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On page 30 of the Big Book, there is a sentence that has been sticking with me recently. It goes like this: The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
I keep thinking about that last word: smashed.
First of all, I fully acknowledge that the word “smashed” has taken on new meaning the past few years. Go to Urban Dictionary or open up TikTok for five seconds, and you’ll hear how the kids have corrupted use of that word. I’ll give you a hint: It relates to sexy time.
Secondly, I find it funny that I used to get smashed every night, and now you’re telling me I need to smash the idea that I can get smashed any more.
Thirdly, think about the aggressiveness of that statement. It doesn’t say that we need to patiently discard the idea that we can drink like normal people. It doesn’t say to gently put that idea down on your bedside table. It says we have to smash that idea.
I’d go one step further—I needed to smash the idea that I could drink like a normal person and also the idea that I could go to rehab and stop on my own. In my 15-plus years in the rooms of recovery, that second part is such an insidious concept that floats back into most of our brains.
It’s the idea that we absolutely cannot drink any more… but that it’s not going to take a lot of work to get out of the same behaviors and thought patterns that led us to a drink. You can’t keep going to the barber shop and just skip the haircut now. I haven’t seen that work out.
I’ve actually seen a lot of that delusion the past few years, including with myself. During the pandemic, I had a period where I stayed in contact with a few alcoholics but my meetings slowed way down. Pretty quickly, I saw some bad thought and action patterns creep back into my life.
And I’ve also had a few friends who came to 12-step recovery breathing out of their mouths, suffering and desperate, hitting a meeting every day and calling and texting multiple times per day. And then… things got better. The meetings slowed down. The calls disappeared, replaced by an occasional, “Hey, how are you?” text. When we’d talk, they’d say, “Oh, I haven’t been getting to many meetings because I got really busy at work lately, and also, I’m coaching my kid’s soccer team.”
I guess the lesson is that yes, I need to smash the delusion I can drink and I need to smash the delusion that it will take lots of work… but also that I need to smash it and then keep smashing it. In fact, I need to smash it every single day if I want to live the best life possible.
And here’s the thing: I’ve found that I can be really busy at work, coach my kid’s soccer team and get to a meeting almost every single day. They’re not mutually exclusive things. In fact, they’re the opposite—I’ve found that the more I smash the delusion that I can drink, the more I can have smashing success in life.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
IN AN EMAIL TO OUR DCM (district committee member), one of our friends told us of the passing of a long-time AA in our district. The notice concluded, "Pat was in the program twenty-five years. He was my first sponsor—but I don't think that is what killed him."
(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by John C. of Antioch, Illinois)
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