In Search of the Real Bill W.

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Bill

Bill Wilson, ca. 1939 - The Fix

Bill Wilson was no saint. He smoked like a chimney and acted like a pig—cheating on his loyal wife and demanding a glass of whisky on his deathbed. Working with him was sometimes so difficult that decades after his death, many colleagues were still angry at his behavior. The January 1971 nurse’s logs for his last days at Stepping Stones, the house in Bedford Hills he shared with his wife, Lois, show an unhappy man struggling for breath—he was dying of emphysema—who repeatedly asked for a drink and was irritated when he didn’t get one.

And yet. If there is a special place in heaven reserved for those who permanently change the world for the better, Bill W. is certainly there.

Why I Haven’t Been Posting Much Lately

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Bill

Both of my faithful readers will by now have noticed that I’m not posting very regularly on this site. It’s not though lack of interest, and I didn’t relapse (in fact, I just celebrated my 21st sober anniversary on 9/14/10).

Thing is, I’ve taken a part-time job writing for a recovery site, and I don’t have time to maintain both blogs. Since the other (paid) job covers the same territory, and since I have the potential to reach more people, it was a no-brainer. I’ll continue to post here from time to time, but it will be irregular at best.

I invite you all to subscribe to my posts at the Sunrise Detox Blog. (Click the thingy at the bottom left of the page.) Thanks for visiting WhatMeSober.Com, and thanks for your interest.

Keep on keepin’ on,

Bill

Bill Wilson’s Gospel

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Bill

Op-Ed Columnist — NYTimes.com

On Dec. 14, 1934, a failed stockbroker named Bill Wilson was struggling with alcoholism at a New York City detox center. It was his fourth stay at the center and nothing had worked. This time, he tried a remedy called the belladonna cure — infusions of a hallucinogenic drug made from a poisonous plant — and he consulted a friend named Ebby Thacher, who told him to give up drinking and give his life over to the service of God.

Wilson was not a believer, but, later that night, at the end of his rope, he called out in his hospital room: “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything. Anything!”
As Wilson described it, a white light suffused his room and the presence of God appeared. “It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing,” he testified later. “And then it burst upon me that I was a free man.”

Wilson never touched alcohol again….

Bill Wilson’s Gospel

Q&A: Do you believe an addict can become addicted to the recovery center or support group they use?

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Bill

In a word, “No.” That said, let me go on to what I know can happen.

Getting clean and sober is a life-changing experience, in the literal sense: we are successful only if we give up the world that we built for ourselves and tried to hold together with alcohol and other drugs for one that is new and strange. It’s scary. One of the things that makes it possible — in fact, for most people the main thing — is the bonds and feelings of safety that form, centered on our recovery center and/or support group, and the people who were and are there for us. This is our new home. These are our new friends and teachers. This is where we feel safe, protected from the wolves of our addiction that still prowl around “out there.”

Nonetheless, recovery is about resuming (or finally attaining) a place in the world. This means moving away from our safe space, slowly but surely, and expanding our circle of friends, acquaintances and activities to encompass the rest of the community — not dropping our old friends and our program, but making new friends and developing outside interests, getting jobs, reconnecting with families, and growing into the adulthood of our recovery. Change is never easy for human beings, and here we are, faced with the prospect of making huge changes: moving away from the place we feel we “belong” into a world where — we intuitively understand — the vast majority of people don’t even know we are alive!

It’s no wonder, then, that some people become stuck, unable to move onward in their recovery. They have found a new family, a new nest, a new place “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” It takes courage to move out of that glow and into the real world. Addicts and alcoholics are people who have never learned that it is OK not to feel OK. So we get stuck. Some of us don’t want to become unstuck.

It’s not addiction, it’s fear — of change, and of changing. People don’t get addicted to the rooms, but some certainly abuse them.

What Do You Expect?

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Bill

I recently received a letter from a person who was detoxed at home, and who is sitting around feeling miserable and wondering when the symptoms of Post Acute Withdrawal are going to ease up. [Not you, Matt.]

There are two issues here. First of all, it’s not uncommon for people to either become depressed when they stop drinking or using other drugs, or to have been attempting to self-medicate previously-existing emotional or other disorders with the booze. In either case, quitting without support is likely to create feelings — both psychological and physical — that folks new to recovery are simply not equipped to handle alone.

There’s a saying (that you’ll read over and over if you hang around here) that “When you keep on doing what you used to do, you’ll keep on getting what you used to get.” This is rather akin to the well-known “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” What did we do when we were using? We isolated. Often we drank or drugged alone, or with people to whom we were able to relate only superficially due to our mutual conditions, and every drunk and addict knows that feeling of alone-ness while surrounded by other people. Drunks and addicts isolate — emotionally, if not physically.

It therefore follows, as the night the day, that isolation is not a good thing for us. It gives us too much time to feel sorry for ourselves, too much time to mull over old wrongs and resentments, too much time to decide that if it doesn’t get any better than this, we might as well use.

If you’re sitting around home, down in the dumps, either see a shrink for the depression or — possibly better yet — get to a 12-step meeting, make some new friends, and begin to change your life. If it doesn’t work, they’ll be happy to refund your misery.
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So, what’s your experience with isolation? Tell us about it. You might save someone’s life.

(She’s) Just Curried

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Bill

“The sun finally shone in Southern California…
…and like they say without the rain, there can’t be rainbows.
They were a tough couple of days earlier this week. Raining outside, raining tears on the inside. Bewildered. Why was I feeling so sad? Why couldn’t I snap out of it?
I did the only thing I could do. …”

The Rose and the Sledgehammer

Question: How long is one considered a recovering addict?

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Bill

The use of the words “recovering” and “recovered” are a couple of the trivialities that people argue about when they should be paying attention to more important things.

There are two opinions. One is that you are “recovered” when you are able to assume all of the duties and responsibilities of an everyday person, and carry them out competently.

In the opinion of many, including this writer, this ignores (or minimizes) the fact that certain changes in the brain that occur as a result of addiction make it likely that if one uses again one will become re-addicted.

Most people who take this position maintain that “recovering” is more accurate, and that it also helps us get past the denial of continuing issues that may cause us to use again. Many feel that “recovered” shows an arrogance that can lead to trouble — if for no other reason than it is a way to make onself stand out from the crowd (at least in one’s own head).

In the final analysis, however, it doesn’t matter what we call ourselves, as long as we continue to be able to do so, and understand fully that “if you go back to doin’ what you used to do, you’ll go back to gettin’ what you used to get.”

Romancing the Stoned

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Bill

I was at a meeting this evening that bothered me a lot. Several of the members, most of them relative newcomers, including a couple with only two or three months, commented in their sharing about what kinds of wine they used to enjoy with what dishes, each succeeding one remarking about their preferences and then going on to share about how much they valued their recovery.

Another guy shared about how much he valued his two months, which he’d struggled so long to get, then proceeded to comment at some length about how great it was to be going to parties, fraternal organizations, etc., where people are drinking and “not have the urge to drink.” He talked for about three or four minutes in that vein, all the time shaking visibly. It was scary!

I call this Romancing the Drink, or Romancing the Drug. People in recovery DO NOT NEED to be talking about how much they enjoyed drinking, nor do they need to be hanging out with drinkers — certainly not in early recovery. I’m twenty years sober, and I don’t hang out with people who are drinking. Why? I find them embarrassing, because they remind me of how I used to act. But it’s different when you’ve thoroughly learned new ways of behaving. Early on, being around people who are doing what we used to do is liable to seem so familiar and comfortable that we just naturally slide back into doing it, and end up getting what we got.

Another thing that bothered me was that the old timers in the meeting did nothing. I don’t mean that they should have confronted these folks, but there are ways to redirect a meeting when you share, so that the talk returns to the solution, rather than the problem. That didn’t happen. I’m not one of those mystical pollyannas who believes that “everything in a meeting happens for a reason,” or that “whatever is said in a meeting, someone needed to hear.” That’s simply New Age b.s. Meetings are so that newcomers can learn how to stay sober and recover, and so that old timers can help them learn, and when the folks with the skills abdicate their responsibility, I have a real problem with it.

After a while I shared that I found in early recovery that I needed to avoid my old ways of doing things, both in deed and in association, because I didn’t have the new habits thoroughly in place yet. I mentioned a few things about how long it takes for our brains and bodies to repair themselves, and how vulnerable we are until we are well on the way to physical and emotional recovery.

I don’t know if I did any good or not. I firmly expect to go back to that meeting after the holidays and find some folks with hangdog looks picking up white chips.

Or not there at all.

What…Me Sober?

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