What I wrote after finishing “Dr. Bob’s Nightmare” in our Big Book writing meeting:
This is a shocking story, partly because it points out so strongly the vulnerability to alcoholism that brilliant and highly accomplished people can have. For decades, Dr. Bob just couldn’t get it that he was permanently disabled from drinking sanely. He went to immense effort to make sure he could drink by arranging every detail in his life to make the habit sustainable. That effort became more massive at every turn, and the certainty of its failure grew ever more massive, too.
I did an equivalent thing with my addiction. It went from being a way to please my boyfriend to being the ruin of every important thing and almost every important relationship in my life. Only my parents were still there when I hit bottom, and they let me know I was causing them nothing but grief. All the while, I wanted desperately to stop my disordered eating; and I investigated every spiritual and secular avenue for recovery I could find. All to no avail.
Dr. Bob had to go through many dimensions of hell before he could stop drinking. I had to go through a 19-year relapse and a near-death experience before I could secure a foothold on sane eating. I couldn’t have done it without OA, nor without my near-death experience.
It is a testimony to the generosity of our higher power that so many addicts of all varieties are given chance after chance to begin recovery -- until, finally, the last brick is put in place to complete their path of surrender. A great songwriter and poet, Leonard Cohen, said, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Some of us have to get cracked wide open by self-inflicted pain before we can give in to common sense. Only a higher power can be persistent and patient enough to stay with us until that surrender happens.
-S
