Pre-AA Musings

I enjoy reading AA history from time to time.  I also enjoy dipping into auxiliary books that are not conference approved but can shed some light on the history and origins of AA, and to learn more about the people, places, and things that influenced our founding members.  I've mentioned Richard Peabody a few times.  Here are a few more quotes from his seminal book that obviously made a big impression on Bill W.

"It does little good for a man to endeavor to eliminate his habit until he considers it a sound, sensible, and desirable thing to do; something he would like to accomplish for his own sake, however difficult it may seem.  The minute a man seeks to reform for somebody else, no matter how deeply he may care for the other person, he is headed for failure in the long run."

Yeah, well, no one in AA has ever heard it mentioned that successful recovery is dependent on the person who is getting sober doing it for him- or herself and not for someone else.  If you try to get sober to please or placate another person you are often looking at a big, honking resentment.

Incidentally, for a man who is willing to buckle down to work the 'difficulty' is always exaggerated in the beginning . . ."

I think I remember my first sponsor saying something along the lines of "quit bitching all the time and write your fucking Fourth Step."  Something like that.  I'm cleaning it up a bit in case there are any children present.  

"But, whatever the final results may be, the initial effects are so satisfactory that the individual is tempted to seek this method over and over again for want of a better one, with full realization of the eventual suffering that he must endure."

I was always encouraged to think the drink through.  Initially, I couldn't shake the desire to make any discomfort I was feeling go away immediately, something that drugs and alcohol would do.  I understood on an organic level that I was going to suffer in the long run but I drank anyhow.  Future comfort after enduring some suffering never appealed to me as much as making the suffering go away immediately and then dealing with collateral damage down the road.

"Writing incidentally will disclose how many of the ideas have been thoroughly understood and retained in the patient's mind, how many have gone in one ear and out the other, and how many have been twisted so that they are more in line with emotional wish fulfillment than with an intellectual disposition of the problem under consideration."

Ibid:  "Write your fucking Fourth Step already."  Bill and Bob understood how important writing is, how one's pen, once unleashed, will wander all over the place and lead the writer to astonishing places.