Latest / Sober Readings / The Upward Path
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Tuesday, the 2nd of June. My name is Scott, and I'll be your host. Let's begin today's episode with the serenity prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections: The Upward Path. Here are the steps we took. And that is a line from the How It Works chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's on page fifty nine. These are the words that lead into the twelve steps. In their direct simplicity, they sweep aside all psychological and philosophical considerations about the rightness of the steps. They describe what I did. I took the steps, and sobriety was the result. These words do not imply That I should walk the well-trodden path of those who went before, but rather that there is a way for me to become sober, and that it is a way I shall have to find. It is a new path, one that leads to infinite light at the top of the mountain. The steps advise me about the footholds that are safe and about chasms to avoid. They provide me with the tools I need during the many parts of the solitary journey of my soul. When I speak of this journey, I share my experience, strength, and hope with others. Today's reading from 24 hours. June 2, AA Thought for the Day. Some more things I do not miss since becoming dry. Wondering if the car is in the garage and how I got home. Struggling to remember where I was and what I did since my last conscious moment. Trying to delay getting off to work. Wondering how I will look when I arrive at the office. Dreading the day ahead of me. I'm quite sure that I don't miss these things, am I not? The Meditation for the Day No man can believe in God and keep his selfish ways. The self shrivels up and dies and upon the soul becomes stamped God's image. The gradual elimination of selfishness and the growth of love for God and your fellow man is the goal of life. At first, you have only a faint likeness to the divine. But the picture grows and takes on more and more of the likeness of God until those who see you can see in you some of the power of God's grace at work in a human life. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may develop that faint likeness I have to the divine. I pray that others may see in me some of the power of God's grace at work. And for today's final reading, let's pick up where we left off in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, a brief history of a unique movement. And so we'll pick up in chapter two where we left off with Bill having just left a meeting, and he's walking up 23rd Street, and he says he realized he hadn't thought of looking in any of the bars. So we'll pick it up. Before going to bed, Lois and I had a long talk. There was hope in every word. Without an ounce of gin, I slept like a child. I was due for a terrible hangover the next morning, but I had almost none at all. Yet that small hangover was my undoing once more. I felt I would be more comfortable watching the sun come up if I had a drink. Just one or two, maybe. Saying nothing to Lois, I took a couple aboard and followed them up with mouthwash. She noticed nothing and I felt fine. After she left for work, the hangover got very troublesome again. This was to be the last one. Rationalizing as usual, I felt justified in tapering off. As always, of course, I tapered on instead of off, and at six o'clock, poor Lois found me upstairs on the bed dead drunk. Yet I had seen some kind of light, and although I drank on for three days, I kept pondering that mission experience. Sometimes it seemed real, then again I would brush it away, charging it off to an alcohol fired imagination. On the morning of the third day, my wandering thoughts gathered into a sharp focus. I remember comparing myself to a cancer victim. If I had cancer, I would do anything to get well, would I not? Yes, anything whatever. Would I sit home and put cold cream on the affected parts? No, of course not. What would I do? I would head for the best physician in the business and beg him to destroy or cut away those consuming cells. I would have to depend on him, my god of medicine, to save me. My dependence would be absolute. For myself, I could do nothing. Alcoholism, not cancer, was my illness. But what was the difference? Was not alcoholism also a consumer of body and mind? Alcoholism took longer to do its killing. But the result was the same. So if there was a great physician who could cure the alcoholic sickness, I had better seek him now at once. I had better find what my friend had found. Would I, like the cancer sufferer, do anything to get well? If getting well required me to pray at high noon in the public square with the other sufferers, would I swallow my pride and do that? Maybe I would. Meanwhile, though, I would go back to Towns Hospital where Dr. Silkworth Sober me up again. Then I could look clear-eyed at Ebbie's formula for sobriety. Perhaps I would not need an emotional conversion. Maybe a conservative doubter like me could get by without anything like that. Anyhow, I started for the hospital. Walking up Clinton Street to the subway, I fished six cents out of my pocket. A nickel would get me to the hospital. But hadn't I forgotten something? Here I was on my way to be cured. Typical alcoholic that I was, I figured I might as well be comfortable until the hospital took over. So I stepped into a grocery store where where I had a slim credit. I remember explaining to the clerk that I was an alcoholic on my way to be cured. Could I have four bottles of beer on the cuff? I drank one bottle on the street and another in the subway. My spirits rose as I offered the third to a passenger. He turned down my refreshment, so I drained that bottle on the station platform near the hospital. Holding the last bottle by the neck, I walked into towns, where doctor Silkworth met me in the hall. Now in very high spirits, I waved the bottle and shouted At last, Doc, I found something. Even through my haze I could see the good old man's face fall. I now know how much he loved me. This fresh outburst really hurt him. I tried to explain the new thing I thought I had found. He looked at me, shaking his head, and after a while he quietly said, Well, my boy, isn't it time you went upstairs and went to bed? I was not in too awful a condition. In three or four days I was free of what little sedative they gave me, but I was very depressed. I was still choking on the God business. Bright and early one morning, friend Ebbie showed up and stood in the doorway, smiling to me. I didn't see what was so funny. Then I had a suspicion. Maybe this is the day he is going to evangelize me. Maybe he's going to pour on the sweetness and light. But no, he made me wait until I asked him. Well, said I, what is your neat little formula once more? In perfectly good humor, he handed it out again. You admit you are licked. You get honest with yourself. You talk it out with somebody else. You make restitution to the people you have harmed. You try to give of yourself without stint, with no demand for reward. And you pray to whatever God you think there is, even as an experiment. It was as simple and yet as mysterious as that. After some small talk he was gone. My depression deepened unbearably, and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the very bottom of the pit. I still gagged badly on the notion of a power greater than myself. But finally, just for the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, If there is a God, let him show himself. I am ready to do anything, anything. And so we'll stop right there in Bill's story, but I can tell you that I read ahead a couple paragraphs, and you'll really want to hear this next part. And so with that, we'll close today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you all so much for listening. If you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's reading, go to my website, soberreadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, Best day ever.