Corey moves into chapter three and starts where the text starts, with the admission most of us were unwilling to make. He works the first paragraph slowly, circling obsession, then illusion, then delusion, and points out that all three describe a person being lied to by his own mind. Which raises the problem he keeps returning to: if he’s powerless over it, he doesn’t know he’s being lied to while it’s happening.
He spends real time on the word careers. Drinking was never an hour a night for him. It was days at a stretch, more hours than he gave his job, and he uses that as a measure for what he gives to helping other people now. By his own accounting he comes up short, and he says so.
The rest of the study walks the failed remedies, the line about men who have lost their legs never growing new ones, and the man of thirty who stayed bone dry for twenty-five years and was dead within four of picking it back up. Corey finds his own version of that story close to home, and also in the thinking that came back to him after his first stretch of sobriety at twenty-one, when the good job and the routine started making a case that maybe he had just been young and dumb.
The practical thread through all of it is what to do when you’re sitting across from somebody. The book says it does not like to pronounce any individual an alcoholic, and Corey pairs that with page 92’s instruction to be satisfied the man is a real one before you go further. His conclusion is that his job is to show a person what an alcoholic looks like and let them decide.
A study offered in the spirit of one alcoholic sharing experience, strength, and hope with another. Next week: the examples, starting on page 35.
Read along at home. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
Big Book study | More About Alcoholism | obsession illusion delusion | once an alcoholic always an alcoholic | the man of thirty | no reservation of any kind | beyond human aid | recovery literature | experience strength and hope | addiction recovery
Disclaimer: This Wave Book Study is an independent recovery study offered free of charge as a teaching aid. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (A.A.W.S.). Passages read and discussed are drawn from the book Alcoholics Anonymous (“The Big Book”), © A.A.W.S., Inc., and are used here for educational and discussion purposes with attribution. This study is not a substitute for the Big Book itself. We’d encourage you to get your own copy and read it. A.A.W.S. has not reviewed or approved this content, and the views expressed are those of the host alone.