Chapter 16: Acceptance Was The Answer
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The physician wasn't hooked, he thought---he just prescribed drugs medically
indicated for his many ailments. Acceptance was his key to liberation.
IF THERE EVER WAS anyone who came to A.A. by mistake, it was I. I just
didn't belong here. Never in my wildest moments had it occurred to me that I
might like to be an alcoholic. Never once had my mother even hinted at the
idea that, when I grew up, I might like to be president of A.A. Not only did
I not think that being an alcoholic was a good idea, I didn't even feel that
I had all that much of a drinking problem! Of course, I had problems, all
sorts of problems. "If you had my problems, you'd drink too" was my feeling.
My major problems were marital. "If you had my wife, you'd drink too." Max
and I had been married for twenty-eight years when I ended up in A.A. It
started out as a good marriage, but it deteriorated over the years as she
progressed through the various stages of qualifying for Al-Anon. At first,
she would say, "You don't love me. Why don't you admit it?" Later, she would
say, "You don't like me. Why don't you admit it?" And as her disease was
reaching the terminal stages, she was screaming, "You hate me! You hate me!
Why don't you admit you hate me?" So I admitted it.
I remember very well saying, "There's only one person in the world whose
guts I hate worse than yours, and those are my own." She cried a bit and
went to bed; that was the only answer to problems that she had left. I cried
a bit and then mixed myself another drink. (Today, we don't have to live
like that any more.)
Max hadn't gotten that way because I didn't care. Indeed, it seemed that I
cared too much. I had sent her to four consecutive psychiatrists, and not
one of them had gotten me sober. I also sent my kids to psychiatrists. I
remember, one time, even the dog had a psychiatric diagnosis. I yelled at
Max, "What do you mean, 'The dog just needs more love'? You tell that dumb
cat-and-dog doctor he's not a Beverly Hills psychiatrist. All I want to know
is, why does that dog wet in my lap every time I hold him?" (That dog hasn't
wet my pants once since I joined A.A., and neither have I!)
The harder I worked with Max, the sicker she got. So, when it ended up at a
psycho ward, I wasn't all that surprised. But then, when that steel door
slammed shut, and she was the one that went home, I truly was amazed.
I had begun to drink in the early years of pharmacy school, in order to get
to sleep. After going to school all day, working in the family drugstore all
evening, and then studying until one or two in the morning, I would not be
able to sleep soundly, with everything I had been studying going round in my
head. I would be half asleep and half awake, and in the morning I would be
both tired and stupid. Then I found the solution: At the end of study time,
I would drink two beers, jump in bed, sleep real fast, and wake up smart.
I drank my way through schools and always got honors. And as I went through
pharmacy school, graduate school, medical school, internship, residency, and
specialty training, and finally, went into practice, my drinking kept
increasing. But I thought it was because my responsibilities were
increasing. "If you had my responsibilities, if you needed the sleep like I
do, you'd drink too."
My drinking took place after work hours. I remember finding myself in the
middle of the night in the doctors' parking lot at the hospital with one
foot in the car and one foot on the ground, not knowing which was the lead
foot; finding myself hanging up the telephone---then realizing I had gotten
out of bed, answered the phone, turned on the light, and carried on a
conversation with a patient. I didn't know whether I had told him to rush to
the hospital and I'd meet him there, or to take two aspirin and call me in
the morning. With a problem like that, I couldn't go back to sleep. So I'd
sit up, watch old Wallace Beery movies on all-night TV, and drink.
The longer the drinking continued, the shorter the time the alcohol would
keep me asleep; I would have to drink myself back to sleep again and again
throughout the night. But I never became a morning drinker. Instead, I had a
5:00 a.m. shut-off time. If it was one minute before five, I'd drink myself
back to sleep. If it was one minute after, I'd stay up and act like a martyr
all day. It became progressively harder to get up in the morning, until one
day I asked myself what I would do for a patient who felt this rotten. The
answer came right back: I'd give him something to pep him up.
So I immediately started taking and shooting pep pills. Eventually, I was
taking forty-five milligrams of the long-acting Benzedrine and forty-five of
the short-acting just to get out of bed in the morning. I took more through
the day to increase the high, and more to maintain it; when I overshot the
mark, I'd take tranquilizers to level off. The pep pills affected my hearing
at times: I couldn't listen fast enough to hear what I was saying. I'd
think, I wonder why I'm saying that again---I've already said it three
times. Still, I couldn't turn my mouth off.
For the leveling-off process, I just loved intravenous Demerol, but I found
it hard to practice good medicine while shooting morphine. Following an
injection, I would have to keep one hand busy scratching my constantly
itching nose and would also have sudden uncontrollable urges to vomit. I
never got much effect out of codeine and Percodan and the tranquilizers.
However, for a period of time I was injecting Pentothal intravenously to put
myself to sleep. That's the stuff used when the oral surgeon puts the needle
in your vein and says, "Count to ten," and before you get to two, you're
asleep. Instant blackout was what it was, and it seemed delightful. I didn't
feel I could lie in bed and squirt the stuff in my veins while my kids and
wife stood around watching me, so I kept the drug in my bag and the bag in
the car and the car in the garage. Luckily, the garage was attached to the
house. In the garage I would put the needle in my vein and then try to
figure out exactly how much medication to inject to overcome the pep pills
while adding to the sleeping pills while ignoring the tranquilizers, in
order to get just enough to be able to pull out the needle, jerk the
tourniquet, throw it in the car, slam the car door shut, run down the hall,
and fall in bed before I fell asleep.
It was hard to judge the right amount. One night I had to put myself back to
sleep three times, and then I finally decided to give it up. But to do so, I
had to get all the stuff out of the house and out of my possession. In the
end I had to do the same with alcohol and all pills. I wasn't able to quit
chemicals as long as they were in the house. If they were around, I always
found a need for them---especially the pills. I never in my life took a
tranquilizer, sedative, or pep pill because I was a pillhead. I always took
it because I had the symptom that only that pill would relieve. Therefore,
every pill was medically indicated at the time it was taken. For me, pills
don't produce the desire to swallow a pill; they produce the symptoms that
require that the pill be taken for relief. As a physician and pharmacist who
had grown up in a drugstore-home, I had a pill for every ill, and I was sick
a lot.
Today, I find I can't work my A.A. program while taking pills, nor may I
even have them around for dire emergencies only. I can't say, "Thy will be
done," and take a pill. I can't say, "I'm powerless over alcohol, but solid
alcohol is okay." I can't say, "God could restore me to sanity, but until He
does, I'll control myself---with pills." Giving up alcohol alone was not
enough for me; I've had to give up all mood- and mind-affecting chemicals in
order to stay sober and comfortable.
On two occasions, over weekends, I had decided I would take absolutely
nothing. On each occasion I had a convulsion on Sunday morning. Both times
my reaction was that I had had nothing to drink the night before, so
obviously alcohol had nothing to do with it. The neurologist in charge of my
case didn't think to ask me whether I drank, and I didn't think to tell him.
As a result, he couldn't figure out why I had the convulsions, and he
decided to send me to the Mayo Clinic. It seemed to me I needed a
consultation first. I happened to be the best diagnostician I knew at the
time, and certainly I knew my case better than anyone else. So I sat down
with me and went over the facts behind the convulsions: personality changes,
daily headaches, sense of impending doom, sense of impending insanity.
Suddenly, it was obvious to me: I had a brain tumor and would die, and
everyone would be sorry for me. The Mayo Clinic seemed like a good place to
have my diagnosis confirmed.
After nine days of tests at Mayo, I was put in the locked ward---of all
places! That's when that steel door slammed shut, and Max was the one who
went home. I didn't like being on the nut ward, and I particularly didn't
like being forced to ice cookies on Christmas Eve. So I raised enough fuss
that they finally agreed to let me sign out, against medical advice. Max
accepted responsibility for me after I had promised never to drink again,
never to take another pill, never to swear again, and never to talk to girls
again. We got on the plane and immediately had a big fight over whether I'd
drink the free booze. Max won; I didn't drink it. But by God, I wouldn't
talk or eat either! And that was how Max and I and our two daughters spent
Christmas Day, eight years ago.
When we got home, I got a bottle of Scotch and went to bed. The next day,
Max called the neurologist and told him about the Mayo psychiatrist's
opinion. He arranged for me to see a local psychiatrist, who quickly decided
I should be in the mental-health unit of our local hospital. The people
there insisted on putting me in a ward, when Max and I both knew I ought to
have a private room. Finally, she asked, "Do you realize he's on the staff
of this hospital?" And I got my private room.
Time went by very, very slowly on my second nut ward. I never could quite
get the knack of it and kept asking myself, "What's a nice guy like me doing
in a place like this?" They wanted me to make leather belts, of all things\!
Had I gone to school all those years just to sit and make leather belts?
Besides, I couldn't understand the instructions. The girl had explained them
to me four times, and I was too embarrassed to ask her again. (I am pleased
to state, however, that I had gone to only a very few A.A. meetings before I
was able to make a really beautiful pair of moccasins---and half of a
wallet. I wore those moccasins every night for the next seven years, until
they wore out. For my seventh A.A. birthday, my program-oriented, Al-Anon
wife had my moccasins bronzed. Now I own perhaps the most costly pair of
moccasins anyone has ever seen, and they help me remember where I've been.)
In the hospital I hung on to the idea I'd had most of my life: that if I
could just control the external environment, the internal environment would
then become comfortable. Much of my time was spent writing letters, notes,
orders, and lists of things for Max, who was also my office nurse, to do to
keep the world running while I was locked up. One has to be pretty sick to
do that, and perhaps one has to be even sicker to come back every day for a
new list, as she did. (Today we don't have to live that way. Max still works
with me in the office, but we have turned our wills and our lives and our
work over to the care of God. Each with the other as a witness, we took the
Third Step out loud---just as it says in the Big Book. And life keeps
getting simpler and easier as we try to reverse my old idea, by taking care
of the internal environment via the Twelve Steps, and letting the external
environment take care of itself.)
One day as I sat there in the hospital, my psychiatrist walked up behind me
and asked, "How'd you like to talk to the man from A.A.?" My reaction was
that I'd already helped all the patients on the ward, and I still had plenty
of problems of my own without trying to help some drunk from A.A. But, by
the look on the psychiatrist's face, I could tell that it would really make
him happy if I agreed. So, for no better reason than to make him happy, I
agreed. Very shortly, I realized that had been a mistake---when this big
clown came bounding into the room, almost shouting, "My name is Frank, and
I'm an alcoholic, ha-ha-ha!" I really felt sorry for him; the only thing in
life he had to brag about was the fact that he was an alcoholic. It wasn't
until later that he told me he was an attorney.
Against my better judgment, I went to a meeting with him that night, and a
strange thing began to happen. The psychiatrist, who had generally been
ignoring me, now became quite interested; every day he would ask me all
kinds of questions about the A.A. meetings. At first I wondered whether he
was alcoholic himself and was sending me to find out about A.A. But it
quickly became obvious that he had this childish notion instead: If he could
get me to go to enough meetings while in the hospital, I would continue to
go after he let me out. So, for no better reason than to fool him, I asked
Frank to take me to a meeting every night. And Frank did set me up for a
meeting every night except Friday, when he thought he might have a date with
his girl friend. "That's a devil of a way to run an organization," I
thought, and I reported Frank to the psychiatrist, who didn't seem
perturbed; he just got someone else to take me on Fridays.
Eventually the psychiatrist discharged me from the hospital, and Max and I
began going to meetings ourselves. Right from the start, I felt that they
weren't doing anything for me, but they sure were helping Max. We sat in the
back and talked only to each other. It was precisely a year before I spoke
at an A.A. meeting. Although we enjoyed the laughter in the early days, I
heard a lot of things that I thought were stupid. I interpreted "sober" as
meaning "drinking but not being drunk." When a big, healthy-looking young
fellow stood up there and said, "I'm a success today if I don't drink
today," I thought, "Man, I've got a thousand things to do today before I can
brag about not taking a drink, for God's sake!" Of course, I was still
drinking at the time. (Today there is absolutely nothing in the world more
important to me than my keeping this alcoholic sober; not taking a drink is
by far the most important thing I do each day.)
It seemed that all they talked about at meetings was drinking, drinking,
drinking. It made me thirsty. I wanted to talk about my many big problems;
drinking seemed a small one. And I knew that giving up "one drink for one
day" wouldn't really do any good. Finally, after seven months, I decided to
try it. To this day, I am amazed at how many of my problems---most of which
had nothing to do with drinking, I believed---have become manageable or have
simply disappeared since I quit drinking.
I had already given up all the narcotics, most of the pills, and some of the
alcohol when I first came to A.A. By early July I had tapered off alcohol
completely, and I got off all pills in the ensuing few months. When the
compulsion to drink left, it was relatively easy to stay off alcohol. But
for some time, it was difficult to keep from taking a pill when I had an
appropriate symptom, such as a cough, pain, anxiety, insomnia, a muscle
spasm, or an upset stomach. It has gotten progressively easier. Today I feel
I have used up my right to chemical peace of mind.
It helped me a great deal to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease,
not a moral issue; that I had been drinking as a result of a compulsion,
even though I had not been aware of the compulsion at the time; and that
sobriety was not a matter of willpower. The people of A.A. had something
that looked much better than what I had, but I was afraid to let go of what
I had in order to try something new; there was a certain sense of security
in the familiar.
At last, acceptance proved to be the key to my drinking problem. After I had
been around A.A. for seven months, tapering off alcohol and pills, not
finding the program working very well, I was finally able to say, "Okay,
God. It is true that I---of all people, strange as it may seem, and even
though I didn't give my permission---really, really am an alcoholic of
sorts. And it's all right with me. Now, what am I going to do about it?"
When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the
problem went away. From that moment on, I have not had a single compulsion
to drink.
And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed,
it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation---some fact of
my life---unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that
person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed
to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by
mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless
I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to
concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what
needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.
Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely
players." He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always
able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad
to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. A.A.
and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us
and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we
each have a right to be here. When I complain about me or about you, I am
complaining about God's handiwork. I am saying that I know better than God.
For years I was sure the worst thing that could happen to a nice guy like me
would be that I would turn out to be an alcoholic. Today I find it's the
best thing that has ever happened to me. This proves I don't know what's
good for me. And if I don't know what's good for me, then I don't know
what's good or bad for you or for anyone. So I'm better off if I don't give
advice, don't figure I know what's best, and just accept life on life's
terms, as it is today---especially my own life, as it actually is. Before
A.A. I judged myself by my intentions, while the world was judging me by my
actions.
Acceptance has been the answer to my marital problems. It's as though A.A.
had given me a new pair of glasses. Max and I have been married now for
thirty-five years. Prior to our marriage, when she was a shy, scrawny
adolescent, I was able to see things in her that others couldn't necessarily
see---things like beauty, charm, gaiety, a gift for being easy to talk to, a
sense of humor, and many other fine qualities. It was as if I had, rather
than a Midas touch which turned everything to gold, a magnifying mind that
magnified whatever it focused on. Over the years as I thought about Max, her
good qualities grew and grew, and we married, and all these qualities became
more and more apparent to me, and we were happier and happier.
But then as I drank more and more, the alcohol seemed to affect my vision:
Instead of continuing to see what was good about my wife, I began to see her
defects. And the more I focused my mind on her defects, the more they grew
and multiplied. Every defect I pointed out to her became greater and
greater. Each time I told her she was a nothing, she receded a little more
into nowhere. The more I drank, the more she wilted.
Then, one day in A.A., I was told that I had the lenses in my glasses
backwards; "the courage to change" in the Serenity Prayer meant not that I
should change my marriage, but rather that I should change myself and learn
to accept my spouse as she was. A.A. has given me a new pair of glasses. I
can again focus on my wife's good qualities and watch them grow and grow and
grow.
I can do the same thing with an A.A. meeting. The more I focus my mind on
its defects---late start, long drunkalogs, cigarette smoke---the worse the
meeting becomes. But when I try to see what I can add to the meeting, rather
than what I can get out of it, and when I focus my mind on what's good about
it, rather than what's wrong with it, the meeting keeps getting better and
better. When I focus on what's good today, I have a good day, and when I
focus on what's bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem
increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases.
Today Max and I try to communicate what we feel rather than what we think.
We used to argue about our differing ideas, but we can't argue about our
feelings. I can tell her she ought not to think a certain way, but I
certainly can't take away her right to feel however she does feel. When we
deal in feelings, we tend to come to know ourselves and each other much
better.
It hasn't been easy to work out this relationship with Max. On the contrary,
the hardest place to work this program has been in my own home, with my own
children and, finally, with Max. It seems I should have learned to love my
wife and family first; the newcomer to A.A., last. But it was the other way
around. Eventually I had to redo each of the Twelve Steps specifically with
Max in mind, from the First, saying, "I am powerless over alcohol, and my
homelife is unmanageable by me," to the Twelfth, in which I tried to think
of her as a sick Al-Anon and treat her with the love I would give a sick
A.A. newcomer. When I do this, we get along fine.
Perhaps the best thing of all for me is to remember that my serenity is
inversely proportional to my expectations. The higher my expectations of Max
and other people are, the lower is my serenity. I can watch my serenity
level rise when I discard my expectations. But then my "rights" try to move
in, and they too can force my serenity level down. I have to discard my
"rights," as well as my expectations, by asking myself, How important is it,
really? How important is it compared to my serenity, my emotional sobriety?
And when I place more value on my serenity and sobriety than on anything
else, I can maintain them at a higher level---at least for the time being.
Acceptance is the key to my relationship with God today. I never just sit
and do nothing while waiting for Him to tell me what to do. Rather, I do
whatever is in front of me to be done, and I leave the results up to Him;
however it turns out, that's God's will for me.
I must keep my magic magnifying mind on my acceptance and off my
expectations, for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of
acceptance. When I remember this, I can see I've never had it so good. Thank
God for A.A.!