Homework

So I am sponsoring two people now. If that makes no sense to you, don't worry about it. I assigned homework to them this week, and realized immediately it was an assignment i should also do for myself.


"What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate expirement of the first drink? Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon. Why does he? Of what is he thinking?" ~page 35 of the big book

This is actually a bit difficult to analyze without going on tangent after tangent about my drinking history. I want to focus on those first drinks of a spree though; those times I walked out the door for a beer knowing I had already committed to stop or at least slow down. Even the words above "desperate expirement of the first drink" throw me off into a tangent! I needed a drink; I needed a sip, a taste, just something to take the edge off. I was in all sense of the word, desperate.

Let me give some examples.

I was in a state conservation program. To sum it up nicely, it was boot camp for hippies. We went out in the woods and made fire trails. We chopped down invasive cypress trees and burned them (in the July heat). We got up early and did calistentics (sp?) and stretching exercises. We ran out of cigarettes in a week, got to feeling really healthy after two. After about six weeks, we graduated and went to Tahoe to work. And they gave us a paycheck.

I got to drinking that very night. What was my thinking? That it had been weeks, and i needed a drink of course! But I can recall now the whole idea of joining that program was to dry out and to get healthy and to start doing better. That thinking was out the window at the first opportunity. Within a week (was it two, perhaps?) I was suspended because of my drinking. Had to spend a week living in the laundromat (and already broke). I got back and got another check in a week.

My duties at this point were to make breakfast for the hundred or so, clean up, and show back up to make dinner. I had the day free. I went to the bar for a drink. Here I am, already suspended and back, and heading out to do the same thing! I knew the consequences, and I sure as hell knew that when I drank, I could not stop. What was I thinking? In this case I cannot honestly remember. Of course I came back about four, and napped. I napped right through dinner. I napped right until they came into my room and started packing my bags and sending me on my way.

Lets try another example.

Any typical Sunday that last year of my drinking. l'd sleep in as long as possible. I would hide in my room even longer. Late afternoon I would come around and glue myself to the tv. I knew I had to get a drink, and I would fight it all day long. Up until 9pm or even 10pm. Then I would go to the bar, once again, for that "desperate expirement". Inevitably what followed was a hungover Monday morning at best. Why does he? Simply put I needed to. I understood that from my very first meeting. Very early on I even understood that self knowledge was not keeping me sober no matter how much I tried.

Let's search out one more example for good measure.

Halloween of '86. My last drink was not quite a year away but i always consider that the starting point for my last year of miserable lonely drinking; the point where I stopped caring, stopped trying to quit; where I knew im my heart without having been to a meeting or reading the words, that I was headed for jails, institutions or death. My friends were having a birthday party I wasn't invited to. I showed up anyway. They blocked me at the door, first one person then another. I was arguing. I told them to get Karen since it was her birthday and she was a real friend. She wouldn't come to the door. But she passed word that if i didn't drink I could come in.

Here was a chance. I wanted to be normal, to be accepted and to be a part of. I wanted to be with my friends and to have fun. They were done with my drinking. So what did I do? I swore at them and went to a bar instead. I cannot tell you what the excuses really were, what my thinking was. I had to drink. The guilt and the depression and the hopelessness and the consequences did not ever outweigh the need of my body to ingest alcohol. The first step is easy to admit. That alone never got me sober.