Step One and Beyond Daily Topics 2024 Q4

31 December 2024: Done

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“If what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try.” (Chapter 2, ibid.)

What we who have consistently applied the Twelve Steps to recover have is a relationship with God. Not a very evolved one, perhaps, but it’s there and it’s functioning.

Worse: the relationship is an asymmetrical one. I’m infinitesimally small. God is infinitely big. In that relationship, the goal is for the I to disappear, like a jigsaw puzzle piece in a jigsaw. No more me. No more stories. No more history. No more hysteria. No more “I want”. No more “But”. No more ‘pinions. And then, and then, not sitting on a cloud with a harp, singing Wesleyan hymns, but being super active in the world, working for God, and trying to be available for God to use one as a channel to reach a largely uninterested world. Self constantly pops up everywhere, like a swarm of gremlins, not to be gotten wet or fed after midnight, and they take a lot of swatting. So it’s a busy time.

One has to be really, really, really done for that to be attractive. I mean, really done.

If someone wants that, then they are ready for the steps, and I might be able to help.

If someone does not want a relationship with God, and specifically the above relationship, if someone doesn’t want their story, history, personality, and identity to be dissolved into nothing, I don’t know how to get someone to that position of wanting. It was external and internal disaster that got me to that position, not reading things like this or having someone in nice knitwear produce clear sentences in meetings and smiling at me hopefully. That made me back off, edgily.

Once I was done, done-dy, done-dy-, done-dy done, I was ready, and the message of the Big Book then seemed so obvious it barely needed explaining.

What’s your experience?

30 December 2024: Musty past

“Never mind the musty past.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

I can dwell on the past, and give myself a hard time.

Anything I did in the past has three possible assessments:

1. It was good and right, in which case ‘Ten points to Slytherin’. [I’m in Slytherin]
2. It was wrong but excusable, in which case I’m excused.
3. It was wrong but inexcusable, in which case I can be forgiven if I confess and make amends.

There is therefore nothing to worry about.

What’s your experience?

29 December 2024: Grosser handicaps

“We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.” (Chapter 5, ibid.)

Writing a detailed Step Four and getting input on the detail during the process rewires my mind. There is simply not time to cover the detail adequately in a single Step Five conversation.

I proceeded from my first Step Five relieved but with my world of perception and interpretation largely intact.

On the other hand, in a single Step Five conversation, a broad overview helps right-size the past and me, hence the relief.

This is why I practise and advocate both a sponsor’s close involvement in the Step Four writing process and running through a summary in Step Five with a few trusted AA friends.

In this way, both rewiring and right-sizing can be achieved.

What’s your experience?

28 December 2024 (bonus): Don’t be a Christmas pudding!

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

I ask once then take responsibility for my thinking.

Once is enough. God does not need to be nagged.

Having asked, the onus is now on me to reject all negative thinking.

I have to change my thinking.

God won’t do it—God enables it.

That’s different.

He’ll specify the direction.

But I have to make the decision:

Do I want to be a big, frightened, whiny milksop?

Or a joyful, active, life-loving adult?

Here, I use my pride against my ego—

(and this is the legitimate use of pride):

Becoming embarrassed at what I had become …

… and sincerely wanting to be bigger than my feelings.

Having made that decision, I have to guard the gate.

I have to do that. God won’t do it.

God gave me a brain to use, so I must use it.

... under His direction and under His strength.

No negative thought has any power whatsoever except what I give it.

I shoot down the thought at the gate, and it’s over.

That thought is gone forever.

Another may come, but I shoot down that one too.

It might be the twin of the first thought, but it’s a new thought.

When I shoot that one down, it’s over, gone forever.

Eventually, they stop coming. They go and bother someone else.

What do I think of instead?

1. Grateful thoughts
2. Compassionate thoughts about others
3. Constructive thoughts
4. Interesting things I might do
5. The interesting thing I am doing right now

Especially, I listen and read.

Sometimes something spiritual …

… but that can be misused to continue to think about me.

Best to listen to or read something that has absolutely nothing to do with me.

So something worldly and practical can be more useful spiritually.

Spirituality is about self-forgetting and re-engaging in the world.

Not thinking fluffy spiritual thoughts about self.

When bad thoughts come:

“we ask God at once to remove them.” (Ibid.)

I don’t then just sit there like a Christmas pudding, waiting for God, like a servant in Downton Abbey, to remove the dirty plate.

I have to go and wash up the dirty plate.

This might mean a ten-second spot-check inventory.

It might mean saying the rosary out loud.

But then:

“Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.” (Ibid.)

We resolutely. Not God resolutely. We.

Asking God to direct my thinking and / or to remove a thought is a momentous but momentary action.

What’s the constant mental action?

“Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities. ‘How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.’ These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.” (Ibid.)

In other words, 99.9% of the time I’m not sitting in a mental and emotional stew, asking God to change my psychic nappy: I’m actively channelling my mind in constructive directions, and anything that does not fit this plan can F right O.

What’s next? _Action, action, action_.

With God’s help, this is perfectly possible.

I got sick of being unhappy and did something about it.

What’s your experience?

28 December 2024: Regardless

“Burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition is that he trust in God and clean house. … These things will come to pass naturally and in good time provided, however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of what anyone says or does.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

Someone said that love = benevolence + beneficence.

Benevolence: wishing someone well.

Beneficence: acting in others’ benefit.

This means I can act with love whatever I feel and whatever they say or do.

Such love entails no risk.

When loving in this way, I need no defence.

What’s your experience?

27 December 2024: Rubbing up

“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.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

“Pride is putting self in the place of God as the centre and objective of our life, or of some department thereof. It is the refusal to recognise our status as creatures, dependent on God for our existence, and placed by Him in a specific relationship to the rest of His creation.” (St Augustine Prayer Book)

I used to become irritable when presented with religious ideas, particularly Christian ones, particularly where God was mentioned, and I thought it was because I had theological objections.

What I sensed, instead, it turns out, was the presence of something greater than me, something much more powerful, with standards, values, and demands, who commanded both awe and obedience, and who wanted something more and better for me than I wanted for myself.

It ‘rubbed me up the wrong way’ because it was challenging my view of myself as the centre and main objective of my life.

Whether a person believes and precisely what others believe is none of my business or concern, but I can report that, when I developed a sufficient abhorrence for self-centredness, God-centredness seemed not so much of a bad deal, and the only thing that was threatened was the parasite of self that had been misdirecting me.

What’s your experience?

26 December 2024 (bonus): On the beam or off the beam

I know I’m on the beam or off the beam by whether or not I am enthusiastic. Enthusiasm came into English from the post-classical Latin enthusiasmus, itself from the Greek ἐνθουσιάζειν, which of course means to be inspired or possessed by God. Here are twelve tests for enthusiasm. I do better with these on some days than on others:

1. Excited to hear & talk about God.
2. Thrilled to pray & meditate & bask in spiritual material.
3. Self, stuff, goals, fame, & ideology lose interest & priority.
4. Sitting at the front of meetings, bursting to carry the message.
5. Chuffed to go to extra meetings to meet & hear new people & carry the message to new ears.
6. Drawn to people showing the active grace of God.
7. Glad that the solution is to abandon self, not scan, fix, grow, or plump it.
8. Doing stepwork now and well, without cue or prompt.
9. Heaping and sharing wisdom, tools, & solutions.
10. Keen to help any and all.
11. Intolerance of own upset & defects + resolute resolution of both.
12. Brisk, calm, blithe, and insouciant.

When I’m not scoring so well with the above, I pull myself up short.

“An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

26 December 2024: The logic of Step Two

“When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

Sally was powerless over alcohol.

She acquired power and was able to stay sober.

She has accessed power.

That power achieved what she couldn’t.

That power is greater than her.

I believe Sally.

I therefore believe that there is a power greater than Sally.

I could not achieve in Sally what that power achieved.

That power is therefore greater than me.

I therefore believe that there is a power greater than me.

I am powerless than alcohol.

Sally was powerless over alcohol.

Whatever provided power to Sally can provide power to me.

I now believe in a power greater than me.

I then do what Sally did.

I then get the results that Sally got.

I now know there is a Power Greater Than Me.

What’s your experience?

25 December 2024: God’s job and my job

God will do for me what I cannot do for myself.

God will not do for me what I indeed can do for myself.

“The thoughts and beliefs that fill our minds ultimately appear in the cake of experience, and to realise this is to save oneself a lot of trouble. No one puts kerosene in the mixing bowl, because no one wants it in the cake, for everyone knows that, if it does enter the bowl, in the cake it will be.” (Emmet Fox)

“If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

What I think produces what I feel.

If I feel bad, I’m thinking bad.

If I think bad, I’ll feel bad.

It’s my job, not God’s, to sift my thoughts and figure out which to accept and which to reject.

I cannot fool myself about the value of these.

This means I need to evaluate these.

This is what daily inventory suggests:

Watch out for troubling thoughts.

Categorise them (page 84) into selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, or fear.

Then ask God for well-targeted corrective measures (three is a good number).

Then run the result past someone else if in doubt.

What’s your experience?

24 December 2024: As we understood Him

I once heard a recording of an AA speaker who was an ordained priest say that no one understands God and that anyone who says they do is wrong. Of course, he’s entitled to this view, and—who knows?—he may be right, but I reverted to the AA literature to see what AA says about this question.

“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies, too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth, but if we wished to grow we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was.” (Chapter 4, Ibid.)

“We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God.” (Chapter 4, Ibid.)

“Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.” (Chapter 2, Ibid.)

“We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know Him better.” (Chapter 6, Ibid.)

From the above, I take the following points:

• The programme encourages me to acquire an understanding of spiritual matters
• I do this through enquiry, consideration, action, experience, and subsequent reflection
• As we understood Him suggests the understanding also encompasses God
• That understanding of God will not be complete but is authentic
• That understanding of God is dynamic not static: it grows over time
• The understanding is achieved most chiefly through building an active, working relationship with God.

When I was new and over the years I’ve been sober, I’ve needed to consider and reconsider my spiritual and religious beliefs. The programme encourages this. Through alternation between consideration and action, I’ve made progress. I have not needed to figure it all out first. But I have not needed to shut down my critical faculties either. The only prerequisite is open-mindedness, in other words not starting the investigation with a conclusion, for instance that reality can be discerned only by scientific measurement or that God is a priori unknowable.

What’s your experience?

23 December 2024: Plates

“First Things First” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

I heard someone say that they had a lot on their plate.

I heard someone else say that they were spinning many plates.

I take First Things First to mean I put things in order of priority and then attend to those things, one at a time.

This means that I only ever have one thing on my plate.

The uncertain pipeline of future tasks is on God’s plate, not mine.

When I believe I have a lot on my plate, I’ve pinched things from His.

When I’m spinning plates, the food flies off.

One spins plates because one cannot hold all of them at once.

If I’m spinning plates, I’m doing too much.

Putting First Things First:

• I have one plate.
• On the plate there is one item.

What’s your experience?

22 December 2024 (bonus round): Transcendence

“Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!’
…
“There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”
…
‘What’s to-day, my fine fellow?’ said Scrooge.
‘To-day!’ replied the boy. ‘Why, Christmas Day.’
‘It’s Christmas Day!’ said Scrooge to himself. ‘I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!’” (A Christmas Carol)

When one first reads the above line about the bedpost, it appears that Scrooge has woken up from a dream: the visitation by Jacob Marley was indeed indigestion; the spirits were conjured by his own unconscious. That’s certainly a modern view, in fact the reductive materialist’s view, the atheist’s view. Everything boils down to the human brain, and the human brain is just neurons, electricity, chemicals. That’s certainly Scrooge’s view, too, before his transformation.

Here’s his former view:

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.
“I don’t,” said Scrooge.
“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”
“I don’t know,” said Scrooge.
“Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

In other words: spirits cannot exist, Marley cannot really be there, so, being the good reductive materialist he is, he must explain what he sees by reducing the phenomenon to a purely physiological one.

Oh, how different after his transformation: he has acquired a belief in the transcendent: “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me … it’s all true, it all happened.” Whatever we might believe, Scrooge believed in an intervention from a metaphysical realm, in the intrusion of beings from that realm into this realm, apparent to our senses in this realm. Capital letters for Spirits and Three: originating in the Divine. And what’s more: the beings from that realm are capable of anything (in contrast to mortal folk; as Scrooge says earlier: “‘I am a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, ‘and liable to fall.’”)

This echoes the basic principle of AA, an interventionist God:

“But for the grace of God, there would have been thousands more convincing demonstrations.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

This presence of God, necessarily from beyond, this intrusion of God via grace into this realm, is the presence, furthermore, of an omnipotent God.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “God ought to be able to do anything.” Then he added, “He sure didn’t do much for me when I was trying to fight this booze racket alone.” (Chapter 11, ibid.)

Another key element of AA’s philosophy is that, whilst mortal, like Scrooge, we are not merely mortal. We are quite literally children of God:

“[A]ll of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try.” (Chapter 2, ibid.)

This is echoed by Bill Wilson’s letter to Carl Jung:

“Very many thoughtful AAs are students of your writings. Because of your conviction that man is something more than intellect, emotion, and two dollars worth of chemicals, you have especially endeared yourself to us.” (Bill Wilson, The Language of the Heart)

Bill Wilson, Jung, and the philosophy of AA do not subscribe to reductive materialism. All three, as did Scrooge, transcended that view to arrive at something more expansive.

Finally, the intervention, as with Scrooge, first acts on us, then acts through us:

“The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.” (Chapter 2, ibid.)

The above ideas represent the absolute core of AA’s solution for me. Materialism is simply not a satisfactory explanation, not to me at any rate, and is profoundly depressing, to boot. Chesterton puts it very well:

“Take first the more obvious case of materialism. As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance … and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.” (Orthodoxy)

AA opened the gateway to another realm, through which Reality gushes like an unstoppable cataract.

“We found the Great Reality deep down within us.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

When I’m gloomy, depressed, or cynical, I have forgotten this. The answer is Step Twelve: wake up and serve, and that Reality heaves into view once more:

“Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

22 December 2024: Triptych

“Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“A triptych is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided into three sections. … The middle panel is typically the largest and it is flanked by two smaller related works, although there are triptychs of equal-sized panels.” (Wikipedia)

When I’m asked to speak at a meeting, the subject is me, not ‘it’: not what ‘it’ used to be like, etc., but what ‘I’ used to be like. Like a triptych, there are three parts, and the largest part is ideally the ‘what happened’, in other words the programme I have been working.

This is what I find useful when I hear others: a little bit about what the person was like, so I can identify; a little bit about what they are like now, to provide a contrast and an indication of what the results of the programme can be; but mostly what I can actually do about my problem, as reflected in the speaker’s experience.

“Sobriety—freedom from alcohol—through the teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps, is the sole purpose of an AA group.” (Language of the Heart)

I would get very frustrated in my early days, because, within half a minute I had identified with the speaker, so no more drunkalogue was required, and, within another half a minute, I had figured out that this person was doing well in life, so the motivation was there. More often than not, the meal was a bread sandwich: the left and right panels of the triptych but little or nothing in the main middle panel. I looked out for and grabbed hold of people who could actually articulate what they did about their problems and took their numbers.

That’s why, now the roles are reversed, I aim, when sharing, to convey as much substance as possible.

What’s your experience?

21 December 2024: Vanity

“Rather vain of us, wasn’t it?” (Chapter 4)

The word vanity come from the Latin word vānus, which means not only ‘empty’ but ‘deceptive’. Vanity—self-regard—is self-deception. A form of vanity I have succumbed to: the belief I am entitled to an elevated position, above others, plus the effort to climb a ladder to achieve that position, masked as ‘ambition’ or the quest for ‘security’.

The deception: there is nothing at the top of the ladder, except more ladder. The ladder does not lead to anything. It leads away from reality and away from my true self, which is simply one of the world.

What’s your experience?

20 December 2024: SLIP

“The A.A. group would have to stick to its course or be hopelessly lost. Sobriety had to be its sole objective. In all other respects there was perfect freedom of will and action. Every group had the right to be wrong.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

‘[I]ts sole objective’. Not God. Not spiritual growth. Not relief. Not fellowship. Not service. Sobriety.

Pursuing the objective of sobriety will involve all of those other things, but they are not the primary purpose: they are secondary purposes.

In my life, when sobriety’s my sole objective, other pursuits can contribute to the attainment of that objective, and their fruits are bonuses, not payment due to me.

When I position something else as my primary purpose, Sobriety Loses Its Priority / Purpose (= SLIP).

A drink lies down the end of all other paths than sobriety.

What’s your experience?

19 December 2024: Debating society

“Just resign from the debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came first.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

This passage occurs in the context of Step Two but applies brought.

“We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues—particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters they can express no views whatever.” (The Twelve Traditions)

Resigning from the debating society and quitting bothering myself with deep questions, if such questions are bothersome rather than enlightening, frees up the whole day.

“Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

18 December 2024: Grouch

“If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Grouch: Grumbling; a complaint or grumble; a grumbling, sulky mood; a fit of ill temper or sulkiness.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

Transient annoyance is inevitable. Building it into a defended castle and moving in is problematic.

What’s your experience?

17 December 2024: Exercised and right-sized

“If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Brainstorm: A fit of rage, melancholy, etc.; a sudden change of mood or behaviour; (also) a sudden and severe attack of mental illness … In later use also figurative or hyperbolically: a temporary loss of reason, a serious error of judgement. (Oxford English Dictionary)

I cannot afford to get exercised about me, you, them, or the world. I can pay attention and act right, but that’s where it has to stop.

When I do get exercised, I ask God to be right-sized.

What’s your experience?

16 December 2024: Gentle

“There may be some wrongs we can never fully right. We don’t worry about them if we can honestly say to ourselves that we would right them if we could. Some people cannot be seen—we send them an honest letter. And there may be a valid reason for postponement in some cases. But we don’t delay if it can be avoided.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

When I first completed the Steps properly, I whizzed through amends and got them done. Inelegantly at times, but always sincerely, so done they were. Although I later found much more I needed to amend, the first run was genuinely the best of which I was capable.

I have sometimes heard people not completing their amends because we must be kind and gentle to ourselves, and instead recognise how much we’re doing and achieving just by being sober and going to meetings.

The word ‘owe’ is used in connection with amends.

If my clients or employer did not pay me what they owed me when invoices fell due or at the end of the month, because they were being kind and gentle to themselves and were doing so well generally there was no need to pay me as well, I would rightly think myself ill used.

Not only it is unfair to people who I have wronged and who have already waited long enough for an apology or repayment, but it is not even kind or gentle to me, either, to leave my relationships unresolved and my unconscious dirtied with all of the unfortunate acts I have not amended.

The absolute kindest thing I ever did for myself was complete that first set of amends and then clear up whatever arose in my behaviour or consciousness.

What’s your experience?

15 December 2024: Done

“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.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

“Done” means completed. For years I thought AA had sold me a bill of goods (i.e. swindled me), because I’d taken the Twelve Steps ‘many times’ but still had persistent problems, particularly negative emotions, flashbacks, panic attacks, and more.

The idea was presented to me that, although I’d started the Steps many times, if I had not done my absolute utmost to make amends to everyone I had harmed, I lacked willingness in Step Eight. I was stuck on Step Eight, even though I had taken certain actions of later Steps. I had not actually taken the Steps once.

If taking the Twelve Steps is like a rail trip to Edinburgh, I had been stuck on a siding outside Doncaster for many years, furious that I could not hear bagpipes.

What’s your experience?

14 December 2024: Outexist, outvegetate, outlive

“Faith without works is dead.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

And I, too, am dead without works, if not in a biological sense, in a spiritual sense.

The Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard, in his novel Korrektur, takes the word outlive (überleben) and coins two more: outexist and outvegetate (überexistieren, übervegetieren) (page 33).

In surviving alcoholism, I do not merely want to outexist and outvegetate the version of me that would have died of alcoholism, in the sense merely of living longer, but actually outlive, make infinitely more of life.

That’s why I work the Twelve Steps on a regular basis: they cut away everything dead and leave me just with life.

In Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, he says that those who sincerely attach themselves to God ‘put away their deadness’.

What’s your experience?

13 December 2024: The requisite honesty

“Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

This rightly gives the impression that gross self-deception, deception of others, secretiveness (or at least the failure to disclose material facts to at least one other person), dirty dealing, and other manifest forms of dishonesty will spell failure.

But behind every failure one will not necessarily find an undisclosed secret or an instance of duplicity.

Behind every failure, however, there appears to be a self-reliance: one has trusted one’s own perception, followed one’s own counsel, yielded to one’s own impulses, instead of trusting the experience, reason, and authority of those who have gone before, even if one’s reason cannot grasp the sense of such a path.

The essential honesty is this pair of realisations:

• My way hasn’t worked
• The programme will.

What’s your experience?

12 December 2024: Let It Begin With Me (Al-Anon slogan)

In Al-Anon we are instructed to ‘stay inside the hula hoop’.

This might be considered to be the large ring swung around the hips and maintained in perpetual motion through their movement.

Such hula hoops can be very large indeed, and a lot can be fitted inside them.

I can overestimate significantly the circumference of my hula hoop.

It is perhaps better to consider the hula hoop I am to stay within to be the pinkie-snug potato-based snack.

What’s your experience?

[For those not in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_Hoops\]

11 December 2024: Riot

“an extreme example of self-will run riot” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Surrendering to impulse (rather than asking God for the right action and getting on with it) is a good, and perhaps the prime, example of self-will.

Every time I surrender to an impulse, I am giving one more seat in the assembly to the Impulse Party

Impulses can be overridden at will whilst there is a majority in the assembly for the Higher Values Party.

But all it takes is for the Impulse Party to get one too many seats and acquire a majority, and the ability to override impulses is lost.

This loss can be permanent, if the impulse is to relapse.

What’s your experience?

10 December 2024: Work, part, role

“if we kept close to Him and performed His work well” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

His work is the set of actions He enjoins me to take. Well means as directed.

The actor performs well if he plays his role well.

The fate of the character in the play is not the measure by which the actor’s merit is assessed.

The fate of my character in the world is not the measure by which my merit is assessed.

I perform well if I play my role well.

What’s your experience?

9 December 2024: Seeming

<span style=“color: #000000;”>“Once confused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence, they show the underlying reasons why they were making heavy going of life.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

The sun is always shining above the clouds. The clouds do not change the sun: they merely obscure it from my perspective.

The heavy going, the clouds, lies in my attitude.

To adjust the image: the clouds are not even above my head. There are no clouds. I have cataracts.

What’s your experience?

8 December 2024: Daily

“What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

I have at times felt disappointment, discouragement, and despair on waking up in the morning (yet again) with a pall of gloom and ill augurs. The charge: Recovery does not work! The spiritual life does not work!

Nonsense.

A bath on Tuesday does precisely what it is supposed to do but will not guarantee fragrance on Wednesday morning.

Clear the snow. Mow the lawn. Water the plants. Sweep the leaves.

Clearing, mowing, watering, sweeping work, but the cycle, being a cycle, goes round and round.

There is the daily cycle and there are larger cycles.

The programme works, but its purpose is not to eliminate the need for the programme.

What’s your experience?

7 December 2024: Mouton à cinq pattes

“In spite of your new-found happiness, there will be ups and downs. Many of the old problems will still be with you. This is as it should be.” (Chapter 8, Big Book)

The French have a phrase, the mouton à cinq pattes, the sheep with five feet, namely an unattainable ideal.

I often find the fifth foot of the mythical sheep is happiness: my demand is not just that my sheep have four good feet and produce useful wool but that it have the extra boon of the fifth foot. I will demand not only freedom from alcoholic and drugs, abstinence from addictions, the satisfaction of needs, the provision of opportunities for connection and utility, a wealth of things to appreciate, but a smooth, nice time, unadulterated happiness, almost constant joy and excitement, in others words for everything to go my way without the slightest effort, risk, uncertainty, or tension.

When the sheep has only four feet, all is at it should be. I have not been denied anything. My vision of how things should be is a childish fantasy.

Letting go of demands for a smooth life and an agreeable set of emotions firstly is rational but secondly opens me up to appreciation of the rich reality provided beyond these facile demands.

What’s your experience?

6 December 2024: Causes and conditions

“So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Sometimes people say, “I’m doing inventory on [insert name]”. Of course, one isn’t. One is doing inventory on oneself.

So why does one have to write about other people at start of the Step Four?

If the kitchen is a mess, yet one has been commanded to go in and cook a meal, one must clear the kitchen: the resentment must be cleared first in order that one can write sober and sound inventory.

This resentment inventory, apparently about others, reveals one’s own values, beliefs, and attitudes and, if one investigates further, the ego’s cherished gameplan, partly concealed as it is below the surface, like the coils of a sea monster.

When I’m doing in inventory on Sally or Cheryl, I’m really doing inventory on me.

What’s your experience?

5 December 2024: Contingency

“What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

This refers to what happens when one has completed the process of the first nine Steps.

I first completed this process somewhere around the two- or three-year mark in AA. Over these first years, I firstly had unfinished business and secondly was often in a parlous state mentally and emotionally.

How was I staying sober if I wasn’t spiritually fit?

Sometimes it is easier to figure out what is going on by looking around in one’s home group: plenty of people who are new seem to stay sober without any difficulty, and it is not because they have achieved spiritual heights.

The answer seems to be this: spiritual fitness refers to the direction in which one is pointed and the speed at which one is moving in that direction.

Being spiritually well seems to have more to do with humility (taking oneself with a bushel of salt and so looking elsewhere for guidance) and action in accordance with that humble position.

This seems to do the trick.

The opposite—holding my own perceptions, beliefs, and thoughts in high regard, plus self-willed action—seems to erode spiritual condition until, out of spiritual credit, I drink again. I’ve had close calls.

The terrible curse of spiritual disease is this: the unhappier I am, the more I cling to my perceptions, beliefs, and thoughts, the greater my certainty I am right. When unhappy: better to be wrong.

What’s your experience?

4 December 2024

“A certain American businessman had ability, good sense, and high character. ... His physical and mental condition were unusually good. ... he had acquired ... a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs ... he seemed quite rational and well-balanced with respect to other problems ... he was a good church member ... his religious convictions were very good” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

These advantages did not save the certain American businessman (CAB).

What he required was this: “... a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them,” (ibid.)

This makes life a lot easier for me. I do not need to acquire unobtainable virtues. I need merely acquire a few new ideas (‘conceptions’), namely the nothingness of self without God and God’s interest in taking charge of my life and His ability to do so, following by the adoption of new motives: the principles of the programme.

“Giving, rather than getting, will become the guiding principle.” (Chapter 9, ibid.)

“Suggest how important it is that he place the welfare of other people ahead of his own.” (Chapter 7, ibid.)

“with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of others” (Chapter 11, ibid.)

Having adopted the conceptions and motives, a switch takes place, and rather than me employing these conceptions and motives, they, in their power, begin to dominate me.

What’s your experience?

3 December 2024: Humility

“For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Three points:

1. I am very small.
2. The world is bigger than me.
3. God is bigger than the world.

What’s your experience?

2 December 2024: Moping melancholy mad

“Moping melancholy mad” (A. E. Housman, Terence This is Stupid Stuff)

This describes my perma-state when I was newly sober. The madness took many forms including manic excitement.

“We have found nothing incompatible between a powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy usefulness.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

The opposites:

• Rather than moping listlessly, I can get on with constructive action: Usefulness
• Rather than dwelling on the sad or the gloomy, I can adopt a cheerful, optimistic disposition: Happiness
• Rather than denying or fleeing reality, I can deal with it head on, and dial back the extremes: Sanity

... are three of the greatest gifts of the programme.

What’s your experience?

1 December 2024: The deception of appearances

“To all appearance he is a stable, well balanced individual.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would not go back to it even if I could.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

“To all appearance” implies that how he appears belies the reality. One does not say, “To all appearance, grass is green,” because grass definitely is green.

Even he did not realise that his life was falling far short of what it could be until he was transported to a new condition, from the perspective of which he acquired new insight.

Note that the boy whistling in the dark is fooling himself. He does not realise that his self-perception does not match the reality.

When I apply this to myself, I am not the best judge of whether I am doing well or badly. I might be doing a lot better than I think. I might be doing a lot worse.

This is why I have to seek to adhere to the perfect ideal, which is an objective anchoring point, rather than pitching the effort to match the condition in which I think I find myself.

This way, whatever needs to be remedied will be remedied.

What’s your experience?

30 November 2024: Before we begin

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

I am to ask God to direct my thinking.

When a thought comes, I am to ask: was this directed by God?

If it was not directed by God, it is to be disregarded.

If the thought has the flavour of fear or lovelessness, it was not directed by God.

What’s your experience?

29 November 2024: Smashed

“The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

Imagine Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll has to understand that Mr Hyde cannot be brought under his control: if he takes the potion and becomes Mr Hyde, Mr Hyde is now in charge and will wreak havoc. The delusion that Mr Hyde can be controlled must be smashed.

But this knowledge alone will be insufficient, because Mr Hyde has acquired the ability to take over, against Dr Jekyll’s will.

The delusion that I will find a way to drink safely was what prevented me from seeking help, ultimately from a higher power, so the smashing of the delusion was necessary but it was not sufficient: I was just as much at the mercy of drinking again, just now without the intellectual justification for the experiment but instead with the terrifying awareness that I was the object of the process, not its subject: I was not in charge; I was not ‘deciding to drink’; the alcoholism was deciding to drink, and my choice was to yield or temporarily resist, and even that choice was largely out of my hands.

What’s your experience?

28 November 2024: Compulsion

“Have you ever had the compulsion to drink alcohol? The answer was ‘absolutely not’. One more way I’m not like those people in AA. I never had a compulsion to drink. I’m like two or three years sober and somebody in a meeting says, in order to have a compulsion to drink alcohol, you have to not drink it. He continued to explain that phrase, cos I’m like, I get the question-mark face. ‘What does he mean by that? This rings a bell.’ If every time you think, ‘Gee, I’d like a drink’, you take one ... or two, you will never experience a compulsion to drink. Long before you have a compulsion, it just sounds like a helluva good idea. Oh, we’re gonna mow the lawn, let’s have a couple of beers. OK!” (Grady O’H)

“I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk. Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn’t hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk.” (Jim, reported in Chapter 3, Big Book)

“They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

When I wanted a drink, I had one. Sure, I was unhappy. But when I was happy, I drank, too, and, when I was happy, I overshot, too. So happy, unhappy: not why I had the first drink; not why I had the subsequent ones; not why I overshot and got into trouble. Restless, irritable, discontent: then drank. Drinking followed this state, but this state did not cause the drinking. If B follows A, A does not necessarily cause B.

On a few occasions, I was prevented from having the first drink or prevented from continuing. You wanna talk restless, irritable, discontent? There could not be a better description of the condition of someone who is under the cosh of the mental obsession or the physical craving but is being prevented from yielding to these imperious urges. Dr Silkworth in the Doctor’s Opinion, who is, by virtue of his position, necessarily treating people who so badly want to stop drinking that they are paying the doctor eyewatering amounts of money to bring this about, sees precisely (and only) this category: the restlessness, irritability, and discontentment of the person who is resisting their desire for a drink.

Sometimes when A and B occur, they have a common cause.

The impulse to have the first drink, an impulse that, in alcoholic, cocks a snook at baleful experience and defies reason, will lead to a drink and, if resisted, will generate the discomfort of restlessness, irritability, and discontentment. The emotion does not give rise to the impulse to drink: it is the other way round.

This is why, when I was drinking, I arranged my life in such a way that I would never run out, in order specifically not to become restless, irritable, and discontent. Stop? HAHAHAHA. Never.

What’s your experience?

27 November 2024: Outside and inside

“They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity.” (Dr Silkworth, writing in The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

“Now and then a serious drinker, being dry at the moment says, ‘I don’t miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time.’ As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

The doctor is looking at the alcoholic objectively, as an object. The alcoholic in the grip of the impulse to drink, which, having sought the help of the doctor, he is fighting to resist, is restless, irritable, and discontent.

The serious drinker is looking at the alcoholic—himself—subjectively, as a subject. The alcoholic in the grip of the impulse to drink may not be adequately aware of his actual condition. He fools himself. And the alcoholic—sober for a while on his own wits—is not continuously subject to the impulse to drink. Bill’s Story, Jim’s story, Fred’s story, the man of thirty, and the certain American businessman all had periods where they had no trouble at all not drinking, until, of course they did. During those periods there is no indication that they were suffering restlessness, irritability, and discontentment; in fact, the evidence points in the other direction. It is only ‘at certain times’ that one has no adequate mental defence.

Conclusion: I cannot rely on my subjective assessment of my mental or spiritual condition. It can be deceptive, in both directions.

What matters is the objective assessment: being open with a sponsor enables this. The sponsor is not perfect, by any means, but the sponsor, importantly, is not me.

There are then seven objective measures (drawn from the Big Book) I can employ to assess how I really am:

• Am I resentful?
• Is my behaviour harming anyone?
• Do I have any secrets?
• Do I have any unfaced creditors?
• Do I have any unmade amends?
• Does my conduct suggest complacency?
• Am I engaged in work and self-sacrifice for others?

What’s your experience?

26 November 2024: Dans son jus

The French have a phrase, ‘dans son jus’, literally ‘in its juice’ or ‘in its gravy’ which is said of something old which has been preserved exactly as it is and has never been renewed.

“Because this book has become the basic text for our Society and has helped such large numbers of alcoholic men and women to recovery, there exists strong sentiment against any radical changes being made in it.” (Preface, Big Book)

The longer I use the principles in the Book, the less I crave any alteration, substitution, or addition, because the less I need such alteration, substitution, or addition: they work, under all circumstances.

What’s your experience?

25 November 2024: Hopeless

“The more hopeless he feels, the better. He will be more likely to follow your suggestions.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

“Here was a prospect all right but, by the description, none too promising. The use of spiritual principles in such cases was not so well understood as it is now.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

When I joined AA, and for a while thereafter, I was not doing well. So many people around me seemed to be thriving. Meanwhile, I was mad and usually in a state of high distress.

This turned out to be an excellent prerequisite for progress, because this forced me to work the Steps.

What’s your experience?

24 November 2024: Enough

“This, the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Sometimes I’ve absolutely had enough. A little bit of me. But mostly of others, of the world. The spirit in which this originates might be churlish, but it can be turned to good account. What I’ve had enough is my experience of me, of others, of the world. Feeling that there is absolutely no point in going on, no point in anything, forms the perfect basis for Step Three. In fact, it is the prerequisite. I’ve been told: if you still have any investment, any potted seeds waiting to sprout, anything at all tying you to the world, ‘get done’ with that, as you had to with drinking, and then come back. Until then, have at it. The desire to completely let go of everything is an excellent one. The choice is only whether to throw everything down the drainpipe or hand it to God.

If I am done with clothing, I don’t throw it away: I give it to charity.

If I am done with my life, I don’t throw it away: I give to Charity (God, in Step Three).

Then stand back.

What’s your experience?

23 November 2024: H(e)aven

“... conspired to let him know that here was haven at last.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

Home is where I sleep overnight, regardless of what I am doing during the day or how much time I spend there.

Without a home group, I am homeless. If I have a home group, which I do, I go, unless I am out of the country or out of town. I avoid, where possible, being out of town on home group night.

At a group I used to attend many years ago, someone used to come along and sleep during the meeting. His dog would sleep. They would both sleep, both making sleeping noises of variously intrusive and comic natures. People complained. Someone pointed out, though, that this was where they felt at home enough to sleep. They were left alone.

Better to fall asleep in one’s home group than not to go at all.

What’s your experience?

22 November 2024: Tannenbaumtherapie and Spekulatiustrauma

“If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn’t want it. We absolutely insist on enjoying life. We try not to indulge in cynicism over the state of the nations, nor do we carry the world’s troubles on our shoulders. When we see a man sinking into the mire that is alcoholism, we give him first aid and place what we have at his disposal. For his sake, we do recount and almost relive the horrors of our past. But those of us who have tried to shoulder the entire burden and trouble of others find we are soon overcome by them.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

In a Heinrich Böll story, a character copes by re-enacting the whole domestic charade of Christmas Eve, daily, even into high summer, roping everyone into it. This is the “Tannenbaumtherapie” (‘Christmas tree therapy’). Another family develops, in response to this, “Spekulatiustrauma” (Spekulatius being a particular, German festive biscuit).

Whatever is going on in my life or in the world, it is fatal to the cause to be so serious I cannot enjoy what is there to be enjoyed, and whatever works, works. It need not be conventional; it might even seem absurd or escapist: no matter. There is a natural limit, however, and there is a point at which engagement in higher matters or unworldly matters becomes pathological, with deleterious effects on me and others.

What is required is not a denial of reality but a combination of active engagement (in a practical sense) but rising above spiritually.

“... but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth. That is where our fellow travelers are, and that is where our work must be done. These are the realities for us. We have found nothing incompatible between a powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy usefulness.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

21 November 2024: One proposition

“On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to, and believes in, a Power greater than himself.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

How many plates can you spin? Plates really should not be spun, that’s the whole problem. Rather than trying to lots of plates, I now reduce myself to one plate: God-reliance. All of the other plates can be accommodated on that one plate. Secondly, I stop spinning the plate. The spinning comes from trying to hold more than one plate at a time. When one has one plate, one can simply hold it.

What’s your experience?

20 November 2024: Angstfrühstück

“[T]he heart-breaking struggle for money, romance, or self-importance.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

In a story by Heinrich Böll, a character uses a paternoster lift in his office block to get to his office, but, each morning, rather than just getting off at his floor, he rides the lift all the way up and over the top through the attic and technical spaces, with their darkness, pulleys, machinery, and nameless, imagined dangers, then back down into the civilisation of the sixth floor, the fifth floor, and so on until he gets off at his own floor, but on the far side of the building. This little thrill of fear sets him up for the day, and he would be lost without it: it is his ‘anxiety breakfast’ (Angstfrühstück in German).

I’ve often had anxiety for breakfast. What would happen without it? I’ve had the experience of getting used to a situation and becoming bored, listless, and panicky because of the apparent pointlessness, the endless expanse of blandness extending to the end of time. What have I done then? Either looked round for a problem to get my teeth into or adopted measures in my life to introduce heady challenges, because I felt alive only when in danger.

“Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

What I’ve tried to move towards is discerning purpose in the sound fulfilment of ordinary everyday activities. When I give myself to those activities as though they are of great significance, which generates diligence, I am as satisfied by the apparently trivialities—and perhaps more so—than by achievement or prominence. Such satisfactions are also unencumbered by the trap of conceit.

What’s your experience?

19 November 2024: Wants and needs, requests, and demands

“The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands. The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I can ask God for certain things, but I cannot demand. A demand is a set-up for unhappiness, immediately bringing impatience and usually bringing frustration, because few wants are met adequately and permanently.

The interesting thing is that, whilst one can be happy without wants being met, one can actually be happy even when certain needs are not met. The distinction between wants and needs is really to do with whether or not the thing, the commodity, is practically required in some way to achieve some objective. No one needs a holiday in Bermuda, but one does need a smartphone if one is going to do some of the things for which a smartphone is required. But if one does not do those things? One can be OK. To me, that’s the whole lesson of spirituality: OK-ness depends on reliance on God, not the fulfilment of plans.

What’s your experience?

18 November 2024: Trust in practice

“For we are now on a different basis; the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“When what seems an especially difficult problem or a great emergency presents itself, many students of Truth start by thinking, ‘This is very serious,’ and then proceed to brace themselves mentally for a supreme effort; and plan to pray exceedingly ‘hard’ in order to meet the difficulty. All this is quite wrong. It simply builds up the problem into something far bigger than it was originally. The right attitude, the one that brings Victory, is to think ‘God can and will solve this problem.’” (Emmet Fox)

I’m in trouble when I think of the big bad problem over there in the realm of the material, then try to run away from it, running towards God, chased by the problem, trying to keep it away from me, and imploring God to do something about it. This pitches the problem at the level of the solution, as opposing forces, and posits the world as a generally Godless place, with God on a little throne somewhere occasionally sending out the occasional useful zap, but not actually capable of doing more than that; the most one can do, in that philosophy, is hole oneself up in the mountain cave and hope for the best.

The two principles I have to apply, to trust God:

1. Everything that happens is in accordance with God’s will, either perfect (i.e. desired) or permitted.

2. God is active within the situation in question, and was already active within the situation, before I noticed something was wrong and ran to God.

In other words, God has this firmly in His hands.

My job is to find my role in that situation: what does God want me to do, if anything?

Usually it’s staying out of the way and going and being useful or appreciative in the remainder of my life.

This is quite different than the running away the opening of this short sequence described.

What’s your experience?

17 November 2024: Materialism and relapse

“When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses. All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm at the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

• Materialism: the belief that the only realm is the material and that aims, values, satisfactions, and measures of success are located there.
• Sensualism: revelling in material satisfaction as an object in itself.
• Materialism and sensualism are a downward escalator.
• Satisfaction is fleeting and creates the next void.
• The condition is progressive.
• Eventually, greater hits are required to keep the system in equilibrium.
• Those hits accelerate the process.
• At some point, the only way to up the ante is to relapse.
• Eventually, for alcoholics / addicts, therefore, relapse occurs.
• Spirituality reverses the process:
• Aims, values, satisfactions, and measures of success are located in the realm of the spirit.
• The material is relegated to being the venue of action.

In my experience, materialism results in an increasingly claustrophobic, desperate, and frenetic life. Spirituality results in an increasingly expansive, hopeless, and poised life. The material life will often look as though it is expanding, growing, developing admirably, when what is happening is that more and spiritual capital is being hocked to buy Roulette chips that are stacked ever higher on the table, the famous ‘big life’. More and more is required, materially, to get less and less of an effect. The spiritual life will often look as though it is shrinking, stagnating, and dying back lamentably, when what is happening is that more and more spiritual capital is being built up, and all of the redundancy in the material venue is being carefully and deliberately pruned away. Less and less is required, materially, to get more and more of an effect.

What’s your experience?

16 November 2024: Impulse and relapse

“In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

• Every time I surrender to an impulse, I am giving one more seat in the assembly to the Impulse Party
• Impulses can be overridden at will whilst there is a majority in the assembly for the Higher Values Party.
• But all it takes is for the Impulse Party to get one too many seats and acquire a majority, and the ability to override impulses is lost.
• This loss can be permanent, if the impulse is to relapse.

When I re-enter a relapse-y phase (with alcohol, or with anything else), I do not exit: I have to wait until I am, as Bill was in his story in the Big Book, separated.

What’s your experience?

15 November 2024: Cannot or will not

“We find it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not work with you.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

When asked how I am, I have a tendency to complain: in fact, my instinct is to cast around for some small, spindly woe, on the spurious grounds that I’m somehow being dishonest if I do not offer up on a silver platter whatever has irked or troubled me, in a sea of placidness and industry. If I am actually beset or preoccupied with something, that same instinct is thrilled, because now, it believes, I have licence to elicit sympathy for my long-suffering pains, although I am skilled at ‘spiritualising’ this by coating the exhibitionism with some sop to the programme, love, or God, which is all part of the dramatisation. I’ve stacked up vicissitudes, front-loading them into my narrative of the week, to so impress others with the burdens under which I am labouring that they will not dare attempt to cheer me up or offer perspective. I’ve even, to my shame, misused what are conventionally viewed as hardships, adversities, or even tragedies to elicit sympathy by playing up my bravery or bravura in the face of grief, challenge, or sadness even though I’m actually perfectly bonny.

This is all a hangover from my pre-AA days and my early days. Before AA, my identity consisted in my self-image as the tragic hero, sensitive, misunderstood, and maladjusted (oh, how titillated I was to see that in the Big Book: ‘Yes, maladjusted, that’s me! I’m simply not built for this world! There is no world where I might feel at home! I am but an exile from heaven knows where!’) Early in AA, I defended myself against solutions, because they seemed to require me to think less about myself and more about the tasks of the day. This seemed a betrayal of my ‘true self’ and also dreadfully inconvenient and time-consuming: the idea that I would have to do things, just like others, that I was one of a sea of humanity: what would be the point in going down that road? For a while, I actually preferred the unhappiness, because it had a rawness and urgency, and, I thought, an authenticity that the Stepford Wives, the sappy programme automata with their niceness and their Filofaxes, seemed to lack.

During this period, I was a ‘cannot or will not’. No one could yank, reason, or even attract me out of this state. The system had to degrade from the inside out: firstly because of the fear of alcoholic death, and secondly because of the fear of alcoholic life. Once the system collapsed under the weight of its own pomposity, I was willing and able. Turning this round, if someone else ‘cannot or will not’, I am best off remaining friendly but refraining from any attempt to convince or cajole. It does not work, it aggravates them, and it exercises me. Once someone ‘can and will’, then my job is to rise promptly and diligently to the challenge.

What’s your experience?

14 November 2024: Flyer-itis

“recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.” (Foreword to the Third Edition, Big Book)

Since 2020, there are now lots of online meetings, online workshops, online opportunities to tune into good and interesting speakers on all sorts of topics. Flyers proliferate, to the extent that some online spaces have had to prohibit the posting of flyers, as they have on occasion come to displace the actual content of those spaces. I can also see the need for certain types of online meeting (particularly to bring people together who cannot meet physically, to give people who live remotely or in sparsely populated areas the chance to interact with a wider range of people), but there’s a terrible danger. Every online event attended by people is taking those people away from other activities. Often those are not meetings: I certainly attend online meetings at times when I do not attend face-to-face meetings, because time constraints are such that I can log on and attend for twenty minutes, half an hour, or an hour, whereas I would not have time to travel and attend and travel back.

The danger comes when I attend online meetings instead of face-to-face meetings. The cost is two-fold: firstly I have a watered-down experience of a meeting; secondly I lose the opportunity to be useful in a physical meeting locally, especially where newcomers need physical interaction. I’ve gone back to focusing on physical meetings, and I’m more swift, now, to carry a message rather than a flyer.

What’s your experience?

13 November 2024: Godless, selfish, hopeless

“But it was a silly idea that we were too good to need God. Now we try to put spiritual principles to work in every department of our lives.” (Chapter 8)

When I’m in a bad way, I’m inclined to attribute this to the world, to others, to a nature of mine beyond my agency, to some posited natural cycles of ups and downs, to the failure of the programme, to an intractable, knotty problem out there in my life, to some external roadblock, conundrum, dilemma, or fracas, in other words to treat the bad-way-ness as something from which I am suffering due to one or more factors beyond my control. I’m watching the shadow theatre play out on the wall, not realising that it is my hands, between the light of the flames and the wall, that is creating every nuance of the drama.

When I’m in a bad way, I’m necessarily concocting selfish plans and implementing them, yielding to selfish impulses, or passively measuring the world against a selfish ideal of my own fabrication. Selfishness and Godlessness are really the same thing. Both are a cul-de-sac without hope. The apparent complexity of unhappiness always resolves into these three elements, like complex carbohydrates resolving into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen: Godlessness, selfishness, and hopelessness.

What’s your experience?

12 November 2024: Plans

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

To consider plans presupposes one has them. My job is to plan what can and should be planned but to leave open what cannot or should not be planned. The morning consideration of the plans for the day should be a last-minute final review, not a thinking-through-from-scratch. An orderly life, an orderly structure, routines, and being on top of my obligations, over the short and long term, is precisely what frees me up for spontaneity, responsiveness, and, most importantly, focusing on God’s will rather than firefighting.

A life being unmanageable (Step One) is undesirable. A manageable life is desirable. My life absolutely can and should be managed, but that management is under the direction of God.

What’s your experience?

11 November 2024: Abandonment

“My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems.” (Big Book, Chapter 1)

The best way to look after myself is to serve God through constructive help of others.

Not the others I want to fix for my purposes.

And not others who want human help as a substitute for legitimate self-reliance and proper God-reliance.

There are times I must help because someone cannot do something on their own.

There are times I must help because such help assists them in acquiring independence.

What’s your experience?

10 November 2024: Zombie

“10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

If I was good at this, I would never need to rework Steps One to Nine. However, I’m not. Step Ten catches situations in which I experience eye-catching emotion or encounter eye-watering difficulties. Most character defects or deviations from God’s will either do not produce eye-catching emotion or eye-watering difficulties, so will go unnoticed, progressing, amplifying, spreading, infecting until significant damage has been done, or even have the effect of gradually putting me to sleep spiritually, inching me into a mindless materialism with a mental landscape populated with society’s contemporary clichés, my brain producing images, my mouth producing words, but my mind knocked out altogether, locked in a treadmill of routines, habits, and overwhelming incoming sensory input, as my unconscious thinks, speaks, and acts through me without any awareness on my part. This is actually the plot of horror films: zombie contagion.

Consequently, I rework all the steps, which is ‘practising these principles in all my affairs’.

This means:

• Constantly reworking the first three steps as I work with sponsees.
• Performing ad-hoc one-through-nine sequences on knotty problems
• Performing a 360-degree review of beliefs, thinking, and conduct in a quarterly review

This catches and fixes what Step Ten misses and wakes me up out of the putrefactive, necrotic slumber referred to above.

What’s your experience?

9 November 2024: Two mice

“Two mice fall into a pot of cream. One soon gives up and drowns. The second, however, continues to paddle with all its strength, and successfully so: the cream turns into butter, and the mouse survives.” (German tale)

“The faith and sincerity of both you and your husband will be put to the test. These workouts should be regarded as part of your education, for thus you will be learning to live. You will make mistakes, but if you are in earnest they will not drag you down. Instead, you will capitalize them. A better way of life will emerge when they are overcome.” (Chapter 8, Big Book)

“We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn’t do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

“Henry Ford once made a wise remark to the effect that experience is the thing of supreme value in life. That is true only if one is willing to turn the past to good account. We grow by our willingness to face and rectify errors and convert them into assets. The alcoholic’s past thus becomes the principal asset of the family and frequently it is almost the only one!” (Chapter 8, Big Book)

Whatever others have experienced sober is converted into lessons that can help me. Whatever I’ve experienced sober is converted into lessons that can potentially help others in a similar situation.

What’s your experience?

8 November 2024: den Hund zum Jagen tragen

The above German phrase means, literally, ‘carrying the dog to the hunt’. Dogs would normally like hunting. But the dog is resisting and needs to be carried.

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” (St Augustine, Confessions)

My natural place, it appears, is this:

“We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

My head gets stuck on earth, however, and, whilst its natural place is in the clouds, I’ve often had to be pushed, cajoled, or even dragged in the right direction.

Other people have very little impact in this regard. God seems to have two very good tools at his disposal, however:

“Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as some of us were.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

“Then perhaps life, as it has a way of doing, suddenly hands us a great big lump that we can’t begin to swallow, let alone digest.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Active alcoholism plus active materialism together have dragged me, the dog, to the hunt out of both, for God.

What’s your experience?

7 November 2024: Bag of tricks and humblebragging

“Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I don’t think that programme is a bag of tricks to secretly get sex, money, power, prestige, etc. but by spiritual or pseudospiritual means.

It’s not a device in a cosmic hustle to get my own way but dress it up as God’s will.

And I’ve certainly been guilty of humblebragging: listing material achievements as examples of ‘the programme working’ whilst secretly wanting people to think highly of me on that account.

The Twelve and Twelve recasts such dubious achievements:

“For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them; we drank of success as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel elated. When temporary good fortune came our way, we indulged ourselves in fantasies of still greater victories over people and circumstances. Thus blinded by prideful self-confidence, we were apt to play the big shot. Of course, people turned away from us, bored or hurt.”

... temporary good fortune.

It has been noted by many spiritual writers and commentators that worldly success, recognition, approval, etc., by no means correlate in God’s eye’s with doing God’s will.

In fact, the two will often be mutually exclusive: the sacrifices required for worldly success, recognition, approval, etc., are often sacrifices precisely of the apparently small things (big in God’s eyes).

What matters to me now is the performance of the work in front of me.

What’s your experience?

6 November 2024: Work

“How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

What is work? Work is a horror. What is service? Service is the practical expression of love (benevolence of attitude plus beneficence of action). Learn to serve and one never need work a moment again.

What’s your experience?

5 November 2024: Anonymity

“One morning he took the bull by the horns and set out to tell those he feared what his trouble had been. He found himself surprisingly well received, and learned that many knew of his drinking.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

I’m entitled, of course, to maintain anonymity personally as I see fit. There have been times I’ve been embarrassed about telling people I was in AA. I realise that, for the most part, although there are exceptions, such fears are groundless. I was never terribly bothered that people knew I drank and drank excessively. It would be odd, therefore, to be coy about sobriety now. It would be like a shoplifter fearing being spotted actually paying for something. Almost unfailingly, people respect the fact one is in AA. Those that don’t typically have little sense, judgement, or respect in any case and are not worth losing sleep over.

What’s your experience?

4 November 2024: Attraction and promotion

“11. Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity. We think AA ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as AA members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.”

If someone pressurises me, even if I was going to cooperate, I will instinctively withhold or defer cooperation, simply because, when a request becomes a demand, accession becomes capitulation and co-signs the strong-arm tactics.

Tradition XI applies: attraction not promotion. If I request once, and nothing happens, I drop it. If I propose once, and no one likes it, I drop it. If the other person won’t play ‘your turn, my turn’, I drop it. Mixed messages mean no, and no, also, means no, not ‘Let’s talk’.

What’s your experience?

3 November 2024: Smashed

“The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

Imagine Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll has to understand that Mr Hyde cannot be brought under his control: if he takes the potion and becomes Mr Hyde, Mr Hyde is now in charge and will wreak havoc. The delusion that Mr Hyde can be controlled must be smashed.

But this knowledge alone will be insufficient, because Mr Hyde has acquired the ability to take over, against Dr Jekyll’s will.

The delusion that I will find a way to drink safely was what prevented me from seeking help, ultimately from a higher power, so the smashing of the delusion was necessary but it was not sufficient: I was just as much at the mercy of drinking again, just now without the intellectual justification for the experiment but instead with the terrifying awareness that I was the object of the process, not its subject: I was not in charge; I was not ‘deciding to drink’; the alcoholism was deciding to drink, and my choice was to yield or temporarily resist, and even that choice was largely out of my hands.

What’s your experience?

2 November 2024: Score cards

“Finally, when all our score cards read ‘zero,’ ... “ (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Plan A has failed. Let’s try plan A. That’s the alcoholic approach to life.” (An AA speaker)

It was only when I lost faith in plan, A, because my score cards read ‘zero’ that ...

“... there was nothing left for us but ...” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

... to work the programme entirely as instructed, cheerfully, and with resistance.

When there is resistance, it is always because I have a plan A, and I think the scorecard reads something other than zero.

What’s your experience?

1 November 2024: Räuberleiter

A Räuberleiter (German), literally a ‘robber’s ladder’, is where one person gives another person a leg up, as it were, to gain access to some restricted premises or to steal something. I like the idea of a robber’s ladder: an illicit way of reaching a higher level, one morally dubious non-expert giving another morally dubious non-expert a leg up to access something that ought to be out of reach. The spiritual experience really ought to be out of reach to alcoholics, but it isn’t. There’s no actual ladder to get there. There is only one alcoholic helping another. No external tools or devices, like ladders or jetpacks. Using oneself as the means to help another. The upward process of the steps is by means of the amateurish and questionable Räuberleiter. But what is gained is not stolen: it is actually the due inheritance; the realm of the spirit is where one always ought to have belonged.

What’s your experience?

31 October 2024: Vernacular

“Every examination for ordinands ought to include a passage from some standard theological work for translation into the vernacular. The work is laborious but it is immediately rewarded. By trying to translate our doctrines into vulgar speech we discover how much we understand them ourselves. Our failure to translate may sometimes be due to our ignorance of the vernacular; much more often it exposes the fact that we do not exactly know what we mean.” (C. S. Lewis)

The Big Book (and other AA literature) was written to be accessible, but it’s not as accessible as it might be. To this problem is added the fact that, although I thought I could read, I could not. I thought that, if I had caused my eyes to pass across sequences of words, grasping the syntax and formulating in my mind some notion of what was being said, I had read something. I assumed, wrongly, that this process meant that I had indeed correctly grasped the syntax and correctly projected onto the internal screen the message that was being conveyed. Furthermore, I would retain next to nothing of what I had read but still believed I had performed some valuable task, ticked the box, checked the item off the list. I took cursory and scrappy reading to be assimilation, readying me for the next thing to read (i.e. not read).

If someone had asked me at a few years’ sober whether I had read the Big Book, once I had recovered from my offence at being insulted with such a patronising question, I think I would have retorted “Of course I have.” If someone had then gone on to ask, for instance, to whom or what I might turn in all things, I would not, I am pretty sure, I have known. If you asked me that now, I would know instantly: “I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.” I would have been equally stumped at or incorrectly answered the questions, “What is the guiding principle?” “What is the cornerstone?” “What is the keystone?” “What is the main object of this book?” “What is the AA message, according to the Third Edition?” “What is our real purpose?”

In a sense I had read the Big Book, in that I’d passed my eyes over the words, etc., but what I could attest to, there, was a trivial, superficial, and pointless activity. I had not processed the content in any comprehensive, useful, operable, memorable, life-changing way. I had read the Book as I might a newspaper or a cornflake packet.

At that point, I was not turning to God (aka the Father of Light) in anything at all, except perhaps in emergencies. I was certainly not turning to Him in all things.

The task, therefore, when reading, is not to read the Big Book as I would a newspaper or cornflake packet but in such a way as to actually engage in the material and thus assimilate it for further use.

The best way to do this, as C. S. Lewis describes, is to imagine I have to explain it to someone in the most straightforward way possible.

A few years ago, a friend of mine reported the following: he and others decided to start a new AA meeting, specifically a newcomers’ meeting, and he proposed that the group members take it in turns to present, in under five minutes, at the head of the meeting, what alcoholism is and how they know they’re an alcoholic, so that new members (or ill-informed members) would acquire a basic grasp—would they have it—of the nature of alcoholism and the nature of the solution. The assembled company, all of whom had taken the Steps, sometimes multiple times, sponsored others, had attended thousands of meetings, and had read the book, said that they would not be able to do that, that they would not know where to start. It turned out that all of the work over the years had been a waste of time: the most elementary, entry-level task, the ability to explain alcoholism to an alcoholic who badly needs the information, was beyond them.

To avoid this embarrassing predicament, the best possible exercise is to go through the AA literature, taking a paragraph, and explaining as simply, accurately, and clearly as possible the ideas contained in the paragraph. It is only if I can explain something important simply, accurately, and clearly that I prove to myself I have really understood it.

Here’s an example of one of Bill’s more flowery passages:

“We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table. Unlike the feelings of the ship’s passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

Summary:

• AA members are varied.
• But we are unified because of:
• The common problem of alcoholism
• The common solution of the AA programme.

What’s your experience?

30 October 2024: Stones and demonstrations

“He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator. Thus was our friend’s cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

“He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

“A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes, occupations, and affairs.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

The Chapter 2 quotation about the ‘much more important demonstration’ can (erroneously) lead one to think that one somehow relegates service and sponsorship to a corner of one’s life in order to do the much more important business of everyday life.

In fact, the most important things are the reliance on God and the service of God through carrying the message: No cornerstone, no keystone, no foundation: no recovery at all; no areas.

What I do in my home, occupation, and affairs supplies the best examples of how to apply the principles of the Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, and therefore offer the best demonstration (because this is where the principles and one’s character are put most severely to the test), but that does not mean that the service and sponsorship are less important.

I once asked someone which of two things was more important. He answered ‘yes’.

I think that’s the answer for me to the question of which of having a spiritual awakening, carrying the message, or practising the principles is the most important.

The answer is ‘yes’.

What’s your experience?

29 October 2024: This and that

“‘Have you a sufficient substitute?’ Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

I’ve in the past felt resentful at the programme, because it seems to be adding to the number of things to do.

Now, let’s say we’re awake for 16 hours a day. We’re always doing something. Even if we’re watching television, we’re doing that. We’re also always thinking something, as well. Come to think of it, we’re always believing something, too. There are always beliefs underlying every thought, and thoughts underlying every action.

The programme doesn’t ask me to believe, think, or do anything extra. It asks me to believe, think, or do something different. It’s asking me to believe, think, or do something that works in the place of believing, thinking, or doing something that does not.

It’s therefore helpful to remember that the programme is merely suggesting I do this instead of that: it’s about substitution not addition.

In addition: As Emmet Fox says, ‘If you have no time for prayer and meditation, you will have lots of time for sickness and trouble.’

What’s your experience?

28 October 2024: Fear of emotion

Most fear (excepting certain so-called visceral fears, like vertigo, or fear of actual physical pain) is fear of how I will feel emotionally if something happens, or the recurrence of a past feeling.

What I forget is that I’m actually the creator of my emotional feelings, past, present, and future: they do not happen to me; I make them with the thoughts that I have. Even puny little me is more powerful than my feelings.

My job, today, is to show them who is boss, and to show them who my Boss is, who is bigger than (having created) me, who is bigger than (having created) my emotions.

My emotions are very noisy mice. Noisy. But mice. Inconvenient, and sometimes requiring me to ‘give it a minute’, but nothing, themselves, to be frightened of.

What’s your experience?

27 October 2024: Lightbulb moment

How many sponsors does it take to change a lightbulb?

One, but the lightbulb has to really want to change.

I gave the programme a pretty good go at one point but found myself still unhappy about the same things (romance, work, money). Did the programme not work?

The programme had worked perfectly well. It had highlighted my selfishness, my materialistic values, my self-absorption, the centring of my life on myself, my objectives, my design. It had offered me new values and a new way of life, centred on God, message-carrying, and service. But the programme won’t change my values or my thinking or my behaviour. I have to do it. The programme and God give me the direction and strength, but I have to take the initiative and then adopt the new way of life, from the inside out, consistently and resolutely.

What’s your experience?

26 October 2024: Instant inventory

Sometimes, with our busy modern lives, with the demands of home, work, and community, we simply don’t have time to do a full moral inventory, yet problems are piling up, and we know something major needs to change.

This is where InstaFour comes in. InstaFour has a number of highly nutritious ingredients, namely the defects that will appear on the Step Four of any respectable person, whether alcoholic, addict, or Al-Anon. Crack open a can of InstaFour, today, and you’ll have a full awareness of the major shortcomings that are eating your lunch and causing all of the fear, resentment, depression, exhaustion, and interpersonal conflict in your life.

Ingredients: Self-reliance, defiance, personal ambition, attention-seeking, obstinacy, vanity, touchiness, self-absorption, self-pity, gloom, thrill-seeking, comfort-seeking, sloth, selfishness, self-justification, and pettiness.

Note that InstaFour will not take the place of a full Step Four but can be very satisfying for those in-between times.

What’s your experience?

25 October 2024: Not happy or unhappy

“Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

The ego suggests I make plans for outcomes, on the basis that those outcomes will make me happy.

There are two possible results: (1) I get the outcome and I am not happy (2) I do not get the outcome and I am unhappy. The choice is: not happy or unhappy. That’s not much of a choice.

The programme offers me complete abandonment of self.

There is no outcome to be realised; only action to take, and the joy resides in the action.

What’s your experience?

24 October 2024: Dimmer switch

“Or perhaps he doesn’t think at all.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

A bit of my brain notes when something hits the mark. Food, drink, drugs, romantic activities. It makes a list, and periodically sends up the request ‘for more’ (like Oliver Twist) to the command-and-control centre (CACC).

In a regular person, the CACC weighs the evidence.

In active alcoholism: not me!

The CACC was dimmed. Half asleep. Just flagging through the desire for a hit and converting it into action.

Brain scans apparently show this dimming effect in active alcoholics and addicts. The CACC is literally dimmer.

And figuratively dimmer: not so bright any more, not so clever.

What’s your experience?

23 October 2024: Reasons

“Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

I thought I was having the first drink because I was depressed.

But when I wasn’t depressed I had the first drink anyway.

I thought I was having the first drink because my circumstances were unfavourable.

But when they were favourable I had the first drink anyway.

I thought I was having the first drink because I liked it.

But when I didn’t like it I had the first drink anyway.

The same goes for any past experience, present circumstance, or emotion.

What terrified me was the realisation that I was not drinking, as an agent, as someone who decided to drink then drinks, as one might decide to board a train to Harrogate and board the train. I wasn’t drinking. I was being drunk through by something else. I was the instrument of my alcoholism. My alcoholism was drinking. I was the bucket into which the drink was being poured. That was a frightening realisation.

This is so frightening that I started to understand my credulity towards the specious arguments, the rationalisations, the plain nonsense that my mind would offer us as justifications for obeying the imperious impulse to drink.

What was even more frightening was the realisation, years into being in AA, that, even sober years in AA, I was talking about my past, my childhood, my upbringing, my conditioning, the values I was inculcated with, my circumstances long past, recent past, and present, and my emotions as having some sort of causal relationship with either the first drink or subsequent drinks.

Sober in AA, I was employing the same rationalisation mechanism deployed by my active alcoholism to justify drinking in advance to explain drinking in retrospect. Under the guise of ‘sharing’, of ‘carrying the message’, I was actually still propagating alcoholism in myself and amongst my fellows, an unwitting fifth column within AA.

The simple, boring truth is that the desire to drink arises because I am an alcoholic, and without a defence I will fulfil the desire.

What’s your experience?

22 October 2024: Twisted fire starter

“In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

If a fire starts in a forest, it can start for many reasons. Arson. Lightning strike. Campfire. Sunlight concentrated through glass. Discarded match. Car crash. Chemical spill. Once it starts, exactly the same mechanism causes the fire to propagate, out of control. How the fire propagates has nothing to do with the original cause.

It’s like that with my drinking. I might start for a dozen ‘reasons’, on a dozen different days, but the mechanism responsible for the second and subsequent drinks was entirely different to the mechanism responsible for the first. With fire, the second flame is caused by the first, regardless of what caused the first. With drinking, the second drink is caused by the first, regardless of what caused the first.

Turning to the first drink:

Looking for reasons for the first drink is a reasonable exercise when trying to explain why someone drinks moderately. These reasons (social awkwardness, unhappiness, boredom, tension) are arguably legitimate reasons for moderate drinking.

Once I developed the regular habit of very destructive drinking, whose destructive extent was never precisely what I planned, all such reasons became irrelevant. The legitimate reasons for moderate drinking cannot even be discussed when moderate drinking is not one of the options on the table. When the only two options on the table are sobriety and excessive drinking, such reasons are easily defeated: excessive drinking brings increased social awkwardness due to my behaviour drunk; excessive drinking brought huge unhappiness, was often profoundly boring, destroying any real ability to take an interest in interesting pursuits or subjects, and drinking excessively often made me nervously aggressive.

Any ‘reasons’ I give for such drinking are therefore insane rationalisations. The only reason for having the first drink is that I have the impulse to drink and lack a mental defence against it.

21 October 2024: Grow where you’re planted

“Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions …?” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I was told very early in AA to grow where I was planted, to be skeptical of dreams, ‘massive realisations’, handbrake turns, pulling big levers, lurches, flouncings-out, throwings of toys out of cots, plots, schemes, plans, designs, graduations, fresh starts, and every other attempt to avoid the work of the day and the problem presenting itself.

Almost every good change my life has undergone has been the result of circumstance forcing that change. Almost every bad change my life has undergone (since being sober) has arisen out of an idea I had all by myself, not forced by circumstance, not growing organically out of my present situation, molecule by molecule. Of course, huge change has taken place, but not from my insight or Stalinist five-year plans: those were always disastrous.

The real reason for the big changes that I envisioned by myself, for myself, has typically been an unwillingness to walk through a conflict, a boredom, the growing realisation of the implacable complexity of reality: its mixed bag of good and bad that I can frankly do little about. When reality started to bleed through my illusions, I would switcheroo, build a new castle in the sky, and move in.

When I grow where I’m planted, I find I can adapt to any situation, and that adaptation was the next lesson in the curriculum all along.

What’s your experience?

20 October 2024: Pride

“But not so with alcoholics. When AA was quite young, a number of eminent psychologists and doctors made an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of so-called problem drinkers. The doctors weren’t trying to find how different we were from one another; they sought to find whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alcoholics had in common. They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the AA members of that time. These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose.

How we alcoholics did resent that verdict! We would not believe that our adult dreams were often truly childish. And considering the rough deal life had given us, we felt it perfectly natural that we were sensitive. As to our grandiose behaviour, we insisted that we had been possessed of nothing but a high and legitimate ambition to win the battle of life.

In the years since, however, most of us have come to agree with those doctors. We have had a much keener look at ourselves and those about us. We have seen that we were prodded by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making a life business of winning fame, money, and what we thought was leadership. So false pride became the reverse side of that ruinous coin marked “Fear.” We simply had to be number one people to cover up our deep-lying inferiorities. In fitful successes we boasted of greater feats to be done; in defeat we were bitter. If we didn’t have much of any worldly success we became depressed and cowed. Then people said we were of the “inferior” type. But now we see ourselves as chips off the same old block. At heart we had all been abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether we had sat on the shore of life drinking ourselves into forgetfulness or had plunged in recklessly and wilfully beyond our depth and ability. The result was the same—all of us had nearly perished in a sea of alcohol.”

Often, in my life, I have felt not good enough. Demonstrably, though, I was, because being good enough to have a job, have friends, basically rub along in life, requires only a waddling mediocrity. The problem was never really that I did not have sufficient qualities to rub along but that I either hadn’t managed to shine, to outdo literally everyone else, or hadn’t managed to bend a situation or other people to my will and felt thwarted. The counter would then flip, and the reverse of hubris, shame, would kick in, red-faced that I’d been caught so brazenly raiding the cookie-jar of divine usurpation.

The problem is not that I am not good enough; it’s that, in my eyes, I’m not God enough, I know that others have seen through me, that they will see me for what I am: a failure in my endeavour to usurp God’s creative power to create myself, that I am as at the mercy of the material world, circumstances, and people as they and others are. The Wizard of Oz is just a man behind the curtain. Simply embarrassing. I would feel insulted if people said, “You’re only human.” My response to this line from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, “We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it,” was “Why bother, then?”

When the glamour [related to Old Norse glámr, meaning ‘moon’, ‘ghost’, and glámsýni, meaning illusion] fades, and the trickery is revealed, I have to pay the price (which was always waiting in the wings) of setting myself up in competition with God as the author of my own creation, wishing to create a set of roles for myself in the world (in contrast to humbly and invisibly doing God’s will). That fundamental rebellion is the real source of the shame, which finds its way out and hooks itself onto any external failure of will.

The only solution is recognising my ego as the enemy, the source of all this nonsense, stepping back, and going to God for instructions.

What’s your experience?

19 October 2024: Humbly

“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.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

• I cannot stop drinking once I start
• Sober insanity: a drink seems like a good idea
• If I am in charge I will drink based on this idea
• If I am not in charge, I will stay sober despite this idea
• If I am in charge I will not recover
• If I am not in charge I will recover
• Someone must be in charge
• That someone must be God
• “Humbly” = right-sized
• “Humbly” = recognising I am “nothing” (alone)
• That means I can achieve nothing while I am in charge
• True in relation to my drinking
• True in relation also to life
• What I achieve alone will not bring happiness
• Without him I am lost: I cannot determine the right thought or action
• With him I am found: I can be shown the right thought or action
• “As I then understood him”: the understanding need not be complete or accurate
• “To do with me as He would”: (a) I take the action He directs (b) I accept the outcome
• “Under His … direction”: (a) take the Twelve Steps (b) take direction on what actions to take all day, every day
• “Under His care”: this is the payback for being under God’s direction
• “Care” = protection against acting on the insane idea

What’s your experience?

18 October 2024: Tools and instruments

One often talks about the ‘tools’ of the programme.

This is fine and good (the Big Book even refers to such tools) but the danger is that I stand above the programme, bigger than it, taking things from it to pursue my own purposes.

Rather, I should be the instrument of the Higher Power, not in a conceited or elevated way, but as a humble doer of daily things, through which God’s will is done, usually without my awareness or understanding.

What’s your experience?

17 October 2024: Grundhaltung

The word Grundhaltung (German) means a fundamental position from which all other positions are derived. Grund means ground or foundation.

“But be sure you are on solid spiritual ground” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

“In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.” (Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

The fundamental ground I have to build my life on is this:

• I am not my own master: I am a servant
• My life is in God’s hands
• I need not concern myself with it
• My concern is my conduct

What’s your experience?

16 October 2024: Multiple affairs and radical detachment

“and to practice these principles in all our affairs” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

The various circumstances and scenarios in life in which I am enjoined to act (the ‘affairs’) require me to assess the facts, seek God’s will, and implement.

Imagine a chess grandmaster walking around a room in which are laid out a couple of dozen chessboards, behind each of which is an opponent. The grandmaster engrosses herself in the first board, forgetting all others, assesses the situation, makes the move, and then, forgetting that board, proceeds to the next board, to repeat the exercise.

I’ve been shown detachment as a combination of:

(1) Treating each situation as a technical situation to solve.

(2) Not thinking about each situation except when consideration and action are required.

(3) Not exaggerating the significance of any one situation.

(4) Recognising that I lie beyond all the games: if they all fail, I have not failed; if I seek and then attempt to do God’s will, I am fine.

“Each person is like an actor” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

If the roles disappear, the actor remains, and the director can be pleased, even if the show closes or the theatre is destroyed.

In practice, therefore, I need not be concerned or worried under any circumstances, provided I recognise my true role (actor) and the role of the protective Director.

What’s your experience?

15 October 2024: Unheilskette

Unheilskette [German] means, literally a chain of unfortunate events.

“... but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show?” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“But did not we, ourselves, set the ball rolling?” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

The decision based on self: the adoption of values in the areas, typically, of sex, money, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance. This directs my actions and expectations.

“His roots grasped a new soil.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

If I adopt new values (total surrender to God), my actions run along a different course.

“If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

14 October 2024: Sponsoring oneself

A number of years ago, I looked like a very good sponsee, because I did exactly what my sponsor suggested. But then I started to disagree with what he suggested, so I stopped doing what he suggested [incidentally with baleful results, as they say]. It turned out I had never been doing what he suggested: I reviewed his suggestions, approved them, and then suggested them to myself. I was then following my own suggestions. What looked like inconsistency from the outside (one minute following the sponsor’s suggestions and the next minute rebelling) was entirely consistent: I had only ever been following my own.

What’s your experience?

13 October 2024: Keep it simple

Going through the Steps, I think, is about looking at things plainly and simply. Understanding what the authors of the book were plainly saying, using the ordinary words they were using. In Step Four, getting to the facts of what I am ‘up to’ when acting in self-will. Getting to the nub of the harm in Step Eight. The truth is always plain and simple.

The process of getting to that simplicity is often laborious, with lots of back and forth, repeated challenges, going round in circles, as I am unable to see the thing my sponsor wants me to see. It is infuriating, exasperating, bewildering, aggravating, annoying, and embarrassing. Progress seems to be slow. The work seems abstract or academic or theoretical. I start to wonder: Why can’t I just keep it simple?

Many years ago, in the midst of the Steps, my sponsor returned, I think, around a dozen attempts to write a Step Eight, each time apparently ignoring the reams of nuanced material I was sending, saying, “What’s the harm?”

Another time, I wrote a four- or five-thousand-word message to my sponsor, drafted in an MS Word document (just to make sure I was getting it right, so he would ‘understand me’ and ‘where I was coming from’). I can’t remember what the response was, if any. I can’t imagine he read it beyond the first couple of lines.

The complexity lies not in the steps, the Big Book, the process of the work, or the ideas that a sponsor is presenting to me. The complexity lies in the morass of muddy thinking, the unthinking and uncritical use of words, the slipperiness and evasiveness I engage in—within myself and in communication with others—when I try to examine my beliefs, thinking, behaviour, and motivations; it lies in the inability to read what people are actually writing, to hear what people are actually saying, to understand what people really mean based on their actual words; it lies in the layers of self-justification and self-deception, the word-castle of self-will I have built in the sky and moved into.

The ostensibly ‘simple’ approach: merely to accept my first response or answer to a passage in the book or a question in the Steps, to flag everything through the gate unchallenged, is neither simple nor complicated: it is nothing; it is merely a lack of reflection, a rubber stamp, a verbal burp. The point of doing the work in the programme is not to get a Scoobie snack and be told that everything is just fine and dandy: it is precisely to challenge and look until I see through until what I see is the truth.

What is your experience?

12 October 2024: Cracking on

Sometimes, I rush at step work and do an imperfect job (to say the least), either ignoring or overriding instructions, suppressing possible avenues of investigation, cutting corners under the guise of ‘keeping it simple’, wanting at all costs the process to be over, but with the belief I have actually completed the mission. I will justify this on the grounds that I am keen, committed to the programme, and the good student sitting at the front of the bus.

The truth of the situation is that I am performing the task in question in order to avoid the task in question. I do not want to look. I do not want to sit with the discomfort of seeing my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour (and the consequences thereof in my life and in that of others) in a stark light. I do not want to sit with confusion or uncertainty. I do not want to be trepidatious of all of the dark areas lying beyond immediate sight.

The two ways of avoiding the process are to avoid the process altogether or to give the appearance of keenness whilst refusing to really look and see and satisfying myself with pat, rote, borrowed, glib, self-abasing, self-indulgent, bloodless, analytical, historical, or wordy answers or observations, all of which are different ways of avoiding calling the spade the spade.

The solution is to sit with the material until it settles down, ensuring that it is not only concise and punchy but also complete, accurate, and entirely honest. Only once my eyes have completely accustomed themselves to the dark can I be sure that I am really seeing everything in the room.

Progress is measured not by how quickly I ‘get through the Steps’ or how many boxes I can tick or how many paragraphs I can read or how many third columns I can write but by the fundamental change in how I think that flows from these exercises. A month spent on one inventory item, if that changes how I think, is worth more than a month spent on one hundred inventory items that leaves me completely unchanged in my approach to belief, thought, and action.

What is your experience?

11 October 2024: Suggestions

I can be a bit of a grumbler. Attending AA is not obligatory. Having a sponsor is not obligatory. Doing the Steps is not obligatory. Going to meetings is not obligatory. Going for fellowship is not obligatory. When I feel put upon by any of these things, I can stop whenever I want. No one is forcing me. When I recognise I have signed up voluntarily for all of this, it focuses my attention on why I signed up in the first place (namely the necessity of such measures to survive and thrive). I then brush the chip off my shoulder, adopt a position of gratitude for having these opportunities, and get on with it.

What is your experience?

10 October 2024: Anyone can write resentment inventory

Sometimes I have a cast around and discover I ‘have no resentments’. That may be the case, in the sense of grinding grievances that are preoccupying me.

That’s not the point, though. The magnitude of the error in one’s thinking is not measured by the magnitude of the resultant emotion. The point of the resentment inventory, sure, is to get rid of resentment. But the great side benefit of the resentment inventory is its ability to reveal pathways from the surface (emotion) to the underlying defects of belief and thinking, which are the source of all one’s problems.

To quote Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on the subject of Step Eight:

“Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can deepen our insight. We can go far beyond those things which were superficially wrong with us, to see those flaws which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible for the whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness, we have found, will pay—and pay handsomely.”

To quote something else:

“There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.”

Unless one has a Christlike equanimity to all phenomena crossing the mental screen (which I have not), unless one has genuinely eliminated all emotion (which I have not: and this would not even be desirable), there is always plenty of material to work with.

How does one arrive at a good list of names?

Well, I start by understanding that I am feeling things all day, unless I am presently drugged, dissociated, deluded, dishonest, or dead. There are no neutral thoughts:

“Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal. We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.”

All day long, little feelings, as well as big ones, are flickering across the screen. The strength of the tremor, as it is felt, has got nothing to do with the size of the earthquake or the tectonic plates moving below the earth’s surface: distance from the epicentre is the key parameter in determining the strength of the tremor. Feelings. What feelings am I actually having? And what are the phenomena (people, institutions, principles, groups, categories, thoughts, ideas) triggering them?

Any negative feeling. Any negative judgement. Any flicker of the arrow on the dial.

Here’s the exercise I use:

I watch the emotions. I watch out for:

• Any negative emotion
• Any negative judgement
• Any fear
• Any aversion
• Any exasperation
• Any disappointment
• Any incredulity
• Any blank dread
• Any sour resignation

... and increase the list to include one’s own personal list of go-to negative conditions.

Whenever such a feeling arises, I immediately write down the person and the thing they said or did, or the institution or organisation and what it said or did, or the principle (idea, concept, ideological position) that irked.

No matter that the smarmy little super-ego, so spiritual, swiftly swoops into rationalise or spiritualise away the emotion. Let’s catch the blighter before it’s stamped out, expelled, or pushed down. Pin it. Then, by all means, say a little prayer and return to being nice.

I can always benefit from a resentment inventory. It does not need to take long, with some practice, and the rewards are immense.

What’s your experience?

9 October 2024: H, J, and F

“We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

Let’s take this to be true.

This means that this is God’s will.

If I’m not happy, joyous, and free, I am not doing God’s will.

Axiomatically, if I am not doing God’s will, I am doing my will.

The question of unhappiness, therefore, is fundamentally a moral question, not a psychological question.

When I am unhappy, I have concluded something is wrong.

How?

My own reasoning process!

To be unhappy is therefore:

• To gather the ‘facts’
• To assemble those ‘facts’ into a picture
• To analyse the picture
• To judge it as wanting

My unhappiness, such as it is, is self-reliance, pure and simple: I have usurped God’s faculty of omniscience. To be unhappy requires me to believe I have seen all there is to see (at least all that matters) and therefore know.

I do not know, is the truth.

As Sandy B’s sponsor said to him, when he, Sandy, complained he was unhappy:

“But what if you’re wrong?”

What’s your experience?

8 October 2024: Surrender and turning

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

When I surrender, I stop fighting and recognise that the gameplan of self is dead in the water.

At this point I’m still turned towards self as the source of direction and strength.

I then need to turn, re-turn, return to God as the source of direction and strength.

I have had a very small number of surrenders.

The turning, re-turning, and returning happens many times a day.

What’s your experience?

7 October 2024: Not a cloud on the horizon

“It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason—ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor—becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

The Big Book makes a distinction between hard drinkers, for whom self-knowledge is sufficient to achieve sobriety, and real alcoholics, who will return to drinking through the ‘peculiar mental twist’ / ‘strange mental blank spot’ unless they have the protection of God through being in the 24-hour-a-day service of God.

Which one am I? This is not a no-brainer question for a person to ask themselves, because one cannot tell simply by examining the drinking: the certain type of hard drinker, as described above, will look like an alcoholic, in terms of both alcohol consumption and impact, and their drinking might also seem insane.

This is also a major question, because how I live my life, based on self or based on God, is really the primary structural question, which must be resolved before anything else is decided upon.

In principle, the certain type of hard drinker might continue to go to AA (after the initial stages where AA was necessary to get the person back on track), simply because it conveys some good common sense, a pleasant network, and a little insurance against silliness about drinking. But is a vital experience necessary to remain sober? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve had many friends and acquaintances over the years who do a slim form of AA, stay sober, and are happy, successful, and stable. God might even be in the picture, somewhere, but they’re good to go, they really are, and my hat is off to them! I have even been sponsored by such people, and they couldn’t help me, because I couldn’t understand how they were OK, and they couldn’t understand why I was not. They were using the tools of the programme to live their lives. I tried the same, and I felt awful.

I’m definitely the real alcoholic. Unless I’m firmly nested in God, I skunk [cause external mayhem] and turtle [retreat neurotically into self], engage in addictive behaviours, and then drink. I’m on a short leash, but, more importantly, when I get ideas above my station, when I forget God, when I re-enthrone self (my perceptions, my understanding, my this, my that, my life), I start to feel very bad, very quickly. Arguably, this is something of an early warning system for drinking. The feelings don’t cause the drinking: they are merely the signs that I’ve strayed outside my Divine Defence System.

I don’t think everyone has this early warning system, though. I’ve known many people over the years in AA who have drunk out of the blue. No warning signs. Things going OK or things going well. Admittedly, they had usually left AA or put AA on the back burner, still ticking away, but AA was not central. Some were even properly embedded in AA, at least in the fellowship part. But they really were doing well in life, often better than the people working very hard at the programme (people like me, who are evidently starting from a much lower base).

The real alcoholic might arguably fall into two categories. There is the real alcoholic who, without a solid programme based soundly on God, will drive themselves nuts very quickly. They might fool themselves, like the boy whistling in the dark ...

“‘I don’t miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time.’ As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

... but the profound problems are not far from the surface.

And then there is the real alcoholic who, although needing a solid programme based soundly on God to ensure sobriety, in terms of everything else, is basically ‘good to go’. No particular neurosis. No maladjustment. Fine. Fred (pages 39 to 43) seems to be this sort of character. There’s no very obvious indication that he’s going to drink again, and, out of a clear blue sky, no cloud on the horizon, he drinks.

I recently spoke to someone and I asked whether he thought that, over the preceding months, he had been at risk of drinking. He replied, ‘I haven’t thought of a drink.’ The boy whistling in the dark might have thought of a drink. The person who is already gripped by the mental obsession, is fighting it, and is therefore restless, irritable, and discontented might have thought of a drink. The unhappy neurotic (me) who is off their programme might have thought of a drink or started to feel the call of the gay chatter of active addiction:

“Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

... but there’s the Fred type (and also Jim), for whom there was no thought of a drink before the overwhelming impulse arose.

I’m definitely the real alcoholic, and I appear to have an early warning system, but I cannot rely on it absolutely: I need to work the programme as though I need the defence against the first drink, today.

What’s your experience?

6 October 2024: ... offered myself to God

“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.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

Here’s how I do it:

• Throw myself at God’s mercy each morning, on my knees
• Commit each day to seeking and doing God’s will only
• Each day, formally renounce vanity- and fear-driven goals
• Throw the future into God’s hands so I am 100% free in the action of the moment
• Recognise God as the power I remain in at all times
• Plan each day with God, then invoke God’s strength to stick to the plan
• Schedule the week, month, and year so everything is taken care of
• Proceed with each task maximally diligently, treating each as for God
• Take anything I develop worry or anger about and give it promptly to God
• Visualise and know that God is looking after these matters at all times
• Ask God what action, if any, I must take, schedule, act, then drop
• Visualise a big ‘no trespassing sign’ over these matters: these are not my problem
• When upset, unsure, or prone to impulsiveness: pause, ask, act per God’s will
• When generally agitated, withdraw to rest in the refuge of God
• Return to the central refuge of God each night when retiring

What’s your experience?

5 October 2024: Practising these principles in all our affairs

I have a habit of keeping secrets from myself. Orthodox and well-behaved over here; rebellious, dissolute, and sly over there. Bulkheads separating different areas.

Sometimes I need to give myself a good talking to.

Here’s an exercise that leaves me nowhere to hide.

1. Say a prayer.

2. Ask God what I need to start doing, stop doing, and do differently.

3. I write three lists, scanning and scouring each area of my life.

This gives me (a) a lot to work on (b) a focus for what I need to bring God to bear on in my life.

I then read the lists daily. There is now nowhere to hide from myself.

What’s your experience?

4 October 2024: Load-bearing wall

A while ago, I was away on my face-to-face home group day. I might have ‘made a day of it’ there and have returned too late to attend my home group and fellowship afterwards. I made the decision, instead, to come back earlier so I could attend my home group and fellowship. Nothing particularly important happened at the meeting or at fellowship. Ordinary meeting. Ordinary fellowship. Nothing spectacular.

The home group and fellowship are vital, though. In construction, when a home is being refurbished, the builders have to be careful not to touch load-bearing walls. They might look like ordinary walls, but knock them down and the whole structure will collapse. My recovery is like that. A few, dull things are the load-bearing walls. Their role in establishing the structure is invisible: there is nothing about them, per se, that reveals their pivotal significance, but remove them and the whole structure will collapse.

What’s your experience?

3 October 2024: If you feel like a drink ...

“... if you feel like a drink, play the tape forward, remember your last drunk, think through the consequences, call someone, go to a meeting, say a prayer, do some inventory, etc. ...”

That’s a common piece of advice, and it’s commonly reported that someone felt like a drink, took these actions, and was ‘saved’. I’ve certainly had the experience where the sequence of events was:

(a) Felt like a drink
(b) Took the right action
(c) The feeling disappeared.

Just because (c) follows (b) and (b) follows (a) does not mean that (a) causes (b) and (b) causes (c).

If, when the thought of a drink occurred, all I had to do was X, Y, or Z, I would not need AA or the programme. This approach is based on the assumption that the thought of a drink is a simple obstacle, the remedy to be deployed is greater than the obstacle, and I am greater than both: I stand above the two, noticing the obstacle, reaching for the remedy, applying the remedy, and Voilà!, problem solved. Have an itch? Apply this cream. Raining? Put up an umbrella. Train cancelled? Get a bus. Feel like a drink? Go to a meeting.

The truth is radically different. The point of the impulse to have the first drink is firstly that it is typically accompanied by an insanity that presents the drink as perfectly rational, reasonable, and sane, and secondly that it is overwhelming. In a state of insanity, I lack the sanity required to observe I am in danger, sift my mind for possible remedies, and commit to such a remedy. Even when I would commit to such a remedy, the impulse would overwhelm me, and I either would find myself unable to deploy the remedy, or I would deploy it and it would work only temporarily, or I would deploy it and it would work not at all: I succumbed and had a drink.

I’ve had many more experiences of knowing I shouldn’t have a drink (or do P, Q, or R), knowing the consequences, knowing it’s nuts, knowing the remedies, but lacking the will or ability to do something about it.

The AA toolkit for what to do when the impulse, the insanity, the mental obsession strikes is of no more use than the ordinary toolkit of common sense that I would try and deploy before I got to AA. Bringing God into it is of no more use than bringing common sense into it: being a good church member did not help Rowland Hazard (the certain American businessman), and being a good Oxford Group member did not help Dr Bob until he completed his amends.

What I need is a defence system that is larger than me and larger than the impulse, the insanity, the obsession. It has to be all-encompassing. The solution is not something ‘the great self’ picks up to deploy but something in which ‘the small self’ lives, safe and sound.

So what is happening when, on the impulse to drink arising, I play the tape forward, remember my last drunk, think through the consequences, call someone, go to a meeting, say a prayer, do some inventory, etc.?

I am not doing those things: God is activating those pathways for me. They are indeed the path out of the cul-de-sac, but they’re given to me: they’re the lifebelt thrown to me from the shore. I do not activate them as an act of the will: the right thought occurs to me (I do not go and fetch it); the ability to follow through on the right thought, i.e. the right action, is the path along which I find myself compelled to walk, drawn and empowered by God.

I’m not doing this. God is.

However, I do have a responsibility, to work to establish the conditions in which I am placed within God’s bailiwick of safety and security.

The remedy does, therefore, ultimately reside with me, but not in the moment: in the whole way I live my life.

What’s your experience?

2 October 2024: Flood defences

Jahrhunderthochwasser: (German) a flood of a severity that occurs only once a century.

Flood defences look excessively precautionary, overblown, paranoid, until an actual flood occurs. Then one is relieved and grateful that the flood defences are in place.

The work implied by the Steps similarly appears excessive until one finds oneself in a genuinely thorny situation: then one is relieved and grateful that the flood defences are in place.

Thorny situations could arise out of personal circumstances, what is going on in the world more generally, internal cycles, or just ‘because’. There is no predicting them, and there is usually no warning. By the time such a situation arises, it is too late to build flood defences: the flood defences have to be in place already.

With alcoholism, I need only one thorny situation in which my defences are not sufficient for the whole course of my life to be diverted into active alcoholism. My defences must therefore be strong enough to deal with the worst possible situation that might arise. A once-a-century-flood might indeed happen once a century, but the phrase does not mean one has to wait a century for the flood to take place; the flood could happen at any point during the century, maybe even today.

That’s why I have to be surrendered to God—in the place of my own assessment—today.

What’s your experience?

1 October 2024: Sorry

“A remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won’t fill the bill at all.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“If a repetition is to be prevented, place the problem, along with everything else, in God’s hands.” (Chapter 8, Big Book)

When I make amends, the point is to draw a line under what I’ve done and not repeat the offence.

For my apology to be sincere, I must really be doing everything to avoid a repetition.

Whilst repetitions might occasionally occur, this must be in the context of a radical improvement.

I used to use ‘sorry’ as a way of indirectly securing permission to continue acting with impunity.

That had to go..

What’s your experience?