Corking the Bottle

If you find yourself digging a deeper and deeper hole, the logical first step is to get rid of the shovel. Then you can plan how to get out. "You hit bottom when you stop digging," the Big Book says on page 325. As long as that shovel was available, however, I was determined  to keep digging. I didn't really want to stop, even though I told others I did. A narrative in the Big Book, "It might Have Been Worse," describes our predicament. "Again I promised to do something about it (drinking). Broken promises, humiliation, hopelessness, worry, anxiety -- but still not enough (to make me lay down my shovel).... "Like all alcoholics I wanted to handle my problem my own way, which really meant I didn't want anything to interfere with my drinking. I was trying to find an easier, softer way." Right in front of me was God. He had been there the hole time, waiting for me to find the answers on my own. He isn't an easier, softer answer, bu...

"Why all this insistence that every A.A must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.s' remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking." -- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 24 I hit bottom and found it wasn't rock bottom. Instead it was more like a trampoline. I soared back up out of that pit of despair. You know what happens when you propel yourself from a trampoline. There's an inevitable fall. But once you hit the trampoline at the bottom again, up you fly. I did the same thing again and again, relapsing and then plummeting to the bottom. At last I got tired of that cycle. I steered clear of the trampoline, crashed onto rock bottom, and then began the slow, painful climb out of the pit of despair. I reached open ground and found sunshine and happy people and f...