Rarely Have We Seen A Person Fail Who Has Thoroughly Followed Our Path

I was born in Stockton, California, in 1925. I was the only child of two loving parents. My dad was a successful securities salesman. My mother was a concert pianist and studied the Bible every day. My dad had quit smoking before I was born, and neither parent gave evidence of any problem with alcohol. I saw no reason to smoke, and I didnt. I saw no reason to drink, and I did not drink until I returned from the Army at age 21.

In school, I excelled. Top of my class in high school and valedictorian at my graduation. At the University of California in Berkeley, I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in my Junior Year and was president of the Inter Fraternity Scholastic Honor Society. At Stanford University, I was elected to the board of Stanford Law Review, on the basis of grades, and became Case Editor of the Stanford Law Review in my second year on the board.

I married a Stanford girl, and we had two sons. Neither she nor the sons were or became alcoholics. And, after a successful ten-year career as an attorney in a San Francisco law firm, I opened my own law office in Corte Madera, California. I had suffered from sleeping problems in law school and ever since. A psychiatrist had been the first of many physicians who enabled me, step by step, to become dependent upon and to abuse high-powered sedatives and such mind-altering palliatives as valium, thorazine, and quide. Worse, I began mixing them with drinks during the night; and soon I was passing out on the kitchen floor each morning with an almost unbearable body discomfort I called the heeby jeebiesnot a shaking without, but certainly an unbelievable trembling within. None of this had the slightest impact in deterring my continued excessive drinking.

As success in my law practice increased, the time spent practicing law decreased. The money poured in. The drinking accelerated to the point that I was daily in an almost-drunken state by days end. I drank at service club meetings, at chamber of commerce functions, at church meetings, at social events, at the business quarters of a regular drinking buddy next door to my office, and finally alone at home in the evenings. My wife wouldnt even leave the kitchen to join me despite appeals for her company. If someone had told me I had a problem with alcohol and prescription drugsand they didmy response was that the problem was my wife, my sleep disorders, and occasionally the number of minor auto accidents which occurred when I drank just a little too much. Friends, colleagues, physicians, my minister, and other erring commentatorsincluding even some bartendersbegan to tell me and others that I was drinking too much. But that did not deter me at all. I had reached the point where I didnt care what they thought.

I quit drinking for almost two years, however, when my doctor suggested I go on the Pritikin Diet to lose a considerable amount of weight and also to eliminate liquor for a while. In this endeavor, I also excelled, losing some 80 pounds, swimming daily, drinking soda water, and following the Pritikin formula. Then I left my wifecold turkey. The kids had graduated from college and made new lives, and the joy in my marriage had long since left. Or so I thought.

Armed with this new-found fighting trim, I believed that I deserved to renew drinking. But alcohol and drugs had taken a toll I did not recognize. They had removed inhibitions and restraints that had previously been solid moral standards in my life. I began engaging in unethical and irresponsible behavior with a let them eat cake attitude. And then I got caught. A resentful relative of a client called the newspapers and the State Bar. My name appeared repeatedly in the news, along with my picture. I became severely depressed; my clients vanished; and I drank with a vengeance I hadnt imagined possible. Nothing changed. In fact, everything seemed to get increasingly worse and unbearablethe depression, the drinking, the sleeping pills, the troubles, and the terror. Finally, I consulted a psychiatrist who recommended different sleeping pills and anti-depressants. But I couldnt wait. I went home, poured a four-ounce glass of cheap gin, and went into an entire weeks blackouta period I cant recall or describe even these 22 years later. And that incident, plus a return to the psychiatrist, and the suggestion of my ex-wife, brought me to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous two days sober and ready to conquer the world without booze. But nobody in A.A. had told me about detoxing, seizures, brain-damaged thinking, and bodily withdrawal misery.

What did happen was a series of events that has left me with a continuing appreciation of the unique value of Alcoholics Anonymous to new and still-suffering alcoholics. At early meetings, I had feared the opinions of those who had seen my picture in the newspapers, who might discover some of the things I had done, and who were not as crazy as I was becoming. But those items were definitely unimportant to the mass of drunks I met. At every meeting I attended, I was hugged, welcomed, given phone numbers to call, invited to join other alcoholics after the meetings, given meeting schedules for later meetings, told to stick with the winners and keep coming back because it works. I used the phone numbers repeatedly, followed other recovered alcoholics around, and went to meetings without ceasing. I began to participate in A.A. service where given the opportunity. What these things did for me inspired me to go and do likewise. And I still do. I never see a newcomer at a meeting or a conference or even in a personal encounter without a focus on that persons story and needs and a possible opportunity to help.

Within the first nine days of sobriety, however, things changed. I had three grand-mal seizures, the first at an A.A. meeting, the second in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and the third in the Emergency Room. And these, in turn, took me to a 28-day treatment programin all cases, with no significant mention of the importance of turning to God for help. Hence I didnt. I put abstinence and A.A. firstjust as they seemed to be urging.

In no time at all, I faced the wreckage of the pastsober, but stuck as well with a relentless District Attorney, State Bar investigations, a series of ponderous tax audits and levies, divorce outcroppings, loss of my Law License, lack of means of support other than that remaining from my own earlier investments, and a terror and depression and despair that far exceeded that in my drinking period. Without booze or sleeping pills, I went sleepless for months and months. I felt like a zombie. I shook for five years. They called me Shaky Dick. And my mind was seemingly only a shadow of its former selfproducing mostly forgetfulness, confusion, bewilderment, incessant and irrelevant chatter, and tangential talk patterns. Added to that was the unpleasant fact that I was wetting my pants regularly in A.A. meetings.

By the end of the second month of my sobrietythe period just after I was discharged from the treatment programI couldnt handle any of these problems any more; so I checked into a VA psychiatric ward in San Francisco and there remained for two months. I wasnt as looney as some of the patients, but I was twice as jittery, anxious, and talkative as most of them. I was diagnosed as having some form of hypomania. I now believe it was fear mania!

But I had definitely caught the A.A. bug. I didnt drink. I didnt take sleeping pills. I suffered miserably from fear and insomnia. I went to A.A. meetings devotedly, called my sponsor regularly, and followed the crowd. Very importantly, I was made to feel wanted. I sought A.A. companionship in meetings and retreats and conferences and studies. I chased newcomers and tried to help themeven dragging alcoholics from the VA psych ward with me to A.A. meetings all over the San Francisco Area. But terror and despair still plagued me at every turn.

I faced prison, financial ruin, a lost reputation, unbearable physical consequences of delayed withdrawal, incredible mental incapacity, insomnia, depression, uncontrolled anxiety, loneliness, and a seemingly-hopeless state of fear. I briefly wanted to take my lifein sobriety! Neither abstinence nor A.A. nor the psych ward were cutting it for me.

But two factors dramatically changed both the circumstances and my entire life at about eight months of sobriety. These came into play while I was in the psychiatric ward in San Francisco. One of my sons kept insisting that I needed to study the Bible and get back into what I had learned about the availability of help from my Heavenly Father and the accomplishments of His son Jesus Christ. He sent me tapes to which I began listening. And then, almost every day, an elderly friend from our Bible fellowship kept calling me long distance and listening to me wail. Finally, he asked why I didnt stop trying to program my life and instead let God guide it. He cited the story of Peters walking on the water. When Peter believed, said this man, he walked. When he became afraid, he sank. And it took Jesus to pull him out of the water. I quickly saw that I had a choiceto learn and believe what God had to offer, or to yield my thinking to the seeming disasters the world was offering. I chose the former. I believed. Peace came. And without a doubt, I can say that my almost-instantaneous response to these events was to believe that, no matter what might lie ahead, God had the answers to life; and that I had better seek Him first.

On weekend passes from the psych ward, I began attending my elderly friends Bible fellowship. I stuck with A.A., and I stuck with the Bible fellowship also. And I got well. Quickly! Nurses noticed it. Family members noticed it. And even my attorney announced that I was ready to bite the bulletfacing whatever the courts, the State Bar, and the newspapers had to throw at me.

The result? I was buttressed with solid sobriety, the A.A. program, and the Word of God. I had a Big Book and a Bible. And my sponsor jokingly observed: Dick is armed, but not dangerous. The fear vanished. I faced and dealt with court hearings, imprisonment, financial problems, divorce problems, tax problems, and reputation problems. I was released from the VA and began A.A. life in earnest. I studied and learned A.A.s Big Book. I studied, practiced, took, and learned how to take others through, the Twelve Steps. I sponsored newcomers. I served the Fellowship as a speaker, chairperson, secretary, treasurer, General Service Representative, greeter, chair carrier, and floor sweeper. I went to A.A. meetings, gatherings, retreats, conferences, birthday parties, dances, and campouts. It was then time to grow in my relationship with, understanding of, and fellowship with my Heavenly Father, and to change my emphasis to serving and glorifying Him. But I hadnt fully grasped the fact.

Nonetheless, I began bringing newcomers to Christ, and into our Bible fellowship, while not in any way diminishing their participation in and service to Alcoholics Anonymous. Today some of these newcomers are more than 18 years sober, are married, have a family and a job, and are blessed with strong believing. I thanked God daily for what He had done for me. I asked God daily for His directions as to how to serve Him. I studied the Bible daily and read Bible-based literature daily. I prayed to God daily for myself and others. I affirmed the clear evidence that God could and would and did rescue me.

I began fellowshipping with like-minded believersmany of whom had been completely cured of alcoholism and addiction without even having heard of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. But I stuck to them, to A.A., and to helping others in A.A. I still do.

I had done all things without any knowledge of the fact that my behavior much resembled the behavior of the pioneers in A.A. and of those in numerous movements that came into existence before A.A. And what had my predecessors done?

Here is how I found out. I had been sober and very active in A.A. for about four years. One night, a young man named Johnnow dead of alcoholismwalked up to me in a Step Study meeting in San Rafael, California, and asked if I knew that A.A. had come from the Bible. John was in the Bible fellowship I was involved with and knew of my interest in Scripture. I responded that I had been to hundreds and hundreds of meetings; that I had been to many conferences; but that I had never heard such a thing. John suggested that I read the A.A. General Service Conference-approved book, DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980). John said it would provide details about the biblical roots of our A.A. Fellowship. He pointed out that the Book of James had been so popular in early A.A. that members had wanted to call their Society, the James Club. I jumped at the suggestion and began reading as much A.A. historical material as I could find. There was actually relatively little. Yet, sure enough, the Bible was mentioned frequently. Also the James Club account. Also Dr. Bobs statements that the basic ideas of A.A. had come from the pioneers study of the Bible; that the oldtimers believed the answers to their problems were in the Bible; and that the Book of James, Jesus Sermon on the Mount, and 1 Corinthians 13 were considered absolutely essential to the programs success. [See the A.A. General Service Conference-approved pamphlet, The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous: Biographical Sketches; Their Last Major Talks (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1972, 1975), 11-14, 18-20.] I was later to learn that most of the material in Dr. Bobs talk was incorporated into the DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers book I had previously read.

And success there had been for sure. The A.A. basic text, Alcoholics Anonymous (also known as the Big Book), stated that, of those alcoholics who really tried, 50% got sober and remained that way; and 25% sobered up after some relapses. [See Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed. (New York, NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2001), xx.] It also said of the A.A. members whose stories were included in the book: Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., 29). DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers pointed out on page 261: Records in Cleveland show that 93 percent of those who came to us never had a drink again. And the early Cleveland A.A. fellowship used the same principles that had been used successfully in Akron, together with the Big Book (first published in 1939), the Twelve Steps, and the Four Absolutes of the Oxford Group (absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love) as moral standards for testing behavior.
Wow!

Then came a further turning pointan event which was to change my life pursuits, my interests, and my service to the Creator and His son Jesus Christ. I had never heard anything significant about God, or Jesus Christ, or the Bible in the many A.A. fellowship meetings I had attended. Yet A.A.s own General Service Conference-approved literature contained much to suggest there was more to the picture than most knew. For example, I had read that early AAs in Akron had called themselves a Christian fellowship. (See DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, 118.) I had read that they stressed Bible study and old-fashioned prayer meetings. I had read that Christian literature was distributed to them by Dr. Bob for reading and study. And I had read that Dr. Bob always insisted that newcomers in the hospital profess a belief in God and surrender their lives to Christ. [See Dick B., The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2d ed. (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc. 1998), 177-78, 181-86, 187, 188-215. And see also DR. BOB, 144, for the specifics of what I later found.]
But I still knew very, very little about what the A.A. pioneers actually did, where they got their ideas, and why their program produced such a high rate of success.

In almost every meeting I attended, there was incessant chatter about some higher power. One man insisted his higher power was Ralph. Another insisted that it was a rock. Another insisted that it was a chair. And still another insisted that it was the Big Dipper. These remarks were made regularly in meetings I attended in Marin County, California. There was also bizarre talk about spirituality that was foreign to my ears. Where, I thought, did such nonsense come from? To make matters worse, my own friend and sponsor began telling me that people who read the Bible got drunk. His sponsor convened a meeting where he and my own sponsor warned me that I was getting ready to drink because I had brought my sponsees to a Bible fellowship. But there was still more to be experienced and endured.

I myself have never been the slightest bit concerned about the fact that many of my A.A. friends are Roman Catholics and Jews and that they talk about their faith in meetings. But I began picking up at A.A. meetings some A.A. General Service Conference-approved literature which seemed to endorse, and even encourage, unbeliefthe idea that you didnt need to believe in anything at all to get well. The following are but a few of many examples:

A.A. is not a religious society, since it requires no definite religious belief as a condition of membership. . . . Included in its membership are Catholics, Protestants, Jews, members of other religious bodies, agnostics, and atheists. . . . A.A. suggests that to achieve and maintain sobriety, alcoholics need to accept and depend upon another Power recognized as greater than themselves. Some alcoholics choose to consider the A.A. group itself as the power greater than themselves; for many others, this power is Godas they individually understand Him; still others rely upon entirely different concepts of a Higher Power [44 Questions, 19].

The majority of A.A. members believe that we have found the solution to our drinking problem not through individual willpower, but through a power greater than ourselves. However, everyone defines this power as he or she wishes. Many people call it God, others think it is the A.A. group, still others dont believe in it at all. There is room in A.A. for people of all shades of belief and nonbelief [A Newcomer Asks . . .].

While some members prefer to call this Power God, we were told that this was purely a matter of personal interpretation; we could conceive of the Power in any terms we thought fit [This is AA: An In