Sobriety is More than Not Drinking

I was reminded today of one of my most favorite resentments in recovery which has to do with an oft quoted page of the Big Book, 3rd Edition: Page 449. When I first got sober, the 3rd edition of the Big Book was on it's way out and the 4th edition was on the way in. For some reason, I suppose because I'm basically cheap, when I got sober I bought a used 3rd edition Big Book at Half Priced Books and it was this book that I began reading in earnest as soon as I got sober.

At a meeting at St. Bonaventure's Church in Concord, CA one night, the topic was Page 449 and Acceptance. They read a bit from that page, "And acceptance has been the answer to all my problems today...." and I heard a woman at the meeting say that she absolutely loved that page, so much so that she memorized it. Well, although I was only a few months sober, I'd already developed my weird habit of memorizing bits and pieces of AA literature, stuff that I found particularly wise or helpful or poignant. Well, when I heard all the talk about P. 449 and then this woman saying that she memorized it, I decided that it was going to be next on my list of things to memorize.

The first thing I noticed about this page was that page 449 did not start at the beginning of someone's story, in fact, the stuff they were talking about on page 449 didn't even start at the beginning of the page. What was odd about the quote being quoted was that it started with "And" which seemed to me like it was part of something bigger and that I needed to see what came before the "And". I also thought it odd that in this first sentence, it was talking about "all my problems today" as though the author had talked about some particular problem before this and that I might want to consider reading backwards to find out what that was....

Eventually, I looked backwards to the previous paragraph which began on the bottom of page 448: "At last, acceptance proved to be the key to my drinking problem..." Well, that was certainly the "particular problem" that preceeded the "all my problems" on page 449! And that problem, alcoholism, seemed to me to be of far more interest and importance than "all my [other] problems"! So I memorized that paragraph too.

After awhile though, in the process of memorizing this paragraph, I began to wonder why this paragraph started off with "At last!" -- that seemed to indicate that the author had been struggling with this problem of alcohol and that other solutions just didn't seem to work for him. And then, eventually, or "At last!" he discovered a solution that did work: Acceptance.

So then, I decided to read backwards one more time and there in the preceeding paragraph was the seed of my longest held and most cherished resentment. There was the line that made more sense to me as a new recovering alcoholic than all the other words in the book up to that point in my recovery. But before I get to what that line was, I need to get back to this bringing me to my favorite resentment. The resentment?

Well, until that time, I'd heard many many great lines and sayings within the meeting rooms of AA, but that line led me to my first original thought/line since getting sober. That line was "The best line on page 449 is to be found on page 448! "It helped me a great deal to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease, not a moral issue, that my drinking was the result of a compulsion even though I hadn't been aware of the compulsion at the time and that sobriety had nothing to do with willpower." That "line" about 448 was my line!! But by the time it came time to "wow!" the crowds of AA meetings with my line, no one was talking about p.449 any more. Because in the 4th edition of the Big Book some A-hole in the AA editorial office decided to move this story by Dr. Paul O. to another location in the Big Book and what used to be on p.449 was now on p.417. And now that that was a fact of life, my line was totally worthless and without any punch! I mean, it just doesn't sound as powerful to say that the best line of p.417 is on p.416! Who cares??

Well, I made one more last ditch effort today to revive the resentment and share this story with the group today. It got lots of laughs. Which brings me (finally!) to the point of today's post: the importance of happiness and joy in the process of recovery. Not drinking is truly a critical and essential part of the recovery process, but if one just stops at "not drinking" as their one step of recovery: I think they're missing the full benefit of this new way of life. Even if they do continue "not drinking" for many years, even until death, I think they've cheated themselves out of the full benefit of the program of AA. What does that have to do with p.449 and Dr. Paul?

Well, I remember listening to a tape of a talk given my Dr. Paul (he died sometime in the 1990's I believe) at a Yosemite AA/Alanon Conference and somewhere toward the end of this talk (which if you've never heard Dr. Paul talk, you've got to do this: he was hilarious and you don't really capture the full level of humor intertwined in his story if you don't listen to him talk...) he mentioned that his all time favorite line in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was to be found on the middle of page 132, in fact it was right smack dab in the middle of page 132, "sixteen lines down from the top, sixteen lines up from the bottom, two extraneous words to the left and two extraneous words to the right. And the line is, "We absolutely insist on enjoying life!"

That's a great line--even if it is someone else's!--and it got across to me what I'm trying to get across here: sobriety is more than not drinking, it's about finding a new way of living which can, sometimes quickly, sometimes (more often!) slowly bring about a change of perception which results in an inner sense of contentment, joy and peace with one's self and one's life. Just as it is, today.

Somepeople find me odd because I memorize stuff. And they're right. But Dr. Paul was odder than me. Sure, I memorized his telling the story of his favorite line, but he's the one who was so sick that he discovered that the line was 16 lines down from the top and 16 lines up bottom and that there were two extraneous words on both sides of his favorite line. Thank god there are some sicker than me.

Mike L.