The Great Reality Deep Within

I had scooted through the holiday season one long-ago January without a drink for the first time in memory since teenage years. Even though I had been sober five full months, my gratitude was overshadowed by fear . . . after enjoying a happy-happy parade on Hollywood Boulevard, I marched right into a bar on Cherokee Avenue and almost ordered a happy-happy gin & tonic. Thank God I didn’t! It was definitely one of those strange mental blank spots mentioned on page forty-two of the Big Book. Terrified, I rushed back to my Santa Monica apartment, fell to my knees, and asked God to save me from a seemingly impending drunken spree.

What was I doing wrong? I had been going to at least two meetings daily, and working the Steps from the pull down shades at the clubhouse. God’s answer came in the form of a new sponsor named Carl. He informed me that the directions for AA recovery were in the Big Book, and nowhere else; that meetings only were probably not sufficient for me to recover . . . that my mental obsession to drink would triumph over my willpower whether I was happy, depressed or in-between. But then Carl took me through the Twelve Step process and I soon began to recover.

It was later explained that down deep within the alcoholics mind there exists a quiet undetectable, I-need-a-drink self which may linger surreptitiously for years before it attacks. Indeed, page forty-three informs us that we have no effective mental defense . . . that our defense must come from a higher power. But then, Bill W. informs us that we also have a marvelous often unknown protector; he calls it a “Great Reality deep within” (p. 55). Dr. Carl

Jung called it a God Archetype. For whatever name, it is much more powerful than the mental obsession, and luckily for we alcoholics, this can be ours and it can last for a lifetime if we live the AA program of action. Many Januarys have passed since those days of yore, but the thought of drinking no longer appears in my emotional vocabulary. Thank you God!

By Bob S.