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Now that is precisely what happens with the alcoholic—the arrested alcoholic, or the alcoholic in AA who has a slip. Obviously, he decides to take a drink again some time before he actually takes it. He starts thinking wrong before he actually embarks on the course that leads to a slip.
There is no reason to charge the slip to alcoholic behavior or a second heart attack to cardiac behavior. The alcoholic slip is not a symptom of a psychotic condition. There’s nothing screwy about it at all. The patient simply didn’t follow directions.
For the alcoholic, AA offers the directions. A vital factor, or ingredient of the preventive, especially for the alcoholic, is sustained emotion. The alcoholic who learns some of the techniques or the mechanics of AA but misses the philosophy or the spirit may get tired of following directions–not because he is alcoholic, but because he is human. Rules and regulations irk almost anyone, because they are restraining, prohibitive, negative. The philosophy of AA, however, is positive and provides ample sustained emotion—a sustained desire to follow directions voluntarily.
In any event, the psychology of the alcoholic is not as different as some people try to make it. The disease has certain physical differences, yes, and the alcoholic has problems peculiar to him, perhaps, in that he has been put on the defensive and consequently has developed frustrations. But in many instances, there is no more reason to be talking about “the alcoholic mind” than there is to try to describe something called “the cardiac mind” or “the TB mind.”
I think we’ll help the alcoholic more if we can first recognize that he is primarily a human being—afflicted with human nature.
Anybody Seen My Dragon?
February 1967
You’re still drinking, friend? Then you’re just the man I want to see. Want to ask you a question. Over here, where we won’t be disturbed.
Question’s this: Wonder if you’ve seen my dragon? Name of Beastly. Nice little guy. For a dragon. Green, with pink spots. Believe me, you couldn’t miss ole Beastly!
I was sobbing my eyes out one night because the park bench I was on was going through red lights and I was scared stiff. Suddenly this dragon whammed into the bench and stopped it cold. If I’d thought I was scared before, Friend, now I was petrified. A dragon! Imagine!
“What’th the matter with you, Mithter?” he asked, and that started me laughing like a school kid. Somehow you can’t be really scared of a dragon that lisps.
“Thtop laughing!” he fumed, and believe me, Friend, I thtopped. I mean stopped. On second thought, you can be scared of a lisping dragon, especially when he closes the damper and flames shoot out of his mouth.
“Thanks for stopping the bench,’’ I said.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.’’ At least he was modest.
Turned out the li’l fella didn’t have a name, so I called him Beastly, which described him pretty well. Besides, he liked the name. Beastly also liked the smell of sherry. He always came around when I drank it, and sometimes stayed for days after.
Usually, however, he would disappear when I was broke and had to work for a day or two (as a rule I took a position as Asst. Director of a Dishwashing Dept., Wet Arms Division), but Beastly always showed up again when I got a crock of sherry.
When Beastly stopped that park bench he was about three feet long, but it was amazing how he grew. About a foot a month. At first, he was fun to play with. Throw sticks, that sort of thing. He’d bring ’em back unless he got confused and burned ’em up. But in six months it got to the point where he could stop a Sherman tank with his breath, the ground shook under him when he ran, and if he ran too close to me, the wind would knock me down.
Once a cop found me in that position and asked, “What’s the matter with you, fella?” I said, “It was Beastly,” and he agreed, but wouldn’t accept it as an answer. Then he smelled the sherry and hauled me off to the cooler, which was dragon proof.
I never saw Beastly again. You see, an AA visited me in jail last month and I got on the program, and since they don’t allow spotted dragons to join…
Well, I smelled the sherry on you, Friend, and just thought you might have seen my old pet Beastly. Greatest little dragon I ever met.
Anonymous
The Fear of Feeling Rejected
October 1973
In my first AA inventory, taken almost six years ago, I listed as my primary shortcoming an inability to cope with feelings of rejection and defeat. In pre-AA years, whenever I had been willing to make a sincere effort to achieve anything, I often experienced gratifying success. But ordinary setbacks, which my normal friends seemed to shrug off, would throw me into a seething anger and resentment. I would withdraw from the contest and, wallowing in depression, would lock my door against the entire world, comforting myself with the bliss of alcoholic oblivion.
Then came AA. For the first time in years, I became willing to be possessed by an honest desire to achieve something—in this case, sobriety. The willingness came easily, because my life depended on it. As my obsession was being lifted, I got down to the causes and conditions mentioned in Chapter Five of Alcoholics Anonymous. This first inventory revealed that my old fear was still thriving, that I was still a moral coward, albeit a sober one.
For example, fear of being turned down because of my unstable employment record kept me from trying to land the kind of job for which I was qualified. When I finally did work up the nerve to apply (to just one employer) and was refused the position, my resentment and depression hung on for weeks. Caught in this dilemma, I reverted to form, refused to try again, and as a result, worked below my capacity for many months.
This fear of feeling rejected shortchanged me in the people department, too. I was afraid to choose. Surrounded by these well-meaning but self-assertive friends, I found little opportunity to cultivate any social courage. The men and women I wanted and needed most seemed to move in a sphere of their own, just beyond my grasp.
This insidious feeling even crept into my periods of prayer and meditation. What if God said no? I hesitated to ask, even though I knew such a request should have a qualification: that it be granted only if it was his will and if others would be helped. Thus, God rarely refused me—because I rarely asked him. Hung up in the limbo between fear and anger, what was I to do?
I would like to say that I turned promptly to AA for the answer, that I immediately applied spiritual principles to solve my problem. But I am an alcoholic, with the alcoholic’s hard head, and it was necessary for me to waste much effort exercising my right to be wrong, before I finally yelled for help at my home group’s meeting.
The first thing I discovered was that I was not alone. Almost without exception, my AA friends admitted that they had struggled with these same feelings. Some claimed that their fear of rejection stemmed from a lack of self-worth; some of the men laid the difficulty to feelings of inadequate masculinity stimulated by years of drinking. It was also asserted that we couldn’t stand the responsibility of being loved and so sought rejection in subtle ways. About the only thing that everybody agreed on completely was that this problem, like our drinking problem, had a spiritual solution.
That night, restless with a new energy, I paced the silent city streets, thanking God over and over again for having given me the strength to reveal my shortcoming and to receive a wealth of shared experience. My friends had bridged the chasm of human limitations and had put something in my soul that hadn’t been there before. Who could reject me if God accepted me? Who could defeat me unless I defeated myself?
I began to reach out. Through the amazing capacity of AA members to love, I received acceptance and the strength to go forward in spite of my qualms. I continued to pray for removal of my defects. Although the big step of willingness had been taken, my personality didn’t reverse itself overnight. I can still feel a little bad at