Prayer & Alcoholics Anonymous

It was the usual night for an AA meeting, this particular one in a room over a Rescue Squad station, in Scotch Plaines, NJ.  The meeting began with reciting The Serenity Prayer, followed by a talk by a guest speaker.  The attendees come from all walks of life: rich and poor, male and female, and represent a cross section of religions and races.  Many would stand up and tell their story, about how drink had ruined their life, until someone introduced them to the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Step one was for them to admit they were powerless to stop drinking, and then to turn their life over to a power greater than themselves. The meeting would close with reciting The Lord's Prayerr.

Meetings such as this one, are held virtually every night of the year, in towns and cities across America.  Alcoholism has been around as long as there has been alcoholic drinks to quaf.  Only no one could find a cure, not medical science, faith healers, hypnotists, nor psychiatrists, until William G. "Bill" Wilson introduced his Twelve-Step Program in the mid 1930s.  Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, has been hailed as "The Most Important Man of the Twentieth Century."  He was the first to identify alcoholism as an illness.

As with most alcoholics, Wilson was unusually bright, and very successful in business.  He worked as a stock broker on Wall Street, was married to an adoring wife, had two promising children, and resided in a luxurious townhouse in Brooklyn, New York.  His only problem was he couldn't stop drinking.  Oh, he could lay off the booze for several weeks and months at a time, and sometimes years, but if he had one drink--just one drink -- that would start a drinking spree that would often consume weeks of binge drinking, often ending up with Bill lying in a hospital room in New York City's Towns Hospital.  Wilson was to learn that the root of the problem was not the alcohol itself, but obsessiveness, pure and simple. Bill felt helpless and depressed by an obsession he could not break.

As fate would have it, an old drinking pal stopped by to see him.  Bill was surprised when his friend declined his offer of a drink.  "I've quit," his friend said calmly.  Bill didn't believe him. No one could just up and quit.  "I know," his friend said, "but I have."  Intrigued, Bill asked him how.  His friend, Ebby Thatcher, then explained how in humility and with an open heart he had turned to God seeking help, which had led to a spiritual epiphany that had released him from the need to drink.  Wilson was intrigued with his story, but continued to drink.  After all, drinking brought him joy and release from his cares, self-doubts, and incessant worries.  Besides that, he was not about to become a church goer. Religious people made him nauseous. Yes, he believed in God, or some intelligent being who created and maintained the universe, but no way did he believe that God, or some mystical persona, could help him stop drinking.  No way, no how.

Then, inevitably, his drinking forced him back to a Towns Hospital bed.  When he came to, at some point, he said in all earnestness, "If there is a God, show yourself."  The hospital room suddenly brightened, as if someone had turned on the brightest of lights, and it became incredibly quiet; and he felt a closeness to a divine presence as never before.  At that moment, Wilson sensed he was a changed man. At the same time he realized there was a price to be paid. Yes, self-centeredness and self-will had to go.

He thought: "I must turn all things over to the Father of Lights who presides over us all."  At that moment, he knew that belief in the power of God, coupled with enough desire, honesty, and humility to establish and maintain a new order of things, were the essential requirements.  These were revolutionary and drastic ideas, but at that moment, he fully accepted them. The effect was electric.  There was a sense of victory, followed by such a sense of peace and serenity as he had never known before.  "I felt lifted up," he said, "as though the great, clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through.  God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound.

"For a moment I was alarmed, and called my friend the doctor, to ask if I were still sane. He listened in wonder as I talked.  Finally, he shook his head saying. 'Something has has happened to you I don't understand.  But you better hang on to it. Anything is better than the way you were.'

"While I lay in the hospital the thought came to me that there were thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might be glad to have what had been given so freely to me.  Perhaps I could help some of them.  They in turn might work with others.

"My friend (Ebby Thatcher) had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating three principles in all my affairs.  It imperative to work with others as he had worked with me.  Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic!  For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work he would simply drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die.  Then faith would be dead, indeed! With us it is just like that.

"My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems. It was fortunate, for my old business associates remained skeptical for a year-and-a- half, during which I found little work.  I was not too well at the time, and I was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment  This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink.  I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day.  Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair.  On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet.  It is a design for living that works in rough going.

"We commenced to make many fast friends and a fellowship has grown up among us of which it is a wonderful thing to be a part.  The joy of living we really have, even under pressure and difficulty.  I have seen one hundred families set their feet in the path that really goes somewhere; have seen the most impossible domestic situations righted; feuds and bitterness of all sorts wiped out.  I have seen men come out of asylums and resume a vital place in the lives of their families and communities.  Business professional men have regained their standing.  There is scarcely any form of trouble and misery which has not been overcome among us.  In one western city and its environs there are eighty of us and our families.  We meet frequently at our homes, so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek.  At these informal gatherings one may see from 40 to 80 persons.  We are growing in number and power.

"An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature.  Our struggles with them are variously strenuous, comic, and tragic.  One poor chap committed suicide in my home.  He could not, or would not, see our way of life.

"There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all.  I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity.  But just underneath there is deadly earnestness.  Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish.

"Most of us feel we need to look no further for Utopia.  We have it with us right here and now.  Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men."

BILL WILSON'S TWELVE-STEP PROGRAM TO RECOVERY

1.  We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.  Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to safety.

3.  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives to the care of God as we understand him.

4.  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7.  Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8.  Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9.  Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong to promptly admit it.

11. Sought through prayer and mediation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him to be.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Following these twelve steps has made Alcoholics Anonymous the only agency that has proved successful in treating alcoholism permentally.

Note: In composing this piece I am indebted to the book "Alcoholics Anonymous"; the quotes concerning Bill's recovery are lifted directly from this book.  I'm also indebted to the YouTube documentary, "Bill W" as well as conversations with two members of my family who are both recovering alcoholics, thanks to the Wilson's 12-Step Program.

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