Page 220 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
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WOMEN SUFFER TOO 205
him. I had to persist in my attempts to get straight
ened out enough to be able to use the drinks I needed,
without their turning on me. Besides, how could he
understand? He wasn’t a drinking man; he didn’t
know what it was to need a drink, nor what a drink
could do for one in a pinch. I wanted to live, not in a
desert, but in a normal world; and my idea of a normal
world was being among people who drank—teeto-
talers were not included. And I was sure that I
couldn’t be with people who drank, without drinking.
In that I was correct: I couldn’t be comfortable with
any kind of people without drinking. I never had been.
Naturally, in spite of my good intentions, in spite
of my protected life behind sanitarium walls, I several
times got drunk and was astounded...and badly
shaken.
That was the point at which my doctor gave me
the book Alcoholics Anonymous to read. The first
chapters were a revelation to me. I wasn’t the only
person in the world who felt and behaved like this!
I wasn’t mad or vicious—I was a sick person. I was
suffering from an actual disease that had a name and
symptoms like diabetes or cancer or TB—and a disease
was respectable, not a moral stigma! But then I hit a
snag. I couldn’t stomach religion, and I didn’t like the
mention of God or any of the other capital letters. If
that was the way out, it wasn’t for me. I was an in
tellectual and I needed an intellectual answer, not an
emotional one. I told my doctor so in no uncertain
terms. I wanted to learn to stand on my own feet, not
to change one prop for another, and an intangible and
dubious one at that. And so on and on, for several
weeks, while I grudgingly plowed through some more