When I read this "I had met my match....alcohol was my master" I had already realized this was true. I had always thought of myself as a survivor, a fighter and I was in many situations during my chaotic early life. Booze had me by the neck and I knew it. I went to my first meeting after reading the BB with no question that I was in the right place. I certainly didn't like it, but I had accepted it. Thanks so much for these BB posts, Stepchild! I may not know how this thing works, but the BB is the greatest piece of literature I've yet to read. I read it as a textbook, and have learned more from it than 4 years of college and the countless books I read there .

The effect that alcohol had on my life, from the beginning to the surrender part ... is my story too ... it's identical ... the very same story ... Alcohol had become my Master and was calling all the shots ...

I thank God daily for AA having the key that unlocked me from the chains that alcohol had bound me in ... Great thread Stepchild ... keep it going!

No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.

That is one of the most vivid descriptions of alcoholism in Bill's story. It's a little picture of me struggling in the quicksand, and someone throws me a lifeline and pulls me out. It would be really insane of me to just jump back in the quicksand and see if I can get out by myself this time. But that's how alcoholics like myself think. I have a mental obsession to keep jumping back into the sand. No matter how hard I try and no matter how much I know of the danger of dying in the quicksand, I simply cannot get the insane idea out of my head.

So Bill has his drinking buddy show up...And he's stone cold sober...Clear eyed and fresh skinned...And he shares his solution with him. When I was in rehab we had speakers come in and share their stories...I was mesmerized...And a lady offered to take me to a six AM meeting with her...I asked her to take me again the next day....I couldn't get enough of it...Like Bill seeing his friend...These people were living proof that this thing worked...And their stories were as bad if not worse than mine...It was all the proof I needed. Time to get busy.

Bill goes through Step Two....

But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known!

Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at the minute; and this was none at all.

That floored me. It began to look as though religious people were right after all. Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table. He shouted great tidings.

I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on a different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.

Despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn't like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.

I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!

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I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost.

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Step Three

There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction.

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Step Four and Six 

I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.

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Step Five

My schoolmate visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies.

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Step Eight

We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrong.

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Step Nine

Never was I to be critical of them. I was to right all such matters to the utmost of my ability.

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Step Ten

I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within.

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Step Eleven

I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me. Never was I to pray for myself, except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others. 

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Step Twelve

My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. 

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And that's how it worked for Bill....And that's how it's working for me....Miracle is about the only word I can find to describe it.

Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.

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-- Edited by Stepchild on Wednesday 8th of May 2013 01:06:17 PM

Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity. "Bathtub" gin, two bottles a day, and often three, got to be routine. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars, and I would pay my bills at the bars and delicatessens. This went on endlessly, and I began to waken very early in the morning shaking violently. A tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast. Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation, and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife's hope.

Gradually things got worse. The house was taken over by the mortgage holder, my mother-in-law died, my wife and father-in-law became ill.

Then I got a promising business opportunity. Stocks were at the low point of 1932, and I had somehow formed a group to buy. I was to share generously in the profits. Then I went on a prodigious bender, and that chance vanished.

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This paragraph also hit home for me...The point where alcoholism takes hold.

Liquor ceased to be a luxury; it became a necessity.

My last few years of drinking were just as he describes it. I couldn't function in the morning without having a drink first...Forget about eating. How many times throughout my years of drinking did I get paid to clear up bar tabs? How many jobs did I lose?...Or how many blown opportunities because of drinking?...Yeah...I had it under control...How could I not relate to this?....It's my fricken life he's describing.

I agree, Gonee. Although I read the BB, did my steps with my sponser from the book... I feel as though I have gotten more into the 'meetings are everything' mentality a bit- I haven't been looking at the BB lately, and it shows ( to me). I hear many people who do not read the book, or never have, or who feel as though the steps are 'not for them'. I try not to judge, as I am in no position to offer advice... But I know this would not and will not work for me. I really do appreciate you guys posting these BB studies. Just the other day I was thinking 'Man, I haven't picked up my BB in a while... I really should get back into that".

Thanks Pappy...It's a beautiful book...It's cool to see peoples input on it....Good stuff!...I wish more alkies would follow it.

Vixen...I would say treasures is the perfect word. The book is loaded with them...And we just keep finding them...What a deal!

The steps come alive in Bill's story. As I progressed through the book, I could identify with Bill all the way through my recovery in AA.