Page 220 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
P. 220

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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
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