Corey picks up right where last week stopped, on page 52, and lingers there on purpose, reading back through the bedevilments one more time because, as he puts it, he doesn’t have to be drunk for them to still show up in his life. Trouble with personal relationships, inability to control his emotional nature, prey to misery and depression. He points out that every one of these was already true of him before he ever took a drink.

The heart of the episode is the line that either God is everything or He is nothing, and what Corey calls the bridge of reason that gets a person most of the way there but never quite lets them step ashore onto faith. He works through the book’s case that reason itself rests on a kind of faith nobody questions, faith in a paycheck, faith in a person, faith that the bed will be as comfortable tonight as it was last night, and uses that to dismantle the idea that logic and belief are opposites. It lands on the chapter’s close, the story of a minister’s son who hit bottom in a hospital bed and tumbled to his knees asking who he was to say there was no God, and Corey’s own hard-won version of the same insanity, that the crazy one isn’t the man drunk, it’s the man stone sober who picks up anyway, knowing exactly what it’s cost him before.

A study offered in the spirit of one alcoholic sharing experience, strength, and hope with another. Next week: pages 58 through 60.

Read along at home. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Big Book study | We Agnostics | God is everything or nothing | the bridge of reason | the great reality deep down within | Fitz Mayo’s story | 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.