Clown Artist Philosopher

You are probably familiar with the song Amazing Grace. What you likely not aware of is that it is a song about a drunk getting sober. John Newton’s parents enlisted him in the Royal Navy, he didn’t like it in the navy so ran away. When he was caught he was indentured into the slave trade. The life a a sailor was a wild and woolly one. It was a well paid job and while at sea there was nothing to spend their money on. When in port sailers would spend their generous wages on drink, gambling and prostitutes. So when John was not at sea ill-treating slaves he was behaving badly in port towns. Then one day in a wild and terrifying storm he had an amazing encounter with the Holly Spirit. He immediately gave up alcohol, gambling and promiscuity, saved up some money and headed back to England to become a writer of spiritual songs and a lobbyist for the abolition of slavery. Something to think about next time you hear that song. 

This is what Carl Jung called a profound psychic change and it is something that has been going on throughout history. For as long as there has been alcohol there have been alcoholics and for as long as there have been alcoholics there have been people overcoming the disease. One such example is Bill Willson. Bill was a very sick alcoholic – on the brink of death. All the fun of drinking was gone, but he just couldn’t stop. Eddy an old drinking friend came to visit. Bill was excited at the prospect of some of the good old days. But something had changed in his friend “I’ve found God” Eddy told him; “Oh God” Bill thought. Eddy persuaded Bill to come to his Oxford Group meetings. The Oxford Group was a loose association of Christians that would gather to work on their faith. They had literature and slogans, would share about where they were in their Christian walk, they had a six step program and they liked to sober up drunks. Not long after joining the Oxford Group Bill ended up back in hospital there he had his amazing grace moment and saw the light, he didn’t drink again. Rather he set out to find other drunks to sober up. Eventually he found Dr Robert Smith, a hard working professional, a good husband, a throughly likeable sort of guy, who would have a few drinks before he went into surgery to stop the shakes. Dr Bob was also in an Oxford Group trying to get help and was able to sober up after meeting Bill. June 10 1935, the day Dr Bob had his last drink, is considered to be the founding day of Alcoholics Anonymous. The formation of the Twelve Step programs is one of the most profound events of the Twentieth Century.

I started drinking when I was eighteen, I was a fairly moderate drinker until I was twenty four when I had a bit of a problem with going insane. At first I started having these accidental binges where I would go out intending having a couple of drinks and wake up the next day with patchy memories of the night, feeling sick and having spent money I had intended for something else. The drinking progressed and by the time I was twenty eight I was drinking on a daily basis – despite not wanting to. I knew where to get help for drinking so I walked to the AA office up the road from me. There I saw the Serenity Prayer and said to the woman behind the desk “Oh, I love that prayer I didn’t know it had anything to do with AA” I quickly worked out a friend of mine’s father was an alcoholic and his mum was going to Alanon. This was the first of many great revelations that were to come to me working The Steps. Then I saw The Steps – I had heard it so many times “your going to have to do The Steps” I had wondered what it meant; now I knew. I got my self to a few meetings but couldn’t make much sense of it because I was insane and at that point what I needed was hospital, a doctor and medication. Not long after I got my first hospital admission.

In 2000 after a particularly disastrous overseas trip I found my self stuck in my parents back yard in rural Queensland; I didn’t know anyone, I had nothing to do and there was a free cask of wine sitting on top of the fridge. I went from two or three long necks of beer a night to half a cask of wine a night. This went on for three and a half years. I was in no way in denial about being an alcoholic I just didn’t think I was up to AA’s standards. I was thinking AA is for together people, its for people with jobs and houses and families, they just drink too much. It’s not for crazy want to be clowns living in their parents back yard. They say at first you hear the differences. Then in 2003 I got my self back to Darwin, I had a very successful season, had a lot of fun and made enough to buy my self a lap top computer. I went back to Queensland determined to get my act together and move back to Darwin. In October 2003 I started to work The Steps.

Step one was a no brainer for me, powerless over alcohol, I had been drinking on a daily basis for six years; despite not wanting to. I didn’t drink because I wanted to, I drank because I couldn’t cope without it. My life unmanageable, I was thirty three living in my parents back yard in a place I just didn’t want to be, I had been on welfare for ten years and Centerlink had put me in the too hard basket, I had had multiple admissions into psychiatric hospitals – did my life have to be any more unmanageable?

Steps two and three; I had no problem with the existence of God, but believed God intended for me to be a drunk. I quite resented God for making me a drunk. I had been struggling to understand God for many years: after a meeting one night a member told me I had to accept God as I understood him “but I can’t understand God!” “Then that is what you have to accept” and I understood. I had asked God into my life many years earlier, but it is not until I started working The Steps that I started to understand what God was trying to tell me.

Then the hard work begins; step four. There is just so much I was ignorant of, in denial of, confused about or deluded about. With diabetes the doctor takes some blood and does a test then tells you what kind of diabetes you have and exactly how much you need of what to fix it. With mental health they ask you some questions come up with a funny sounding diagnosis and hand you some pills “here try this see if it helps.” Make a list of resentments; all I could think of is: I don’t like living in Hervey Bay because its boring and there’s no opportunities and I can’t work out work. Then one night I got to thinking there were some things in my past I wasn’t happy about and all of a sudden I had in front of me what had driven me insane. I had to get my self into hospital the next morning where I was told “we don’t deal with that kind of thing.” I didn’t have schitzoaffective disorder I had post traumatic stress disorder, Mental Health was not impressed. 

I didn’t know that I was smart or how that affected my life. I was very confused about my identity as an artist; I had mixed up artist with smart with that stuff with some personal values with some identity issues every artist deals with. I had to face up to the fact that they had put me on the pension for a reason and I needed to accept that and be grateful I lived in a country with such generous welfare. Early in working The Steps I was asked
“Have you heard anything you can relate to?”
“Well there are some things I think yes that’s me and there are some things I think I’m glad that’s not me and there are some things I think that could be me and there are some things that ring a certain bell but I can’t think what it is.
”Do you know anyone else who drinks like you?”
“Well my dad drinks as much as me.”
And the penny dropped; how could I have missed that! It just didn’t occur to me the fact my dad drank as much as me as often as me for longer than me made him an alcoholic as well. My problems didn’t start when I started drinking they started twelve years earlier when my dad started drinking.

This was just the start of facing up to the realities of my life and at first it was a terrible shock to the system. Working The Steps set off a doozer of an episode in Darwin in 2004, I was in hospital for six weeks and ended up back in my parents back yard in complete defeat. When it came to making amends I was just me and my higher power; AA people didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about and Mental Health didn’t want to talk about it. I needed to mend the relationship between me and my parents, this relationship was very badly broken. With my mum this was a long, slow painful process. But highly rewarding, my mum now understands that I am not a chef or a baker and that my interest in art, theatre and philosophy is not a mental health condition. We can now have a sensible conversation about anything from the weather to troubling family issues; with mum it was a courage situation. With my dad it had to be a short loud confrontation, I said what I needed to say, but ultimately he still goes around telling people I’m a baker and believes my artistic interests are a mental health issue; with dad it is a serenity situation.

In 2007 I discovered private psychiatric clinics, there like a five star hotel with a psychiatric theme, I highly recommend them. I soon discovered that my heart was beating twice as fast as it should be. When I got the medication to fix this the anxiety attacks stopped and I was able to stop using Valium. In 2010, with the help of medication, I was able to quit tobacco and money stoped being such a problem for me. In 2015 I took up study in philosophy and theology, something I had long wanted to do. I had clawed my way out of the pit of despair I found my self in in 2005. I have been fearless and through in working The Steps and this effort has born fruit in the form of a more sane and manageable life; but I just can’t stay sober. 

I’ve had what I call sober binges: nine months when I first started AA, a few weeks here, a few months there, with clinics and rehabs, two years while living and working with a Christian charity that ministers to homeless people. But ultimately I pick up again. “Rarely have we seen a person fail” the introduction to How It Works starts. It certainly isn’t true now and I doubt it was true in 1939; this is ego maniac Bill Willson at work, he’s had a bit of success and its totally gone to his head. The introduction then goes on to explain how anyone it doesn’t work for is born morally deficient. It is staggeringly offensive for anyone who battles to get sober and it is read out at just about every meeting. The purpose of the introduction is to first give hope to what has been described as a hopeless situation then empathise the need for hard work and honesty, but it is an appalling peace of prose that makes some extraordinary claims and causes a lot of misunderstanding. It seems likely to me that the majority of long term sober people in AA are what I call first steppers. These are people that can sober up at the first step. This can be a doozer of a step to get over; first they have to admit they are drinking too much “I just have a couple of drinks at the end of the day to relax”, then they have to admit it is causing trouble “it’s everyone else that is causing the trouble”, then if you haven’t at least tried to control it you probably shouldn’t be in AA. But having admitted that they are drinking too much, that it is causing trouble and that they can’t control it, they have arrived at step one and simply decide to stop doing it. Then the meetings and the sharing are about reenforcing the decision, that needs to be made on a daily basis, not to pick up that first drink. Just don’t pick up that first drink? You are clearly not dealing with the same thing I am! There is no way a first stepper will be able to understand a compulsive drinker. Rather they shake their head and say “will this guy ever get it?” What happens when you take a boring arrogant drunk and remove the alcohol? You get a boring arrogant sober alcoholic, welcome to AA.

The Big Book does a really good job of dealing with Bill Willson’s problem. At his best Bill Willson was a narcissistic egomaniac who liked to show off with his money. At his worst he would steal money out of his wife’s purse, that she earned as a checkout operator, to buy gin and have sex with prostitutes. In the early days of sobriety he continued to sleep around and would boast about sexual prowess at his Oxford Group, a Christian group that was trying to achieve purity. It’s just the kind of guy he was. The Big book deals with egotistical, resentful, fearful, promiscuous and selfish because these are the things that came up in Bill Willson’s inventory. But not all alcoholics are like this: there are those with low self esteem, the guilt ridden, those that serve on every one else but never have time for themselves. My sex life was a long way from ideal, but work is the area where I had some big things to face up too. I go to AA meetings and keep hearing the same stories. Is it that everyone in AA has the same story, or are people just trying to fit in? This is important because if people are not sharing their stories but sharing stories that fit in, the honesty’s not there and that might explain AA’s lack of effectiveness.

When I first started working The Steps I heard the similarities, the drinking was the same. But over time the differences became more pronounced. I started to question wether or not I was an alcoholic, certainly I didn’t have the same thing that was described in The Big Book and I wasn’t hearing anything much like my story in the meetings. But when I went into the hospitals I met lots of people with stories like mine. I’m a crazy guy that drinks to deal with the madness, I drink the way I do because I have a medical condition that is effectively treated with alcohol. The problem is it has so many nasty side effects. Over time I have found medications that deal with my condition better. I found medication that slows my thinking down, medication that stops the anxiety attacks, medication that helped me quit smoking and medication that helped resolve a resentment I had with my parents. I don’t need to drink anymore. But I have a long positively reenforced habit of picking up a drink, how do I beat that? Am I an alcoholic, or am I a problem drinker? Having treated the problem can I return to moderate drinking? Is abstinence an option for me? Is there a medication that can help me achieve this? I can’t get help or understanding with these issues at AA. My condition doesn’t fit the template and Im not even allowed to ask some of these questions at AA.

A lot has happened since Alcoholics Anonymous was published. At the time membership stood at about 100. There are now over 123,000 groups in approximately 180 countries and the Big Book has been translated into over 100 languages. Lessons have been learned and the AA program has evolved. Medical science has advanced in its understanding of addiction, both at the biological and psychological level. But Bill Willson died in 1971 and there have been almost no updates to the AA literature since. Dr Silkworth in his letter to AA writes “there is the manic depressive type, who is the least understood by his peers and about whom a whole chapter could be written” that was over eighty years ago, where is the chapter? The prospect was grim for someone like me in 1939: permanent institutionalisation, straight jackets, restraining tables, strong sedatives, lobotomies. The modern medications have seen an end to these practices and people like me can manage a fair degree of functionality in the community. As a result people like me are turning up to AA to get help with drinking issues, but the help isn’t there because the person seeking help doesn’t fit Bill Willson’s description of the alcoholic. The Big Book will always be the Big Book, but what about a supplementary booklet or something? 

What about the quit drinking medications, why aren’t these being talked about at AA meetings? Bill and Dr Bob tried all sorts of things to help people get sober, do you think they would have refused to try Antabuse, Campral or Naltrexone? Antabuse is a dead cert, you just can’t get drunk if you are on Antabuse. You can’t even use aerosol deodorants because the alcohol with cause you to break out in a rash. It will smell bad, it will taste bad and if you swallow it it will make you sick; you will end up in hospital before you get drunk. It doesn’t treat the alcoholism, it just makes it impossible to drink so you still need something like AA. Campral reduces cravings and can give the AA member a better chance at recovery. Naltrexone requires a different program as it offers a complete cure to alcoholism, used properly Naltrexone is making making moderate drinkers of alcoholics, its called The Sinclair Method (TSM) it works for a lot of people. But no; if it isn’t in the Big Book, it isn’t a valid way to treat alcoholism.

Religion is a dirty word in AA. The early members were divided into three camps: those that wanted AA to be a Christian organisation, those who wanted AA to be a secular organisation and those who wanted a God of your own understanding. The Christians and the secularists were persuaded to meet in the middle ground. This has given AA much of its strength. Initially this meant Catholics, Protestants and secularists could meet in one place to deal with their common problem. As AA spread across the world it transcended spiritual boundaries. Alcoholism doesn’t discriminate on religious grounds and neither does AA. But in Australia AA is primarily secular, try walking into an AA meeting in Australia and talk about  the love of Jesus and see how it goes down. The great irony of secularism is that you can’t get out of religion by being non religious, it’s just non religious becomes your religion. When the secular AA member obstinately insists “a God of  YOUR understanding” he actually means a God of his understanding and you better not disagree with him or he will be highly offended. 

Then look around the room: the banners, the wooden circle with a triangle in the middle, the jewellery, the tokens, the bumperstickers, the replica of the original Big Book; these are looking a lot like religious icons. You can hear a member share about there trip to America: you can goto the hotel where Bill made the call to Dr Bob and make a call on the phone he used, you can goto Dr Bob’s house, its a large house that serves as a BnB, you can see the typewriter Bill used to write the Big Book, the house is slightly elevated and there are twelve steps leading up to the porch, there are twelve bricks around the fireplace in the living room and above the fireplace is a picture of a camel and great significance is read into the camel “the camel can walk through the desert one step at a time and not have to drink”, you can goto Dr Bob’s grave and exchange a token that is left on the grave stone; this is looking a lot like a religious pilgrimage. Then you tell me the Big Book has THE description of the alcoholic and THE solution to the problem and it must not be altered in any way. The solution is to attend lots of meetings, read the Big Book every day, get a sponsor, spread the message, praise the program and tow the line. And if it doesn’t work for me its because I am not doing the program honestly and throughly; this is looking a lot like religious dogma. Dogma is an inevitable consequence of religion and you can’t get out of it by being secular or New Age. The problem with dogma is it erodes the original spirit of the message. AA was meant to be a group of drunks getting together to help each other to stay sober. It has become a society of reformed drinkers, that just decided to stop drinking, where they can enjoy the fellowship of other reformed drinkers and feel comfortably smug about their moral superiority. As I said earlier; what happens when you take a boring arrogant drunk and remove the alcohol – you get a boring arrogant sober alcoholic; welcome too AA.

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