Bitter morass of self-pity
"No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.
"Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn! In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes."
(All excerpts used are solely from the First Edition of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
I read the Big Book before I dared to venture out to my first AA meeting.
This was the passage that changed my life. For the first time, I realized that my alcohol problem is not unique -- and there is a solution.
Thank you all for showing up to those meetings. We need each other.