Page 212 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

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GRATITUDE IN ACTION 197
to my problem, I told Dorie, my wife, “You can quit
your job now; I will take care of you. From now on,
you will take the place you deserve in this family.”
However, she knew better. She said, “No, Dave, I will
keep my job for a year while you go save the drunks.”
That is exactly what I set out to do.
As I look back on it now, I did everything wrong,
but at least I was thinking of somebody else instead of
myself. I had begun to get a little bit of something I
am very full of now, and that is gratitude. I was be­
coming increasingly grateful to the people in New
York and to the God they referred to but whom I
found difficult to reach. (Yet I realized I had to seek
the Higher Power I was told about.)
I was all alone in Quebec at that time. The Toronto
Group had been in operation since the previous fall,
and there was a member in Windsor who attended
meetings across the river in Detroit. That was A.A. in
its entirety in this country.
One day I got a letter from a man in Halifax who
wrote, “One of my friends, a drunk, works in
Montreal, but he is currently in Chicago, where he
went on a major binge. When he returns to Montreal,
I’d like you to talk to him.”
I met this man at his home. His wife was cooking
dinner, their young daughter at her side. The man was
wearing a velvet jacket and sitting comfortably in his
parlor. I hadn’t met many people from high society. I
immediately thought, “What’s going on here? This
man isn’t an alcoholic!” Jack was a down-to-earth per­
son. He was used to discussions about psychiatry, and
the concept of a Higher Power didn’t appeal to him