of me. Then I went for a walk in the downtown area of the city.
Suddenly I came up short. Booze!—that was my problem. In a flash of clarity, I saw that if I could beat this curse, I could recover. But how? I remembered a questionnaire I'd done in our local paper, but which I'd rejected as extreme, although it appeared to hit the mark in a number of areas. Perhaps AA was the answer after all. Going into a phone booth, I found a group listed nearby, which I entered at 4:00 P.M. and by God's grace was open. I realized later that given another few hours of reflection I could have had a change of heart, so unstable was I at this point. For an instant hope inspired my determination to give this last resort one hell of a try.
The first weeks were crucial. To still my inner turmoil I studied the Big Book—“Bill's Story,” “We Agnostics,” and the basic action Step, the Third Step. One night, in a state of near delirium, I concentrated on the paragraph that contains the Third Step prayer. Feeling highly elated, I went to sleep.
In the middle of the night I awoke in a sweat. Was I never to take another drink for the rest of my life—that elixir that seemingly had brought me through so many scrapes? The idea shocked me! Then I remembered that all I had to do is to stay sober one day at a time. Again, I fell asleep and the compulsion to drink was lifted from me and was never to reoccur. The test came two weeks later.
I was working on some real estate I owned, in July, the hottest time of the year. My thirst was overpowering. I choked on a soda pop, and being convinced that beer was the only drink to assuage, I threw my tools into the car and hightailed it to the coolest bar in town, which was a shaded float over the river. At the bridge I stopped with the crushing realization that I was now in AA and understood the importance of the first drink. What to do?
With my heart in my hands, I said a prayer. Visions of another debauchery crept in, and the horror of working in the clutches of another hangover flooded my thoughts. I drove home and made a cup of tea and lay down. That battle was over. I knew it would have taken an all-night drinking session to still my craving if I had capitulated to that first drink.
A few months later, I got drunk to give me the nerve to sever a relationship. That was my last drink. In my first years in AA I was burdened by not being able to reconcile my marriage, as others appeared to have done. But the Twelve Steps enabled me to transcend the trauma, and I was able to hold my job and maintain my two daughters, who on maturity came to live with me, while my ex-wife passed away later without seeing the light. In my four-score years, one half in AA, I've found myself a survivor. I have the respect of my family and the church I joined after my awakening. In the spiritual aspects of AA I can find unlimited opportunities to round out my retirement years.
I believe that AA should be recognized at the close of this millennium, as the most progressive health advance of the twentieth century. In my opinion it has saved more lives than all the antidepressants and painkillers churned out by our geniuses in pharmacy and psychiatry.
My gratitude goes out to Bill W. and Dr. Bob for this remarkable Fellowship, and to Lois and Anne for sticking with their spouses through their shaky quest to alleviate lonely suffering and conciliate fragile families.
George V.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Someone's Got to Show the Way
May 1959
One of the swellest guys I ever met was Tom. I find myself thinking about him often because he's my idea of a man, and because his story is a departure from the run-of-the-mill type of drunk. Tom never got drunk in his life until he was fifty-six years old. That's when his wife died. He and the missus were a devoted couple and their lives were wrapped up in each other because they'd never had any children.
Almost overnight she took sick and was gone, and Tom was left stricken and bewildered. Tom was a steady-plugging gentle type of person and he and mama had a love so deep for each other they had no need for a real, personal love of God. So, when his wife passed away, Tom had no one to turn to for comfort.
For a while he spent most of his time hunched over a freshly risen mound at the cemetery wishing he were down there with her. Life wasn't worth living and he walked about like a zombie, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing but the raw spot in his heart. He just wanted to die because he couldn't think of any reason to live.
He wandered into a bar one day and never came out, he said, until two-and-a-half years later—and only then because his money and credit gave out. Never worked a stroke the whole time. He had turned bitter on life and claimed he was the most miserable man alive, hating everyone in particular and the world in general.
He'd spent his savings, sold his home and converted everything he owned that was salable into cash. Then he drank it up bottle by bottle. Six years later he was a withered wreck of a man, shaking out a bout with the DTs in the alcoholic ward of a city hospital.
There was a resident doctor there who had been working with AA and knew his drunks well. He had Tom on paraldehyde as he brought him through the DTs. Pretty soon Tom was crying for his medicine like a baby crying for its bottle. The doctor shut him off, but finally agreed to give him a little if he'd talk to a couple of guys from AA. Tom would do anything. Well, the guys came to visit two or three times a day but they couldn't get through to him because he was living in another world. As a last resort they gave Tom a kind of shock treatment—accused him of being a quitter and told him the facts of life in no uncertain terms. Tom came up out of bed and raved like a madman. The guys left. Sometime during the night something of what the men said got through to Tom. Next morning he lay quiet and attentive, listening to what his visitors said.
Tom had been sober five years when I met him at Men's Town, after hearing him talk to a bunch of drunks sent there by judges in the surrounding towns. What a man—alive to his fingertips, bursting with energy and a zest for living that would put to shame a teenager. When he listened to a man's problems he crooned and clucked in genuine understanding, his eyelids veiled with the heavy film of compassion.
Tom picked the toughest cookies of them all and the drunks he pulled back from the lip of hell would fill a city square. I'll bet his wife is beaming proudly somewhere up there to watch the likes of Tom as he lives each day to the fullest, giving everything he's got, piling up treasure in heaven that will take eternity to spend. You could tell by the look in his eye he had a new love, a love that would never fail.
It is assuring to know there are men like Tom in the world, lighting a candle here and there, cutting a swathe through the darkness. Someone's got to show the way, and it's guys like Tom who'll be doing it.
G.L.
Boise, Idaho
There Can Be Love and Laughter
February 1974
On June 8, 1961, while sitting in a boat fishing a picturesque little lake in Illinois, I reached a decision. I had returned to the scenes of my childhood to visit my mother, and for one week I had come daily to this tranquil spot to fish, to pray and meditate, and to reflect back over the years of my life as an active alcoholic.
There had been a brief interlude of dryness, when I was going to AA meetings for a period of three months. But then had come the old call of the wild, and I had bolted, rejoining the pack—the old cronies in their dens.
Now I was at the turning point. What was I to do about my life and the influence my life was having on those around me? The choice was mine to make. Was I to continue down the path of self-willed destruction, filled with hangovers,
