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The so-called "only requirement for membership isn't enough for the real alcoholic.
I met the membership requirement for the last several years of drinking, but could not stay sober. That kind of blows the "AA is for those who want it, not those who need it" saying out of the water too. I'm sure we've all heard people talking about those who can't get sober, saying stuff like "He doesn't want it bad enough." Bullshit. I wanted to be sober real bad, I just wanted it on my terms and thought that there was something that I could do about it.
The following paragraphs say something along the lines of if I've lost the power of choice in the matter of when I'm going to drink again and that at certain times I won't be able to recall the memory of the suffering and humiliation of the last time and "Think the drink through," that there is nothing I can do about it. No going to meetings and not drinking in between, because I went to meetings and drank not in between, but before, during, and after. No thinking it through, because I've been brought to a state of "Perhaps he doesn't think at all."
I wanted sobriety on my terms. That meant self-reliance and self-will. That meant doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it with no regards to the consequences or how it might affect others. That meant "getting my life back." Trouble is every time I got it back, I ruined it worse than before. That meant completely destroying any trust that any one whose life was touched by my life. The strongest desire I had to not drink couldn't keep me from doing that. So perhaps there is a deeper requirement: Surrender. Complete and unconditional surrender.
"When this kind of thinking is established in an individual with alcoholic tendecies, he has probably placed himself beyond human aid..." That rules out the AA fellowship. That rules out another treatment facility and more information. That rules my job or my wife or the cops or the judge. On the next page it spells out the solution, a deep and effective spiritual experience. Not the steps, or my sponsor, or meetings. These things lead to the solution. If the problem centers in the mind, then the solution is a new mind.
There is a question. Am as seriously alcoholic as they were? If so, there is no middle-of-the-road solution. I tried middle-of-the-road for years, the "Meeting makers make it" approach, the "Stay away from the first drink" approach and all I got was either drunk again or suicidal and homicidal. I've entered the region from which there is no return through human aid. There are two alternatives, die the alcoholic death, which is usually slow and undignified and doesn't always involve drinking, or I can treat the root and accept spiritual help. I believe than anything you hear in an AA meeting that doesn't speak of having recovered from alcoholism through deep and effective experience with God as the result of 12 Steps is middle-of-the-road solution in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Jim
Big Book references from Alcoholics Anonymous, First Edition
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