A Dozen Steps

The Substance Of The AA Party Line

by Mark on March 11th, 2007

Bill Wilson’s words, reproduced in “The Language Of The Heart” on page 274, are very intriguing to me, especially having recently had some controversy about having a choice or not.

Bill said;

“During my first couple of years I had two or three severe temptations to drink. But having practiced the AA program pretty faithfully, I was fully able to see the consequences of so doing at the time I was tempted. The usual blinding rationalizations were not present. I had been restored to sanity, respecting alcohol. I nevertheless had to make a choice. But under these conditions it was not hard. And the choice did require a certain modicum of willpower. Or of the willingness to choose rightly.

I think this exercise of the will is appropriate and necessary during the interval in which one is developing a general release from the problem. But a general and complete release is quite possible, after considerable practice of AA’s program. I know because I have been under enormous emotional strain since AA started. I had a neurotic depression that lasted from 1943 until 1955, one from which I never fully surfaced. About three years of this was suicidal. But the release from alcohol had been so thorough that I was never tempted during this long siege to resort to drink.

So this is the substance of the AA party line as I happen to see it. But please be assured you don’t necessarily have to see it the same way. Plenty of people differ with me, and yet remain sober. Nevertheless the experience of most of us seems to back up what I have just said. Those who try to work the program in other ways, and who succeed by so doing, are in my belief staying dry the hard way. AA’s orthodoxy, if it can be called that, is merely what the majority experience suggest. You can still take your pick!”

Hmmm - let’s see - nowhere does he say he has been able to develop his own personal defense against the first drink. AND - he was suicidal and stayed sober! I imagine that this means that those who tell you things like “if you’re miserable” you’re doing something wrong, might want to re-consider that lame “profundity”… Oh! Oh yeah! Plus - perhaps you needn’t be recovere(d) to be truly sober! Geeesh.

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POSTED IN: Experience, Strength and Hope, Principles, Reality