the story of Bill. The story of Bill
The atmosphere of war fever was in the city of New England where we, young officers of Plattsburg, we were quartered. We were flattered when the notables of the place invited us to their house, giving us the impression of being heroes. Love, applause, war sublime moments punctuated by breaks lasting pleasure. I was finally launched in life and in the middle delleccitazione general, I discovered alcohol, forgetting the warnings and severe reservations about my parents' drinking. At the appointed time, we embarked on over there. I felt terribly alone, and once again appeals to alcohol.
landed in England. I visited Winchester Cathedral. Excited, I was wandering around. An epitaph on an old tombstone caught my attention. It read:
Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier who jumped at the death small and drinking cold beer. Never forgets a good soldier to die or killed by a musket from the jug. Ominous warning that, unfortunately, not taken seriously.
At twenty-two finally went back to my house, back from a foreign war. I thought I had the makings of a leader, the men of my battery I had perhaps given a special award? My ability to control, I thought I would bring to the leadership of large companies that I managed with complete safety.
I followed evening courses in law and found a job as investigator for an insurance company. The race to success had begun. I could prove to everyone that I was somebody. My work took me Wall Street and little by little I became interested in the stock market. Many people had lost money, but many others were enriched. Why not me? So I studied economics and finance, plus the right. Potential as an alcoholic I was, I was about to fail in the course of law, during a recent exam I was too drunk to be able to write or think. Although I did not drink again and again, my wife began to worry. We were the long conversations during which I tried to calm his fears, saying that alcohol had inspired the men of genius, the most beautiful projects, and the philosophers of the most sublime belief systems.
At the time I finished the course, I knew that my profession does not was the law. I was taken by the whirlwind of fascinating exchange. Speculators and men Daffara became my heroes. With this mixture of alcohol and speculation, I began to forge the weapon that one day would turn against me like a boomerang and had to lacerami deeply. Living modestly, my wife and I had saved $ 1,000. I threw on some bonds that I bought cheap and were little appreciated. I rightly imagined that one day they would reach a high value. I was not able to persuade my friends, stockbrokers, to send me to visit large companies and their administrations, but my wife and I decided to go anyway. I had constructed a theory that people lost money on the stock market because it knew the market trend. More 'Later I discovered many other reasons.
We left everything and set off on a motorcycle with a sidecar load of blankets, a tent, our clothes and three thick volumes of the Yearbook of Finance. Our friends judge us completely crazy. Perhaps they were right. I guessed some speculation so I had the money, but we had to work for about a month on a farm to conserve our nest egg. That was my last honest manual labor for a long time. In one year across the whole eastern United States. At the end of that period, the report I made to Wall Street procured me a place and the possibility use a large expense account. I made another happy transaction in which guadagnai more money to the point that during quellìanno We had several thousand dollars.
For some years the fortune lavished money and success in my way. I had arrived. My intuition and my ideas had a following and influencing the markets where we handle millions of dollars in value. The great wave of prosperity from 1925 to 1929 was at its acme. Alcoholism occupied an important and enjoyable in my life. They talked loudly, jazz in the background, the local uptown, all spent thousands of dollars and they spoke in terms of millions. Those who wanted to make fun of me could go to hell! I had made a large number of friends of the good times.
I began to drink even more, practically day and night. I blame my friends erupted into fights, and so I was just like a dog. Happened several times of the scenes in our sumptuous apartment. I had not committed any infidelity in regard to my wife, because my loyalty, aided sometimes by extreme drunkenness, had kept me away from such trouble.
In 1929, I was seized by the fever of golf. We left suddenly for the campaign, my wife was there to cheer when I beat Walter Hagen: alcohol overcame me before I could deal with Walter. I began to feel ill in the morning and shake. The course allowed me to drink both during the day or night. I felt a great pleasure to hit the ball on that field so nice that I had put so much awe when I was young. Quell'abbronzatura impeccable taken note that on the face of good people. The local banker looked at me with amused skepticism whenever paid or withdrawal of big checks.
Suddenly, October of 1929, broke linferno on the New York Stock Exchange. At the end of one of these days I left the tremendous bar to go to the office of an agency business. It was eight o'clock, five hours after the market close. The telegraph sent yet. My eyes were fixed on a strip of the transmitter that carried written XYZ-32. That same morning was 52. I was broken, as many of my friends. The newspapers reported the news of suicides by men of high finance, I was disgusted, I would not be given for winning. I returned to the bar. My friends had lost several million in ten hours, so what? Tomorrow was another day. While I drank, I returned the old, strong determination to win.
The next day, in the morning, I called a friend of mine from Montreal. He still had a lot of money and he suggested that it would be better for me to go to Canada. The following spring we lived with the same width and safety first. I felt like Napoleon returning dallisola of Elba, St. Helena nothing for me! But alcohol took me again and my generous friend had to beg to go away. This time it was misery for real.
We went to live with the parents of my wife. I found a job, then lost as a result of an altercation with a taxi driver. Fortunately, no one could have predicted that I would have stayed unemployed for five years and almost never get tired of drinking. My wife accepted a position in a department store,
returned in the evening and I was drunk. I had become an annoying visitor offices and financial agencies.
alcohol was no longer a luxury, had become a necessity. The low quality of gin, two bottles a day, maybe three, had become a habit. Sometimes a small transaction made me earn a few hundred dollars with which I paid the debts to the bars and restaurants. This was repeated continuously, and then I started to wake up early in the morning, trembling violently from head to toe. I had to drink a glass of gin and half a dozen bottles of beer before eating. Regardless, I still believed to dominate the situation and some periods of abstinence from drinking ridavano hope my wife.
Gradually things got worse. The house we were taken away by creditors, my mother-in-law died, my wife and my father became ill.
Then I was presented with a promising business. The shares had fallen to the lowest point of 1932 and I had somehow managed to find some buyers. I would have made a good profit, but just then I took a terrible hangover and so vanished all hope of luck.
was necessary that I stopped drinking. I realized that I could not afford to drink even one glass. It was over. Before that I had written down a lot of fine promises, but this time my wife noticed, happily, that I was determined. And I was.
few days after I came home drunk: I did not even fought. Where was he going to finish my firm intention? I did not know. I had not even crossed my mind. Someone had offered me a glass and I had been drinking. I was mad? Begun to wonder seriously.
I took the same decision again and tried again. Some time passed and the My confidence started to become excessive. I could pass for distillation of gin and laugh! It seemed a dream.
One day, I went to a cafe to telephone. A few minutes later gave her fists on the counter, wondering how it had happened. While the whiskey came to my head, I told myself that I would have performed better next time and might as well, now, drink your fill. And 'what I did.
I'll never forget the remorse, horror and despair the next morning. I did not have the courage to fight. I was completely stunned and had the terrible feeling of impending misfortune. I dared not even cross the street for fear of being hit by some trucks that circulated in the early hours of the morning, when it was almost dark. A restaurant, open day and night, gave me occasion to drink a dozen glasses of beer. I came to my irritated nerves calm down. A morning paper informed me that there was still a stock market crash: I was also collapsed. The market would be restored, I did not. The thought was unbearable. I had to kill me? No, not now. Then a mist came down upon me: gin would know how to liquidate it. Two bottles ... then oblivion.
The mind and body are marvelous mechanisms, for mine endured this agony two more years. Sometimes I stole the money to my wife when I felt the terror and madness that try to wake up. Reeled back, stunned all in front of an open window or in front of the cabinet of drugs where there was poison, cursing them for my weakness. Then came the flight from city to country. And the flight from the countryside to the city, when my wife and I were looking for a solution. Later came the night of mental and physical torture, such a hell that I was afraid to throw out the window. Somehow managed to drag the mattress downstairs for fear of throwing down suddenly. The doctor administered a powerful sedative. The next day I was drinking gin and sedatives, and this combination led me to a critical point so that people feared for my reason, and I too. I could not eat hardly anything and when I drank my weight had dropped eighteen pounds below normal.
My brother is a doctor and through his goodness and that of my mother, I was admitted to a famous hospital where mentally and physically rehabilitate alcoholics. After the so-called belladonna treatment my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and some exercises helped me a lot, but the most important thing was to know a very kind doctor who explained to me that I had been seriously ill, physically and mentally, although the disease was in part due to my selfishness and my stupidity.
consoled me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will to fight the liquor is extremely weak, even if it is seen to stop for other things. That explained my incredible behavior in the desperate wish that I had to stop drinking. Now that I understand myself, let lospedale hopeful. For three or four months that hope remained alive. I went to town regularly and even earned some money. Certainly this was the solution: self-knowledge.
But it was not true, because the day came that dreadful resumed drinking. My physical and moral health, already in decline, collapsed. Some time later I returned to the hospital. It was the end, it seemed that the curtain had fallen. My wife, exhausted and desperate, he knew that everything would have been with heart failure during delirium tremens, or that my brain would have been crushed, probably later this year. Soon would he take me to the cemetery or lunatic asylum.
It was not necessary for someone to tell me. I knew and I was almost happy. It was a terrible blow to my pride, I thought I had so much of myself, my talents, my ability to overcome all obstacles, was finally defeated. Now I went into the unknown to reach that vast array of drunks who had preceded me. I thought of my poor wife. We were happy after all. What I would not have given to correct me! But it was too late.
There are no words to describe the loneliness and I felt despair in this morass of self-pity. I was surrounded by quicksand. They were too strong for me, I won, alcohol was my tyrant.
I left the hospital and shaking torn into pieces. Fear kept me from drinking for some time. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and during the feast of "Armistice Day" in the year 1934 taken to drink. Everyone is resigned to the idea that it was necessary to intern somewhere and I would have done a miserable end. As darkness before dawn! The beginning was actually my last drunk. I was about to be catapulted, shortly afterwards, in what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, my reason for existence in a way of life that is incredible, it was becoming more and more wonderful.
Towards the end of that sad November, I was sitting in the kitchen and drank, I thought, with some satisfaction that I had a bit of gin hidden anywhere in the house, sufficient for the whole night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered if I had the courage to hide a bottle of gin near the headboard of the bed I would have needed before daybreak.
My reverie was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. It was the voice of a dear friend from college, I asked if he could come. He was sober for many years in New York did not remember that. Fell from clouds. I was told that he had been admitted, on application by the court, crazy alcoholic and I was wondering how he could get out. Of course, he would eat with me and I could drink without fear him. Without worrying about his current well-being, I did not think to find the spirit of other days when we had chartered a plane to have a feast! His arrival was like an oasis in this sad desert of futility. Oasis: the right word! It appears that most drinkers.
The door opened and he was there, clean-shaven and beaming. There was something in his eyes, was inexplicably different. What happened?
handed him a glass and he refused. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had happened. It was no longer him. So what happened? "I asked him.
He looked at me straight in the eye with ease, but smiling, said, "I found faith.
I was confused. So it was this: last summer was crazy for drinking now, it seemed crazy for religion. He had just that look that shines. Yes, my old friend was really smitten. God bless him, to preach as well! On the other hand, my gin would last longer than his sermon. But I had no preaching. In calmly told me that two people had submitted to the court and had persuaded the judge to suspend the sentence. They had spoken of a religious idea simple and a program of practical action. It had been two months since that day and the results were seen with the naked eye. It worked!
He had come to tell me about his experience, always wanted to hear. I was shocked but interested: I was really concerned. I could not be because I had no more hope.
talked for hours. I sprang to mind memories of childhood. I could almost hear the quiet voice of the preacher that I heard on Sunday, sitting on the hillside, review the card with flowers to mark and I had not scored, the full wrath of my grandfather's good nature and loyal to certain to certain their actions, and his insistence that the stars really have their harmony, but he refused to preach the right to impose its way to hear this harmony, he had no fear of talking about it even when he was dying. These memories emerge from the past. A node I closed my throat.
That day in wartime, when I visited the cathedral of Winchester, I was reminded once again.
I had always believed in a Power greater than myself and I had often thought, was not an atheist. Few people truly are, because this has a blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe came from nothing and without a purpose, is to nowhere. My heroes of intelligence - the students of chemistry, astronomy and even evolutionists - did see the active presence of forces and more admirable. Despite evidence to the contrary I was almost certain that, after all, there was a clear purpose and an extraordinary balance. How could there be a law so precise and immutable without intelligence? I just have to simply believe in a universal spirit without time or limit. I did not go further than this.
It was at this point that separated me from the ministers and world religions. When they spoke of a God who cares for me, it was love, superhuman strength and providence, remain angry, and I closed my mind to such hypotheses.
allowed Christ to be a great man, which the disciples had faithfully below. His moral teaching: excellent. For my part, I had accepted what had seemed convenient and not too difficult, and the rest, I had refused.
I was disgusted to see how religious disputes and wars have produced had shocked society. A well-considered things, honestly doubted that the religions of mankind had done well. If I had to draw inferences from what I had seen in Europe and elsewhere, the authority of God over human affairs seemed entirely negligible and the Society of Human a tragic farce. If somewhere there was a Devil, he seemed to be the master of the Earth was certainly me.
But my friend, sitting in front to me, told me point blank that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. The doctors had called incurable. Civil society was about to lock him up. Like me he had admitted his complete defeat. Just then, indeed, had been resurrected from the dead, suddenly raised his level of misery to a better life than they had ever had!
This power came from him? Evidently, no. He had never owned a power greater than I had at that moment, ie none.
This upset me. I began to believe that religious people were right after all. I had to in front of me something that a human heart had made the impossible. Suddenly, I had to revise my ideas about miracles. Never mind the musty past, I had a living miracle in front of me across the table, which I slammed in my face extraordinary things.
I saw that my friend was much more than just change in the depths: he lived in a different dimension.
Despite his living example, I still had traces of the old prejudices. The word God still aroused in me a certain antipathy. This feeling grew stronger when I thought there might be a God that was taken care of me. I did not love this idea. I could accept certain concepts such as intelligence Creator, the Universal Spirit or the Spirit of Nature but I opposed the idea of \u200b\u200ba Czar of the Heavens, as sweet could be your domain. I later met many men who felt the same feeling.
My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said: Why not choose your own conception of God. "
This statement I went straight to the heart. He dissolved the intellectual shadow of the mountain of ice which I had lived for many years and I trembled. I was finally standing in the sunlight.
It was only to be willing to believe in a Power greater than me. I should not have done to begin with. I realized that could grow from there. On the basis of a strong will, I could build what I saw in my friend. I wanted to? Sure I wanted!
E 'so I bought the conviction that God cares for us men when we want with all my heart. At last I saw, I felt, I thought. The veils of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes and I saw a new world.
The true meaning of my experience in the Cathedral flashed in my mind. For a brief moment I needed God and lavevo desired. I humbly with God wanted me and he had come. But soon the sense of His presence had been choked by a thousand voices of the world, especially those that were in me, and since then had always been so. As I was blind!
hospital I separated from alcohol for the last time. It seemed appropriate to undergo treatment, because they show the clear signs of delirium tremens. There I humbly offered to God, how could I conceive then, why did with me what he wanted. I started without any reservation under His care and His direction. For the first time I admitted to myself that was not worth anything, that without Him I was lost. I started mercilessly in front of my sins and I started my new friend that will completely erase them. Since then, I never got a glass of alcohol.
My classmate was to see me and I'll let you know all my problems and all my misery. We had a list of all the people I had somehow hurt or toward whom he harbored resentment. I declared I fully prepared to meet them one by one and to admit my wrongs. I should never more critical. I had to do this as smoothly as possible.
I had to verify my way of thinking in the light of new awareness of God Common sense would thus become a way out of the ordinary. When in doubt, I should wait quietly, asking only counsel and strength to adjust my problems according to His will. I would never have to pray for myself, except to apply to become more helpful to others. Only then could expect to be heard, but this would often happen.
My friend promised me that when I did this, would have established a new relationship with my Creator, that I possessed the principles of a way of life that would solve all my problems. What was important was the faith in the power of God and a sufficient dose of good will, honesty and humility to consolidate and maintain this new direction in life.
Simple, but not easy, you had to pay the price, ie the destruction of self. I had to leave everything to the Father of Light who govern us all. These statements were
rigorous and groundbreaking, but when I accepted in full, the effect was instantaneous. I felt the impression of victory, followed by a peace and serenity that I had never known. It was a complete safety. I felt relieved, like I was hit from the air invigorating the high peaks of the mountains. For most men, God reveals gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound.
the beginning, I felt the fear and I called my doctor friend, to ask if I was still sane. She listened with wonder what I told him about.
Finally, shaking his head, he said, something happened that I do not understand. But you are right to aggrappartici. Any What is better than you were before. The good doctor now sees many people who have similar experiences and now knows that this is not fantasy.
When I was in the hospital, I happened to think here they are thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might would be happy to receive what I had been given so generously. Maybe I could help some. In turn, those could help others.
My friend had insisted on the absolute necessity of putting into practice these principles in all aspects of my life. She was groped above all necessary to help other alcoholics, as he had done with me. Faith without works is dead, he said. If this is true, it is twice for alcoholics! For if an alcoholic ceases to become better and grow in his spiritual life through work and dedication towards others, will not go through the trials and secure depressions that lie ahead. If you do not engage in this inner growth, it will definitely still eating and drinking if he will certainly die. So, faith is really dead. For us, it is.
My wife and I were thrown on the idea with enthusiasm to help other alcoholics to resolve their difficulties. It was a good thing, because my business partner for a time were skeptical of me for a year and a half, during which time I could not find work. I was not too well and I suffered the onslaught of waves of self-pity and resentment. All this took me almost fall in alcohol, but I soon discovered that, when all other means they could not, help another alcoholic save the day for that day. Many times I have returned to the hospital desperately, but talking with some alcoholic, I found myself wonderfully revived and put back on their feet. It 's a way of life that helps them face difficult situations.
We started to make us a lot of real friends and between us has formed a brotherhood which is wonderful to feel part of it. The joy of living we have really well in the trials and difficulties. I've seen hundreds of families take path that really leads to a goal I have seen back together really desperate family situations I have seen unsubscribe enmities and grudges of any kind. I have seen men come out of psychiatric hospitals and resume a major role in the lives of their families and their social environment. Businessmen and professionals have recovered their social rank than once. Rarely have we encountered any difficulties or problems between us that was not easily overcome. In a city west area there are thousands of friends with their respective families. We meet frequently so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek. These informal meetings can often be seen from fifty to two hundred people. Grow in number and importance.
An alcoholic is a drunk, always be friendly. Our efforts to help these patients are sometimes difficult, even tragic or comic. A poor boy committed suicide in my house could not or would not understand our lifestyle.
In what we do there is a great joy. I suppose that some would remain scandalized by our frivolity and lightness that are only apparent. But behind this facade, there is a serious matter for us of life and death. Faith must be active around the clock in us and through us, or we perish.
Most of us think that we no longer need to search lUtopia. We at hand here and now. Every day that my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies and spreads in an ever larger circle of peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
Bill W., cofounder of AA, died January 24, 1971.
