drivers are quarrelling, and the animals are mistreated.’”

In recovery, all is reversed. The dreary desert becomes the endless expanse. The world becomes the distant mirage.

The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. There was something about his eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened?

I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had got into the fellow. He wasn’t himself.

“He refused it”: The defence is in operation.

“Fellow”: The term used for members of AA: it already exists and has two members, two fellows.

“Disappointed”: Alcoholism is always on a recruitment drive. Hell is contagious. So is Heaven.

“got into the fellow”: Something is present that was absent. Something is present that was suppressed. God.

“He wasn’t himself”: The lower-case-s self is flooded, no longer discernible, now dissolved into the upper-case-s Self.

“Come, what’s all this about?” I queried.

He looked straight at me. Simply, but smilingly, he said, “I’ve got religion.”

The results of the transformation:

He can look his interlocutor straight in the eye. He speaks simply. He is happy.

“Religion.” What do we have? Not a religion. But a system grounded in God.

Of course precisely what system one adopts if any, beyond the Twelve Steps, is entirely up to the individual.

But essentially AA, although not a religion per se, has features of one:

The centring on God, surrender to God’s will, regular routines, things to read, things to pray, things to do, principles, procedures for how to apply those principles to life, and others to do all of this with.

I was aghast. So that was it—last summer an alcoholic crackpot; now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion. He had that starry-eyed look. Yes, the old boy was on fire all right. But bless his heart, let him rant! Besides, my gin would last longer than his preaching.

But he did no ranting. In a matter of fact way he told how two men had appeared in court, persuading the judge to suspend his commitment. They had told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. That was two months ago and the result was self-evident. It worked!

A lesson on how to carry the message:

• No ranting
• Matter of fact telling

Since the result is self-evident (in the person), no promotion is necessary.

What’s the ‘it’ that works? A simple religious idea (God’s in charge) and a practical programme of action (do God’s will).

The parallel between the insanity of alcoholism and the unworldliness of the solution: crackpot to cracked.

The pot cracks and lets everything out. The pot is then useless.

But because the empty pot is cracked, it can now let something in (God).

He had come to pass his experience along to me—if I cared to have it. I was shocked, but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless. He talked for hours. Childhood memories rose before me. I could almost hear the sound of the preacher’s voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside; there was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my grandfather’s good natured contempt of some church folk and their doings; his insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of the preacher’s right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness as he spoke of these things just before he died; these recollections welled up from the past. They made me swallow hard.

There is no force: there is the offer and the freedom to accept or reject the offer.

The notion of suggestion reflects this politeness; it does not indicate that there is more than one solution on offer or that one is just as like to succeed without the programme suggested as with it.

Interest flows from hopelessness.

Lack of interest shows not lack of hopelessness but a failure to recognise it.

His childhood (childish) recollection of religion: something that is over there; offers not taken up; the ‘good’ siding against religion; defiance trumping spiritual awareness; the ultimate victory of atheism: fearlessness in the face of death.

All very well for others:

But when I was left with a problem with no solution, and the only one offered was God, well, there was the choice of no choice: I was interested because “I had to be”.

That war-time day in old Winchester Cathedral came back again.

I had always believed in a Power greater than myself. I had often pondered these things. I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere. My intellectual heroes, the chemists, the astronomers, even the evolutionists, suggested vast laws and forces at work. Despite contrary indications, I had little doubt that a mighty purpose and rhythm underlay all. How could there be so much of precise and immutable law, and no intelligence? I simply had to believe in a Spirit of the Universe, who knew neither time nor limitation. But that was as far as I had gone.

Option one: the universe has no point; behind it is no intelligence.

Option two: the universe has a point; behind it is intelligence.

The existence of laws and forces, to me, does not necessarily imply either the existence of a creating intellect or a physical or metaphysical purpose beyond existence itself. These are leaps too far.

Let’s say, however, that option one is the case. If there is no point, and I am merely atoms obeying laws, why do I seek a point? Why would something that has no point get the idea that there is a point, attempt to discern it, and then spend its entire existence—life—pursuing the point discerned? Why would ‘life’ be distinguished from ‘existence’, with the former deemed infinitely superior?

It turns out I’m programmed to believe that there is a point, to attempt to discern it, and then to pursue it.

What is implausible to me is not that Venus, calendula, and graphite exist without an upstream creative intelligence but that creative intelligence in human beings exists without an upstream creative intelligence, instead merely emerging from senseless atoms. A mechanically efficient intellect might, but the search for a point beyond survival (and the depression that flows from the failure to find a point) does not plausibly emerge from processes that value only survival and procreation. Purpose, meaning, morality, justice, fairness, appreciation of beauty, and a thousand other faculties of consciousness are not taught by nature; nature briefs against these; one must, in fact, fight against nature to discern, promote, and nurture them. Nature teaches death and futility. Nature as God? No, thank you! The tree outside one’s window is nice, but it’s not nature. Nature’s going to destroy that tree and eventually leave nothing in its place.

If creative intelligence, in the realm of the metaphysical (with which anyone conscious is necessarily connected), is the ground of reality, and the material, an odd artefact of the metaphysical, like a play put on in a theatre, the whole thing makes sense. C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton flesh this out.

One might indeed ask why a creative intelligence exists at all; however, that mystery is no less but certainly no more of a mystery than why the material would exist in a purely material universe. The question is not definitively answerable and is not necessarily even a question that demands resolution. At least with the metaphysical, we have inside information on the matter, we have a metaphysical side to our natures.

The material need have no creator to explain it, but metaphysical windows into the material do require an explanation.

Through a different route than Bill—and there may be others, still, for instance mere necessity!—I arrived at the same point; there had to be a Spirit of the Universe who knows neither time nor limitation.

With ministers, and the world’s religions, I parted right there. When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory.

In the blue corner, ministers [of the religious variety] and the world’s religions; in the red corner, me. Pitting my views against the aggregate knowledge and experience of religions, not just the domestic one, but the world’s religions. The hubris is amazing: from a position of abysmal ignorance, I dismissed what I knew almost nothing about. I was dismissing the wisdom of millions of people throughout history, people often far better educated and far more experienced than me, with a far greater understanding of life.

A God ‘personal to me’ is not my own, pocket elf-on-the-shelf, ‘my Higher Power’, as though we each have a separate one, and each one is a tiny little thing responsible for one tiny little person, but a universal God who wants a personal relationship with me, as He does with everyone else.

The trouble with a personal God is that that God might have ideas about what I should believe, think, and do, and these are likely to rub up against my own ideas. Having God take an interest contains an implicit threat.

My mind, too, snapped shut, ostensibly for ‘intellectual’ reasons, but really because I sensed that the existence of such a God would challenge my authority over my life and in particular over my insistence that I was at the centre. I was indeed at the epicentre of my own destruction, but I was not really at the centre of my life, the world, the universe, or life itself—all that was an illusion. In short, if God existed, God was right, and, if God were right, I was wrong.

On another note, the notion that God is love, superhuman strength, and direction is a helpful starting point if one does not know how to conceive of a Higher Power. That could keep one going forever.

To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching—most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult; the rest I disregarded.

“Conceded”. Bill thinks that he is the wisest person in the world, wiser than Christ, able to pass judgement on him. He thinks Christ is a man (just a man), a great one, but “a” not “the” great one. That’s precisely the attitude I had. When I was offered the programme, I stood in judgement above it.

That’s not what I’m asked to do. I’m asked to believe, then follow. The choice is up to me. The programme does not care either way.

“Conceded”. Bill thinks there is a discussion or an argument going on. He’s let one of his pawns go, presumably as part of a bigger tactic.

The programme does not argue with me. God does not argue with me. Sponsors do not argue with me. “Please yourself, then,” is the best answer to argument. When I’m in my right mind, I don’t argue, either. As with Bill, the real argument was, in any case, within myself.

“not too closely followed by those who claimed Him”

I, too, thought I could legitimately pass judgement on all people of religion, as though I had known and interviewed all of them, and assessed them against my own, superior, homespun code of moral conduct, and found them wanting.

“His moral teaching—most excellent.”

Like Bill, I would look at religion and agree with those parts that happened to suit me. I had sponsors I thought most excellent. They were candidates that were passing before me, and I was the examination board. I marked their scripts. Sometimes I would do what they said, not because they said it, but because they happened to get the same answer as I found in my answer booklet. I looked like I was following others’ advice, but I was really following my own, which theirs happened, at that moment, to coincide with.

“Convenient and not too difficult.”

Relying on God is not convenient. It requires effort, pain, and sacrifice.

The effort: to take this action (disagreeable) not that (agreeable).

To front-load pain for the sake of long-term gain.

Sacrifice: of dubious pleasures, of dubious pastimes, of dubious luxuries, of dubious habits, of dubious people.

To do what, instead? To follow, blindly at times, the dictates of a Higher Power.

To rely on God means to resist the world, to resist other people, and to stand firm in the implacable tide.

The wars which had been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious dispute had facilitated, made me sick. I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions of mankind had done any good. Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest. If there was a Devil, he seemed the Boss Universal, and he certainly had me.

I, too, would take a fragment of reality (the tiny fragment I thought I had experienced), focusing chiefly on the negative, and then extrapolating that across the Antarctic wastelands of my ignorance.

A second folly: condemnation based on a highly speculative counterfactual: if there were no religion, what would things have been like? The picture cannot be painted.

In fact, I make up my mind to condemn first. I buy the paints, then look for a painting-by-numbers outline to fill in. The colouring has already been decided; I just need a template.

So why would I do this?

Well, when I am complaining, I’m right and others are wrong, which is a pleasure in itself.

If I’m right and others are wrong, I do not need to work or change.

If I’m right and God does not exist, I need bow to no one; I remain in charge; nothing pulls rank on me.

That’s where all the words come from: I need a good cover story.

But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known!

“Point-blank declaration”: Nothing in between, no buffer, no cushioning, no beating about the bush, straight in there with God. If someone’s not desperate, however you pitch it, it will not be accepted. If someone’s desperate, they’ll accept the point-blank declaration.

What is a higher power? By definition, that which can do for me what I cannot do for myself.

Even the definition, therefore, is moot until I know what the boundary is of what I can do, in terms both of alcoholic drinking and in terms of everything else.

Once I know that I need to be able to do things that are outside the scope of my responsibility and ability, I necessarily need a greater, a higher power with a greater capability, whose scope of responsibility and ability lies not only beyond me but encompassing everything that I am pitted against.

Defeat must be complete. If it’s not complete, it’s not defeat.

What’s dead? Dead is dead. But trapped in the material as though that’s all there is is dead, too.

Being trapped in resentment, fear, guilt, and shame is dead.

Being trapped in trivia is dead.

The new life is on a fundamentally higher level.

It is not the old level, rearranged.

The old level, and everything on it, has been transcended. Action might still be taken there, but that’s not where my living lies. It’s where my material existence is grounded.

Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute; and this was none at all.

Power is the ability to do something.

If I can’t do something, I do not have the power.

If I persistently can’t do something, the power is simply not available within me.

The higher power is that which either gives me the power I need or unlocks the locked power within me.

Whatever the mechanism, I must seek that which provides or unlocks the power.

I cannot do this on my own.

That floored me. It began to look as though religious people were right after all. Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table. He shouted great tidings.

The abstract concepts are true and have their own abstract proofs.

The best proof of the pudding is in the eating, however.

We know AA works because we can see with our own eyes that it works.

Not in the past: now.

A miracle is an intervention in mechanical, material processes by an outside force.

The billiard balls are heading where they’re heading according to the laws of science until someone picks up a cue and plays.

Science predicts the movement of the billiard balls but does not predict whether someone will pick up a cue and play.

Materialism is the philosophy that the billiard table exists without creation, that the game of billiards is not a game at all, just a sequence of causes and effects, that there are no players, that there are no cues, that, if one were clever enough, everything on the table would be predicted, that the balls themselves have somehow become self-aware, and are dissatisfied with the state of affairs but must resign themselves to the scientific predictability of everything that lies upstream, their dissatisfaction and their resignation also entirely scientifically predictable events, with no more meaning than the rotting of an egg or an avalanche.

What is at the top of the materialistic stream, however? “Grant me one miracle—the start of it all—and I will explain the rest,” says the materialist.

Even the materialist requires a miracle.

The spiritual stands in contrast to the material and presumes a universe beyond the billiard table, which provides a more than satisfactory explanation for the existence of the billiard table, for the rules of the game, for the self-awareness of the poor billiard balls, and for the strange fact that the events on the billiard table certainly do not seem to be governed purely by their own laws.

Billiard Bill has seen that it’s possible for one of the billiard balls to form a relationship with the Holder of the Cue.

I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on a different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.

The programme does not offer the same life, tidied up, but a new life.

Life is indeed tidied up—reorganised—but not from within, from without.

I’m re-potted from a tiny, constraining pot, into the garden.

The plant does not save the plant. The garden saves the plant.

What is the new life?

One where I live in the realm of the spirit, from within which I make excursions to the material to do what needs to be done. It is where my work is but not the source of my value, identity, and purpose.

I’m created by God, placed here for a purpose, and given everything I need to do the job. I will not necessarily discern the ultimate purpose; I’m told only what to do next.

Self—the self-made false concept of the person—is the old soil. It did not work. The plant almost died.

God—the loving Creator of all—is the new soil. It works. The plant thrives.

Grasping takes place in desperation. No desperation, no grasping, no engagement, no sustenance.

Despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn’t like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

God as the abstract creator of the universe or as nature is all very nice but has nothing to do with me.

Such a God is also no use in a crisis.

Nature is no use in a crisis.

If I have a problem with another person or with money or with work, a tree is not going to help me.

The personal relationship with God (God provides what I need if I stay close to Him and perform His work well) is both the threat and the answer.

The threat, because God’s will operates 24 hours a day and thus displaces 24 hours a day’s worth of other pursuits.

Even if God permits or wills me to continue the same pursuits as before, they are now pursued with different motivations, with different methods, with different ends, with a different relationship between me as the operator of the pursuit and the Overseer of the pursuit: under entirely new management.

Whatever I was seeking in my self-centered endgame is threatened by the existence of a personal God.

Once I recognise that, in the self-centered game, the ‘house’ always wins (i.e. I never do), the notion of a personal God is converted from threat to salvation.

Once I realise that the ego is not my amigo and I’ve been batting for the wrong side, God seems like an eminently sensible prospect.

I can be told, if I wish and will it, what to do every moment of every day, and I will be given precisely what I need, every moment of every day.

The notion of a personal God can be expanded to include Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind, and Spirit of Nature, as expressions or facets of that personal God, so trees come back into the picture after all.

But it is what is behind nature that is the origin of all wisdom and strength.

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?”

Suggested: not obligatory, but there’s no other option on the table.

The freedom to have one’s own conception of God is a wonderful and useful conceit.

I can conceive of God however I wish and have nice, comforting conception.

If that gets me in through the door, wonderful.

What is behind the door is God, however.

God is God, whatever my conception.

Once I’m on the other side, I will be confronted with the God who is beyond conceptions.

But by then it is too late.

No matter, however, as the God who is beyond conceptions is not only infinitely better than the conceptions but presents zero threat to me on any level—true provided one recalls that I am not my own ego, and my ego is not my amigo.

Anything that God ‘threatens’ is not me at all, and is not even real at all.

The only thing that can be threatened is an illusion: something that does not even exist.

That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.

The intellect must not be above the person.

The person—spirit—must be above the intellect.

The intellect is a tool for thought; it is not, itself, a thinker.

Disconnected from God, truth, spirit, humanity, feeling, it can be deployed by the ego to monstrous effect.

In that case, the ego is the thinker, pulling the strings of intellect, putting on the plausible show.

The monstrosity: the icy intellectual mountain that blocks from life.

What is life?

God, truth, spirit, humanity, feeling.

Intellect has nothing of value, itself, to offer.

What is needed?

Heat.

Where from?

God, truth, spirit, humanity, and feeling.

Once those are restored to their true place of supremacy, the intellect, too, finds its place.

It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!

To be willing to believe is not committing directly to believing what I presently believe to be untrue, which is impossible. One cannot force believe, as belief is a function of the apprehension of the truth. I can technically take something to be true on authority, even though I can’t see it myself, but that is not true belief.

Rather, being willing to believe is a commitment to a process with two stages:

• Unwinding my certainty about truth
• From a new position of uncertainty and humility, plotting a new course.

The new course:

• Gather and assess new facts
• Take note of others’ experience
• Take action
• Have my own experience
• Arrive at a new truth

Once the new truth is arrived at, I assent to it.

That is what belief is.

A power greater than myself: that which can do what I cannot do (keep me sober, keep me sane, have me live well).

What is required at this point is this one faculty of the willingness to believe:

The adoption of a new starting point and the adoption of a new path.

Why complete willingness?

All my conclusions, all my certainties need to be unwound, and I need to go back to a simpler state, where I have a few apparent facts surrounding me: the teapot, the table, the window, and I do not know even what these are for. From this position of seeing without seeing, I can be shown.

Practically, how?

Take the next action in the long arc of the first nine steps.

Take the next action in the daily arc of the last three steps.

Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.

Maybe God is always concerned with us humans, but we are aware of it only once we want Him enough.

There’s that word ‘want’ again: not just a technical recognition that we might be better off doing God’s will, but an emotional pull; not just an emotional push away from suffering but an emotional pull towards God.

I don’t think that pull needs to be absolute. In fact, an unconflicted desire for God is perhaps rare. But there has to be enough desire to be willing to drop old ideas, take right action, and put up with the side effects of the path: doses of pain, effort, and sacrifice.

He saw: something in his friend.

He feels: dropping his old ideas sufficiently, a new feeling sweeps in; this is actual experience.

Belief: this lies at the end of the line of the honesty (about what has not worked with me and what has worked with others), open-mindedness (the loosening or abandonment of the old ideas), and willingness (to take certain actions). These, together, reveal the truth, and the belief is the apprehension of truth.

Pride: not just ‘me first’ but ‘I’m right’. The contrast: asking God to direct my thinking daily, in awful recognition that I’m unable to direct my own thinking truthfully and usefully.

Prejudice: gathering one per cent of the data on the world of the spirit, putting down my pen, and drawing my conclusions, believing I’ve scoured the universe and it has no more to reveal.

These are the two blocks to the spiritual life: belief in self; certainty.

The new world: the world of the spirit. It was there all along, but vision of it was blocked by belief in self and certainty—pride and prejudice.

The real significance of my experience in the Cathedral burst upon me. For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came. But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so it had been ever since. How blind I had been.

A combination of needing God (more precisely: the conscious recognition of that need) plus wanting God (the emotion to match the intellectual recognition of the need).

Humble willingness: the recognition that I can originate no valid plan for myself and I can originate none of the resources—internal and external—to achieve such a plan, or any other; even the ego has to grudgingly siphon off energy stored in the God-supplied fuel tank within me. When you point this out to the ego, it becomes vicious.

God, of course, has been with him (and me) the whole time. But opening one’s eyes to the presence of God will appear in the moment as though God is moving from absent to present. All that has changed is that the illusion has dropped.

Worldly clamours: their prompting, their triggers, might come from the outside, but the real problem is the ego sensors internally that are constantly watching out for these triggers and are activated by them. What do the clamours say? They insist that I do not need God; that God is the enemy; or that God does not exist: there is no world of the spirit; the bridge that led me to the realm of the material from the realm of the spirit is blown up and then shrouded in fog; all I can see is the material on this side of the Great Divide. Having decided that this crumbling world is all there is, I decide to make the most of it: plans and designs (‘little’, of course) for sex, money, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance. The plan’s noisy, and, even more noisy are the fear of its failure, and the resentment at its failure, topped by disappointment and despair as I see the truth. The loudest clamours of all.

When I’m in ego, I’m blind, but, awkwardly, that is precisely when I think I can see the clearest. The more upset I am, the less I need to trouble myself with trivial, complicating details.

When I know for sure I can see almost nothing except the table, the fridge, the body, the tree, and I do not know what even those are for, that is when I am seeing the clearest. The recognition of fundamental not-knowing takes the words out of the clamours. Without words, they have nothing to articulate. In that silence, God is immediately apprehended.

At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremens.

Recovery from alcoholism requires separation from all of the mood- and mind-altering substances and also, frankly, the behaviours, particularly those that produce a chemical thrill in the brain.

Whilst I’m nutted, I’m out of control.

Whilst I’m nutted, my emotions and thinking are out of whack.

The control system is swamped; chemicals are running the show.

I also will not understand anything. There’s no point in talking to me.

Any chemical interference, and nothing can be accomplished.

I cannot stop the course of active alcoholism, in myself or in others.

I have to wait until divine intervention makes it possible for me to stop or stops me.

I didn’t go into detox or treatment, although I did need the intensive care of AA to get through the withdrawal period.

In any case, I had to wait years from first encountering trouble with alcohol to being given the grace to do something concrete and effective to recover.

This is why a slip is never safe: If I slip, I will not be able to separate myself from alcohol; rather, I will have to wait to be separated.

There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.

How I understand God is irrelevant as long as I conceive of God as good, powerful, and capable of helping me.

The inadequacy of the conception does not detract from the adequacy of God to solve my problems.

Humbly: the recognition that I cannot solve my own problems. In fact, the recognition that I do not know what my problems really are; those I identify as problems might not be problems, I might have problems of which I am not aware, and my perception of all of these matters is flawed, particularly when it comes to the method of solving them.

God’s solution to my problems is according to His method, not mine. One seeks God’s will, not one’s own.

Unreservedly: there is no part of my life that does not come under scrutiny in Step Four; there is no part of my life that does not get submitted to God for orders to be received.

God provides two commodities: care and direction; with the direction comes the strength to follow the direction. Because God provides care, I need not worry about anything. Everything will be taken care of, and, even if I make mistakes, God reroutes. But best not to push it.

The notion that of myself I am nothing does not mean I am nothing. It means I’m an unpowered lightbulb. All of the means of being a jolly good lightbulb are right there, but it’s no use without a power source. Once I’m hooked into the electric circuit, I light up. And note that the electric circuit is not much use without the lightbulbs. The lightbulbs are integral to the lighting system but are nothing in and of themselves.

Without God I am lost—I do not know where I am and what to do; with God I am found—I know where I am and what to do.

Sins are the fruits of the attempt to create my own identity, value, and purpose in the material world.

They are not me: they’re what I do with myself, with my mind, and out there, with my body, in the world.

It is perfectly safe to be ruthless with them, because they do not exist as entities; they are pathways that I walk down. Past sins are gone; they need to be faced, in order that something be taken away: not them, the past sins, because they are already gone, but the future sins. What does the removal look like? Not walking down those particular paths again, in my mind and in the world. The way God achieves this is by providing other, different paths to walk down, in my mind and in the world.

The removal, root and branch: I change my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour under God’s direction, and with God’s strength; and God changes everything deep down within me to bring about lasting, fundamental change. God has given me free will and a certain scope of responsibility (belief, thought, and behaviour), and that is where my small role in the removal of defects is played, but, even within that domain, the direction and strength comes from God. What’s required of me: will and action.

What does this pathway deliver? Ultimately, sobriety. Anything else is a bonus.

My schoolmate visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrong. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to right all such matters to the utmost of my ability.

Problems: the array of situations in my life in which I am not conducting myself in alignment with God’s will, in belief, thought, word, and deed.

Deficiencies: the false notions and attitudes giving rise to the incorrect beliefs, thoughts, words, and deeds.

Whose problems and deficiencies are these? Mine! No one has a part in them. They are all my own.

The list of people I had hurt—Step Four, Step Eight.

The list of people towards whom I felt resentment—Step Four.

Acquainting the friend—Step Five.

To what extent? Fully.

Which people in such categories? All such people, without exception.

The willingness to approach such people—Step Eight.

The approach—Step Nine.

How much willingness? Entire willingness: willingness without flaw, which means being prepared to take the action, as indicated, completely, and promptly. I don’t have to like it.

There are two types of approach.

There is the approach of Step Nine: the admission of the wrongful act, the acknowledgement of its impact, the regret for having committed it, and the remedy, through apology, repayment, or other rectification.

Most people one resents one has harmed. That, in fact, is the real reason for the resentment.

For those whom one resents but whom one has not harmed, there is no Step Nine in the ordinary sense, but the approach in one’s mind and heart must be changed. There is an approach; it is merely internal. In my mind’s eye, I admit my wrong, my attitude of resentment, and mentally extend love towards them as the antidote to the poison within me.

In the detail of Step Nine we have the notion that we make amends directly and overtly except when to do so would injure them or others, and telling people I have resented them when they are unaware of the fact or believe merely that I am cranky or unpleasant is to actually inflict injury, but the attitude and, where applicable, behaviour towards such people can indeed be altered.

“Never was I to be critical of them”: perhaps I should never criticise anything or anyone under any circumstances … It is certainly not the case that the condition of my life would be improved with more criticism. Criticism is not a scarce and valuable commodity in my life. Perhaps I could go easier on that.

Utmost: no half measures; no ‘in God’s time’; get on with it, and get on with it maximally, now.

I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me. Never was I to pray for myself, except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive. But that would be in great measure.

My own thinking is no longer the highest court in the land. My thinking is relegated to the position of citizen, submitting its case to a court system, with God as the judge. Thinking still takes place, except now there are checks and balances.

The new God-consciousness is not a wild revelation, dependent on finding pennies on the pavement, seeing signs, or the infamous gut (really emotion). Emotion will ultimately be involved, but not untrained, untested, un-tempered, distempered, feral emotion.

The God-consciousness does indeed involve inspiration, intuitive thought, and decision (see page 86), but these faculties can be trusted only once the Programme, Principles, Prayer, and (sometimes, consultation with one or more) People have been brought to bear on the situation.

It is these that in turn tune the receiver to carefully to pick up the faint broadcast from God and to filter it from the cataract of noise that fills the airwaves.

Without this tuning, there will indeed be inspiration, intuitive thought, and decision, but they will not, generally, originate in God. One will be tuning in, but not necessarily to the right station. There’s more than one voice out there.

Common sense is raised to a higher level (uncommon sense) when put in the employment of a sincere desire to abolish self’s rules and submit oneself to God’s.

Sit quietly: this describes the asking. It does not say that the answers come during the sitting quietly.

The answers come when they come. Occasionally they come, thick and fast, then and there, but that’s not the rule and it’s not the whole picture. Hence the folly of what is sometimes called ‘two-way prayer’, certainly when practised non-judiciously. God simply won’t be commanded to speak and give the final word because I happen to be holding a pencil and waiting. The answer is not symmetrical to the question, because the asker is not symmetrical to the answerer.

The answer is usually not a single answer but a jigsaw puzzle of answer components, and the pieces are fed piecemeal to be added to the picture. Sometimes, pieces are provided whilst the adjacent pieces are not yet in place to receive the new piece. Stray pieces that one is sure are important must be kept aside, gathering dust, for the moment their place in the picture becomes apparent. One does not see the whole picture until one stands back, often a considerable time later.

The only two commodities available: direction and strength (Wh-Wh: the What to do and the Wherewithal to do it).

Nothing else. You can’t shake the tree of the universe and expect all its fruit to fall off.

Best not to try to shake the universe’s tree, to try to look behind the curtain to spy the Wizard and the Mechanism. Macro- or micro-dosing to see ultimate reality will yield more than the individual can handle. People do in fact go mad when going down this path. There are a couple of examples in the Bible (eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Tower of Babel, the story of Nabab and Abihu) of going too far in this hubris; there’s also the story of Icarus; it’s an old and universal tale. I bet there are Asian equivalents.

One does not pray for oneself, firstly because there is no self-contained entity and set of circumstances called the self; it’s an expedient fiction, not a reality.

Secondly, and as a consequence of the first reason, because any outcomes limited to the apparent good of the individual, ignoring the good of others, ignoring the good of the whole, will be at the expense of others and the whole.

How often have I been upset until I learned the fully story?

The programme is predicated on the idea that, if I do my bit, I will be taken care of anyway: I need not take care of myself (beyond the tooth-brushing, the counting of pennies, the blackout curtains and earplugs, the proper diet) that keep the show on the road.

If everyone humbly served the whole, thinking nothing of themselves, the world’s problems would be solved in six months. Self is really the only problem, at the micro and macro levels.

My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements.

Done: one has to complete the first nine Steps. Provided that the Step Eight work is sound and complete (and that can take a while, particularly if people are scrambled, because the process does require the accurate retrieval and marshalling of information to complete Step Eight in a sound way), Step Nine should not take more than a few weeks. Taking longer than that often means that one simply has not understood the necessity and urgency.

What is yielded by this completion is not a relationship with God per se. It is a new relationship that is granted, and admission to a new and higher reality. There has been a relationship already, one of almost pure grace. Whilst everything is still a complete mess, God gives one the necessary means to sort out the mess, but only as long as progress is at least stately, if not swift. Dawdling and backsliding stop the supply of grace. The time is borrowed until the process is completed.

Once the process of the first nine Steps is completed, the flow of direction and strength is sure, although note that a new stipulation kicks in: direction and strength will continue to be provided as long as one maintains effective operating conditions (‘fit spiritual condition’) and continues to place the doing of God’s will above all else.

The elements of living that answer all my problems are the last three Steps. That’s it. All I have to do is Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, and literally everything else is sorted out, because everything that is my responsibility falls somewhere within these three Steps.

There isn’t my life over here and the programme over there: the former is accommodated in the latter.

Establish (first nine Steps); maintain (last three Steps).

The essential requirements:

Belief not just that God exists but is more powerful than—bigger than—any problem I think I have.

Honesty and humility: that I cannot do anything by myself; that my problem is me and my thinking; that that fouled mechanism cannot unclog itself.

Honesty really is humility, therefore.

Willingness is preparedness to take all of the indicated actions despite how disagreeable they may seem, and despite the three inevitable prices of pain, effort, and sacrifice.

These prices are the small, shiny pennies that grant admission to the Great Circus. They are next to nothing, really.

Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.

People talk about unconditional love, say that God is unconditional love, and seem to believe that is all there is to say on the matter. This all sounds delightful. The idea appears to be that this might represent unconditional affection, an absolute approval of everything that I do, and the freedom granted to do whatever I wish with no consequences whatsoever.

Nothing could be further than the truth. To submit to God’s unconditional love is not to submit to the love of a doting dog.

It is to submit to a curriculum under which I am to be moulded from contaminated raw material into an instrument fit for a purpose and then deployed as that instrument.

It is precisely because I am valued by God that, if I recognise that love, I won’t be left there to wallow in mediocrity.

The relationship with God is not about fun or comfort.

The process is going to involve ground-up (in fact below-ground-up: branch-and-root) transformation.

It’s going to involve being ground up like mincemeat.

Creation from that which already exists involves destruction, and that’s the price to be paid.

We are not being cultivated from inert and unblemished potential but being retrained away from a highly deleterious way of thinking and living.

In fact, the whole horror of the fall since Adam must be undone in each person. It is because God loves us that He is willing to engage in this process.

This requires our willingness precisely because it is not for the faint-hearted, and it will not be opposed against our will. Again, because we are loved and not mere resources, we are given free will, to turn away from God, and to turn towards God.

Self-centredness: the perception of oneself as the centre of the universe (fostered by the optical illusion conjured by the physical eyes that our vantage point is indeed the centre of all things) with circumstances mattering to one only to the extent that they are proximal (near) and not mattering to the extent that they are distal (far)—in space and in time.

The destruction of this involves the recognition that a tax collector in Bolivia or a hedgehog in Lowestoft is as important to God as I am. I am no more and no less valuable than any other created being.

Secondly, the whole formation of will and the implementation of that will must be based not on my apparent interests but on this totality of things.

Being almost wholly ignorant of the totality of things, I cannot possibly form my own will with any real cogency. There are next to no data on which basis to form such a will.

Instead of having one’s own particular will, one starts with a blank sheet of paper, and asks God to write His will on the paper. That is then the plan to follow. I choose that as my will. Then there is no conflict.

One never finds out what God’s ultimate will is, even for us, let alone for other people. It is God’s immediate will for us that is to be sought.

One finds out what? What to do today. Even that’s difficult to discern, but a few important items are usually obvious and incontrovertible, and, as long as we do those, the more complicated or obscure affairs do tend to work themselves out as well.

I must turn in all things—in all affairs and matters of my life—to God.

God—the Creator of all things—and the Creator of light.

Darkness is only my refusal to apprehend that light.

It’s not even a blip in the continuum: the light continues whether I see it or not.

Lastly: God did not set the mechanism going and then disappear. God is as attentively attending to its minute operations as ever.

Everything is in His hands.

These were revolutionary and drastic proposals, but the moment I fully accepted them, the effect was electric. There was a sense of victory, followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known. There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up, as though the great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound.

Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, as they say.

One gets pale, drip-drip intimations of Bill’s sudden revelation, but, if one pays attention, and keeps praying, the drips keep coming. Too much of a coincidence not to be connected with the prayer and the programme-founded actions that flow from it.

Revolutionary and drastic. Revolutions sweep away much before they have a hope of creating. I have to be prepared for the merciless storming of the Bastille—the prison I’ve been in.

Victory—over the impulse to drink. Victory—over the terrible weight of materialism.

Confidence—that all problems contain within them the path to their solution; they were always equations to be solved, and the solution is embedded in the equation.

The lower level of the material vs the higher level of the spiritual—one should have one’s feet on earth and one’s head in the clouds with God; not one’s head on the earth and one’s feet in the air, idle.

Ill temper comes from having one’s head in the world.

Disorder comes from having one’s feet in the air.

Order comes from having one’s feet on the earth.

Good temper comes from having one’s head in the air.

For a moment I was alarmed, and called my friend, the doctor, to ask if I were still sane. He listened in wonder as I talked.

It’s not a bad idea to check out Massive Realisations, Epiphanies, Spiritual Experiences, or suchlike, with sane others. Make sure they’re a friend. Make sure they’re qualified.

Not every Massive Realisation, Epiphany, or Spiritual Experience is such.

The realm of the spirit has snakes as well as ladders.

Finally he shook his head saying, “Something has happened to you I don’t understand. But you had better hang on to it. Anything is better than the way you were.” The good doctor now sees many men who have such experiences. He knows that they are real.

Once one has hit rock-bottom and things cannot get worse; or rather, once one has finally realised this to be the case, admitted that one is a liability to oneself, and cried out for help, any step, sincerely taken, really is a step in the right direction, however mistaken it might seem to be. God’s work is at its most mysterious in the newest newcomers to the process.

The spiritual awakening (slow) or spiritual experience (quick) can be alarming both for the individual and for others, and one can become quite difficult for others to deal with.

The gold standard, for keeping oneself going in the right direction spiritually, is the programme as laid out in the Big Book. With one’s consistent application of the principles contained therein, God as the constant companion, systematically acting in one’s life through the daily actions one is taking, continually corrects the errors and replots the course to the right destination.

The requirements for the success of this corrective method, as indicated elsewhere, are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness.

The reality of such spiritual experiences is shown not by the credibility of their subjective reporting at the time of their occurrence but by the long-term impact on how one is living one’s life.

A spiritual experience is real if it enables me to work more effectively and efficiently, to increase substantially in my benevolence (wishing others well and acting in their interests and for the good of all), to take vicissitude lightly, and to enjoy everything, including proceeding cheerfully and systematically through what appear to be bad circumstances or troubles.

It’s not about flashing lights and insights. It’s about practical improvement in the long term.

While I lay in the hospital the thought came that there were thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might be glad to have what had been so freely given me. Perhaps I could help some of them. They in turn might work with others.

Giving is loving when it requires nothing in return but automatically generates the impulse to give onwards.

Reciprocal love in a closed circuit swiftly becomes stagnant.

Love in a chain goes on forever.

Another sign of a genuine spiritual experience is the desire to help others.

That desire might be grossly misplaced and ineptly executed, but its absence casts doubt on the spiritual experience. Any reports of a spiritual experience that does not mention the strong sense of the practical obligation to help others in ways that they might appreciate (as opposed to simply replicating one’s own particular flash in the dark, in other words getting others to ‘see’ what one has seen) I am skeptical of. The false spiritual experience wants to replicate itself like a virus. The true one soon discards the experience itself, which is simply the entrance ticket to a new world of responsibility.

My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic! For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us it is just like that.

The core of the principles: God’s will, not mine, be done. I need only be quiet and act right.

AA is not so much a circular fellowship but a constantly branching tree.

The branches branch, but the roots branch, also. One mirrors the other. The strength of the branches is a function of the strength of the roots in the infinite soil of God.

My job is to make sure that what I am passing on is accurate, to avoid Chinese whispers.

I have to work with others: 80% is talking about the Book and what it says; 10% is talking through inventory and preparation for amends; 10% is talking through other problems or questions.

The relationship with God is not one of insight—hence the ayahuasca-driven realisations concerning the supposed true nature of reality are quite alien to a genuine spiritual experience—but of work. The fruit of meditation is not feeling calm or nice but a good to-do list for the day and an awareness of what defects of mine need to be burned away.

The perfection and the enlargement of the spiritual life come through sponsorship, not cushions, mountains, gongs, candles, and Hildegard of Bingen, although I’m all for those as well as occasional add-ons. They play a different role. They’re sometimes the vessel but never the content; the backdrop not the play.

The trials and low spots ahead are certain.

So are the option to drink and the impulse to drink.

I need protection, both from my ego’s reaction to the trials and low spots and from the impulse to drink.

Only God-As-Employer can provide that.

My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems. It was fortunate, for my old business associates remained skeptical for a year and a half, during which I found little work. I was not too well at the time, and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.

The abandonment of self is absolute. If one were to abandon ship, one would have to abandon all of the ship. If any part of the body were still on the ship, one’s whole fate would still be tied up with that of the ship.

Note that only what is sinking needs abandoning.

Self is sinking from the moment it is launched.

It is not seaworthy.

It is not lifeworthy.

One does not solve others’ problems.

One does not help others, per se.

One helps them to a solution.

What is the solution?

Their service of God.

I’m not providing a product for people to use.

I’m showing the way to the source of all provision.

The spiritual life is not free of waves of self-pity and resentment—these are, in fact, inevitable, because the spiritual life takes as its raw material the unreconstructed person, and the sour fruits of spiritual unwellness are self-pity and resentment.

Emotion is not what drives relapse—note that Fred, on page 41, is having a simply splendid time but drinks; Bill is having a perfectly rotten time but does not.

What matters is whether or not the protection is in place, and the protection comes from serving God twenty-four hours a day.

One carries the message precisely because one has nothing to offer of oneself. If one knows a thing or two—just one or two will do—one can carry that message. One does not have to be well, or ‘spiritual’, to carry a message. In fact, one needs to be unwell—and well aware of that unwellness. From that position, one will understand those who, too, are unwell. The tiny bit of wellness inside the expanse of unwellness is then the spark off the flint that ignites the other person’s kindling.

Again, the notion is one of levels; the right level is higher, and the only way to get higher is to go lower to where people are suffering and offer whatever assistance one, oneself, has been provided with. Then both are lifted up.

We commenced to make many fast friends and a fellowship has grown up among us of which it is a wonderful thing to feel a part. The joy of living we really have, even under pressure and difficulty. I have seen hundreds of families set their feet in the path that really goes somewhere; have seen the most impossible domestic situations righted; feuds and bitterness of all sorts wiped out. I have seen men come out of asylums and resume a vital place in the lives of their families and communities. Business and professional men have regained their standing. There is scarcely any form of trouble and misery which has not been overcome among us. In one western city and its environs there are one thousand of us and our families. We meet frequently so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek. At these informal gatherings one may often see from 50 to 200 persons. We are growing in numbers and power. [In 2006, A.A. is composed of over 106,000 groups.]

What is offered:

• Friendship
• Fellowship
• Being part of something greater
• Joy
• … despite pressure
• … despite difficulty
• A valuable purpose
• Progress towards that end
• The wholesaling of the solution
• The resolution of insoluble problems
• The settlement of intractable quarrels
• The dissolution of trenchant bitterness
• The lifting of irreversible diagnoses
• The resumption of a place in the family
• The reattainment of a place in society
• The retrieval of lost reputation in business
• The abatement of misery
• The unstoppable propagation of all the above

An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature. Our struggles with them are variously strenuous, comic, and tragic. One poor chap committed suicide in my home. He could not, or would not, see our way of life.

Re cups: The cups of the alcoholic can involve drinking—or not. I can be just as insufferable sober, often more so, because I’m awake, paying attention, more vigorously active, and much harder for others to handle.

Re struggles with others in AA: Best to cease struggling (cease fighting anything or anyone, as it says later in the Book). Leave them be. Present the solution. Then walk away to give people the dignity to choose what they want to do without hovering over them, watching, milling around and waiting for an opportunity to be insufferably helpful. Be available for further questions, but let it go at that. Sponsorship is 50% knowing what to say and 50% knowing when to shut up.

Re suicide: In a sense recovery always involves suicide: the choice is between the death of self, on one hand, or, on the other hand, actually terminating one’s earthly existence, directly or indirectly.

The point about the jumping-off point is that one really should jump; one can’t stay there indefinitely. The question is only what one is going to jump into: literal death or a new life. If one does not jump, one’s likely to slip, and one isn’t in control of which way one slips. Best to be deliberate and jump. Clock’s ticking.

Re could not or would not: it is often impossible to tell why someone does not ‘see’ our way of life, hence the yoking of these terms throughout the book on six other occasions (making seven in total, by my count):

• “Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program” (Page 58, Big Book)
• “We find it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not work with you.” (Page 96, Big Book)
• “Some men cannot or will not get over alcoholism.” (Page 114, Big Book)
• “But if you cannot or will not stop drinking, I think you ought to resign.” (Page 148, Big Book)
• “If he cannot or does not want to stop, he should be discharged.” (Page 148, Big Book)
• “At the same time you will feel no reluctance to rid yourself of those who cannot or will not stop.” (Page 148, Big Book)

From the inside, the answer appears clearer, for me at least: unwillingness. Even if I can’t ‘see’ that others are right, I can make the decision to assume that they are right and act accordingly. Backsliding and ultimately relapse always boil down to doing what I want to do because I think I know best. Another person does not always know what is best for one, particularly if is generally doing well, but, if one is in unfit spiritual condition, almost any AA advice is going to be better than what one is planning for oneself.

There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all. I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity. But just underneath there is deadly earnestness. Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish.

If I look at recovery, the spiritual life, and my life generally, and there is not a vast amount of fun, I am missing something; I’m getting it wrong; I’m making heavy weather of it; I’m not operating the machinery in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions.

Worldliness: not getting lost in theological or spiritual abstractions; not getting lost in psychological or therapeutic or ideological jargon; super practical, super simple, super accessible.

Levity: laughing at ourselves, and, when others laugh, laughing with them.

Enough of the seriousness.

The way to take things seriously is actually to take them practically and lightly: that will do everything justice.

It is the absolute reliance on God in all things that enables me to trip lightly.

Twenty-four hours a day of faith: this means when I am asleep, too, when I am half-asleep, when I am half-conscious, when I am dozing. The single most important thing is to maintain conscious contact with God when I am preparing for sleep and waking up and at all times in between, to the extent that I am conscious at all. When I get this resting state right, everything else falls into place.

There is no sense of my life operating over here and the programme operating over there, as two distinct and separate domains with conflicting interests, which would necessitate finding a ‘balance’ between the two.

The two actually becomes fused. The programme is the method; life is the subject matter. A method needs subject matter; subject matter needs a method.

That unity of subject matter and method resolves all conflict.

There is only the programme and there is only life. The paradoxical two-sided coin.

Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia. We have it with us right here and now. Each day my friend’s simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men.

I adopt this attitude:

This is the best of all possible worlds; this is the best of all possible lives; this is the best of all possible opportunities.

God has laid out everything perfectly for me. I need only ask God how to operate in each individual moment, with no policies or strategies, just the direct asking.

All I need to be perfectly happy is right here already. All I need to be perfectly useful and perfectly fulfilled is right here already.

Alcoholism produces shock waves.

Recovery and the spiritual life propagate in the same way as shock waves but to constructive not destructive effect.

Good will to everyone: this is the antidote to resentment.

Not writing.

Writing’s for Step Four.

Good will is for all day every day and for all situations and all interactions.

Bill W., co-founder of A.A., died January 24, 1971.

Someone once asked me who the founder of AA was. I said, “Bill W and Dr Bob!”

He said, “No. They were the co-founders. God was the founder.”

I’m only ever acting under direction: I’m not the originator of anything.

I need only channel what was given to me, onwards.