It was a cold January day, I was sober about a week; usually, I sat in the library reading comic books and listening to Richard Wagner..."talk about on a pink cloud"... I was sure out there...detoxing from 24/7 365 days a year drinking... luckly I was only 30 yrs old.
At random I picked up a paperback title "Life After Death"...It was all this para-metaphysical stuff...but I'll never forget reading sweveral paragraphs referencing,to me out of the blue, about the program of AA. I remember it said "In the 20th C one of the greatest spiritual programs has been AA...Having a week of sobriety that was quite a big deal reading that and on a spiritual high no less, just randomly a book off the shelf.
I don't think I was in condition to drive an auto, but shortly after, I found myself sitting in a very cold VW automobile, maybe a foot of snow on the ground, staring at what is known as Motif #1 in Rockport Mass....A police cruiser came by, telling me I couldn't park here, that I had to move.. I jumped out of my car telling the officer.."don't worry after you die everything all right , you will go to the second plane of existence. He looked at me as if I was crazy, said nothing and drove away. That was the state of my mind with a week sobriety, the effect of the meetings...(2 a day) plus I assume detoxing as well..
I had many years of religious training. After a week in the program, up on a pink cloud, going to 2 meetings a day my ideas began to change radically...That was 41 or more years ago.
If you notice a child going to religious services or Sunday School "a child is indoctrinated with very CONCRETE ideas...much is pictorial very elementary...This is all a child is capable of understanding, concrete ideas, not capable of thinking in the abstract.
When one reaches adulthood, with the mature capability of thinking in the abstract...CONFLICT and CONFUSION sets in, a questioning of these concrete ideas...They may not make any intellectual sense to us, but we NEVER lose these ideas implanted into us as a child or in my case even into very early adulthood. The above experience was my corridor to understanding the transition of a new belief system of spiritual ideas. It was the beginning of my process of taking the second step, or more accurately, the second step was taking me.
I am firmly convinced that this and other early experiences as a result of total immersion in the AA program and 2 meetings a day is the reason why I have experienced unbroken sobriety over the past 41 years...My old ideas quickly were being challenged, there was not any intellectual or emotional resistence, a higher power had definately began to augment itself in my life, first verging on, as I look back at it, insanity, but paradoxically sanity...God was doing for me what I could not do for myself.
This all lead in time to a more sophisticated understanding of God as my personality and education are more predisposed to philosophical reading and thinking, a new path, a new life.
My Sobriety is contingent on my Spiritual well being, just for Today
