is my own invention. It’s a product of my own arrogant stupidity and my unwillingness, once again, to pay attention and follow directions. It’s the kind of blindness T. S. Eliot must have meant when he observed, “Many people think they’re emancipated when, in reality, they’re only unbuttoned.’’
A fragmented program will leave me fragmented. Using part of the prescription produces inadequate results. “Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program….” My life is a totality, and long ago it became obvious that it can’t be compartmentalized. Dishonesty in one area creates problems in another area. Healing in one segment provides better health in another. It is all connected. Each Step blends with another in an integrated, comprehensive program designed to transform you and me into human beings capable of willingly and joyously doing God’s will.
One of the worst bits of advice I ever got was to work the first nine Steps once and then try to subsist on the last three for the rest of my life. That is simply another form of fragmentation. Redoing every one of the Steps provides results I never experienced with the other method. The demands of the program are simple, precise, and specific. The guarantees are equally precise and specific. Viewing each of us as a totality, rather than a collection of slightly related parts, the program speaks to our conditions wherever we are in sobriety. The Steps enable us to move from where we are within ourselves toward the place we belong.
Loren Eiseley once wrote of a Brazilian fish with a two-lensed eye. The upper lens examines the world of sunlight and air, while the lower inspects the water depths in which the fish swims. Said Eiseley: “Now the fish, we might say, looks simultaneously into two worlds of reality, though what he makes of this divided knowledge we do not know. In the case of man, although there are degrees of seeing, we can observe that the individual has always possessed the ability to see beyond naked reality into some other dimension, some place outside the realm of what might be called ‘facts.’”
Seeing my life with the “two-lensed eye” created by persistent work with the Steps, I can be at ease in the swiftly changing society where I make my living because part of my vision is focused on the timeless world opened to me by AA’s eternal truths. AA works, but it does not work on my terms. A fragmented, “individual” program is destined to bring only partial recovery and leave me as bewildered and lost as my Eskimo friends in Point Barrow.
On the other hand, with lives grounded in eternal principles, “We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace…Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us.” (pages 83 and 84 in the Big Book). What happens outside me is far less important than what’s happening inside. My being does attract my life; repeated work with each of the Twelve Steps generates changes within me that are reflected in improvements around me. Simple, but not always easy, the AA program gives me everything needed to become what I should be. Finally, there is no you or me or them. Everything is connected to everything else, and the salvation of each of us is linked to the salvation of all of us.
P.M., Riverside, Ill.
When the Big “I” Becomes Nobody
By Harry M. Tiebout, MD
September 1965
The AA program of help is touched with elements of true inspiration, and in no place is that inspiration more evident than in the selection of its name, Alcoholics Anonymous. Anonymity is, of course, of great protective value, especially to the newcomer; but my present target is to focus on the even greater value anonymity has in contributing to the state of humility necessary for the maintenance of sobriety in the recovered alcoholic.
My thesis is that anonymity, thoughtfully preserved, supplies two essential ingredients to that maintenance. The two ingredients, actually two sides of the same coin, are: first, the preservation of a reduced ego; second, the continued presence of humility or humbleness. As stated in the Twelfth Tradition of AA, “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions,” reminding each member to place “principles before personalities.”
Many of you will wonder what that word ego means. It has so many definitions that the first task is to clarify the nature of the ego needing reduction.
This ego is not an intellectual concept, but a state of feeling—a feeling of importance—of being “special.” Few people can recognize this need to be special in themselves. Most of us, however, can recognize offshoots of this attitude and put the proper name to it. Let me illustrate. Early in the AA days, I was consulted about a serious problem plaguing the local group. The practice of celebrating a year’s sobriety with a birthday cake had resulted in a certain number of the members getting drunk within a short period after the celebration. It seemed apparent that some could not stand prosperity. I was asked to settle between birthday cakes and no birthday cakes. Characteristically, I begged off, not from shyness, but from ignorance. Some three or four years later, AA furnished me the answer. The group no longer had such a problem, because, as one member said, “We celebrate still, but a year’s sobriety is now a dime a dozen. No one gets much of a kick out of that any more!”
A look at what happened shows us ego, as I see it, in action. Initially, the person who had been sober for a full year was a standout, someone to be looked up to. His ego naturally expanded; his pride flowered; any previous deflation vanished. With such a renewal of confidence, he took a drink. He had been made special and reacted accordingly. Later, the special element dropped out. No ego feeds off being in the dime-a-dozen category, and the problem of ego build-up vanished.
Today, AA in practice is well aware of the dangers of singling anyone out for honors and praise. The dangers of reinflation are recognized. The phrase “trusted servant” is a conscious effort to keep that ego down, although admittedly some servants have a problem in that regard.
Now let us take a closer look at this ego which causes trouble. The feelings associated with this state of mind are of basic importance in understanding the value of anonymity for the individual—the value of placing him in the rank and file of humanity.
Certain qualities typify this ego which views itself as special and therefore different. It is high on itself and prone to keep its goals and visions at the same high level. It disdains what it sees as grubs who plod along without the fire and inspiration of those sparked by ideals lifting people out of the commonplace and offering promise of better things to come.
Often the same ego operates in reverse. It despairs of man, with his faults and his failings, and develops a cynicism which sours the spirit and makes of its possessor a cranky realist who finds nothing good in this vale of tears. Life never quite meets his demands upon it, and he lives an embittered existence, grabbing what he can out of the moment, but never really part of what goes on around him. He seeks love and understanding and prates endlessly about his sense of alienation from those around him. Basically, he is a disappointed idealist—forever aiming high and landing low. Both of these egos confuse humbleness with humiliation.
To develop this further, the expression “You think you’re something” nicely catches the sense of being above the crowd. Children readily spot youngsters who think they are something, and do their best to puncture that illusion. For instance, they play a game called tag. In it, the one who is tagged is called “it.” You’ve heard them accuse each other saying, “You think you’re it,’’ thereby charging the other with acting as though he was better than his mates. In their own way, children make very good therapists or head-shrinkers. They are skillful puncturers of inflated egos, even though their purpose is not necessarily therapeutic.
AA had its start in just such a puncturing. Bill W. always refers to his experience at Towns Hospital as a “deflation in great depth”
