Basic Progress - Prologue

Four days later, on January 19th, I opened up the local newspaper and, lo and behold, there staring at me, was AA announcement. I had not had a drink in four days. I had faced an option; go down to the bar and drink or check out AA and drink socially! I really thought it would be dimly lit with barstools everywhere. Every hour, I presumed, they'd ding a bell and we could all have a shot. It worked real well for everybody! All the alcoholics were together so when anything breaks out, the cops knew exactly where to go. I had no idea. That night at eight o'clock, I walked into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Is this where you fix drunks?"

Some guy who claimed to have been sober 31 years and another with 37 years, sat me down and gave me a cup of coffee. They did not impress me at all. I mean there was probably five hundred years of sobriety in the room amongst two dozen old timers.

'Man,.. ' I observed to myself, ' I've got 30 or 40 more years of drinking left in me!'

I listened. They patted each other on the back, talked about a loving God, and twelve steps to recovery. They told me that alcoholism was a disease that comprised two parts: a physical allergy that kicked in immediately after ingesting alcohol, and a mental obsession that compulsively lead me to that first drink. It made sense They told me that I need to get help from a "higher power." That, I didn't like at all. I really had not expected to run across a bunch of holy rollers at this place. I would have left, but, where else could I go?

Churches should take a lesson to what AA offers to those in bondage to sin. AA offers a community of grace and unconditional love with an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance. Discussion is encouraged and spiritual sponsorship and mentoring is the climate. Sometimes I think that the community of the first century is best emulated by a group of broken people trying to help others who are broken and they all get better! Good for them! They mentioned, in passing, the need for me to make amends. In their program, this is step nine. Obviously, I was passed the initial stages of development.

The first two or three weeks were bad. My youngest sister, Tanya, and I argued beyond reason. I threw a peanut butter jar at her. My rage was blinding. I could have killed her. One night, I cursed my brother for consistently overbidding me in a game of 42 (dominoes). That broke up the game. My parents were appalled. I was crazy and subject to rage. John and I have not played dominoes since. He just won't play. That is sad, because he knows that, in my right mind, I can beat him. (That's for you, bro!)

I do now and always have loved my family, but I just could not be crossed. I still struggle with them and my anger, but they have mustered more faith and patience than should be asked of anyone. This is a sad truth concerning anyone who has fallen prey to a life of total self dedication: We are prone to fall all the way back into our old mind set without warning --we are walking a precarious path. Over the years, I have been victimized less and less with only partial severity, but it is a struggle that can only be diagnosed as the consequence of sin. Regardless of definition, I am responsible and I am sorry. This is a message that carries weight and significant consequence --we must tell this to those who are tempted to live life their way. No only does it not work, the rest of your life will be an ongoing attempt to outlive your own internal mechanism. The external problems can be resolved, but we have set in motion internal trains of memory and paradigms of thought that are reluctant, but not impossible, to be removed.

I wanted fix things fast, I asked for my family's forgiveness. John forgave me and all debts, but he encapsulated the problem,

"I have really missed you and I love you. Jay. I'm glad you are doing better. I can forgive all that you have done. I can clear the slate on everything, with one exception. Jay, it is difficult to forgive you for the time that you took away from our relationship."

For selfish reasons, it was imperative to visit my ex-wife. She had since returned to Conroe from Nevada and she had all my worldly goods and my cookbook collection. Not having a license, which did not normally matter, I had recruited my father to drive me. The visit went well until I started taking things she did not want me to have. She started flailing her arms at me. We spun out of the dirt driveway. The effort was ill advised and premature. Not exactly the way to make amends. I have not seen her since.

Two weeks later, my parents had gone out of town on a Spanish club retreat to San Antonio for the weekend. I, in my infinite wisdom, had considerable doubts as to whether I was an alcoholic. The 'Big Book,' AA's basic textbook, stated very clearly that one should test himself to find out for sure. I drove to the closest liquor store and purchase one gallon of rose' wine. Two hours later, I jumped in agony and gasped at the cigarette burn hole in my pants, thirty five miles from home on a country road. I was intoxicated without a Driver's license and I was scared. When I reached the house, I buried the jug in the bottom of the outside trash dumpster and passed out in bed. The next morning, February 29, 1988, I awoke with the familiar craving for the hair of the dog that bit me. I knew that alcoholism was the proper diagnosis.

Either, I was to wake in the morning and pray,... or I was to continue arising with puke in my hair, Hmm... decisions, decisions...

Addiction and self sufficiency had discarded me to the heap of losers. Ultimately, I was faced with the proposition that all my primary thoughts and values had been wrong. For the second time in my life, I slowly began a theological U-turn... but this time, it was a matter of survival. God was my last chance.

Abstaining is only the beginning of trouble. Whatever degree of relief that one gets from his or her addictive demon has been removed. To attain any degree of stability, the power which is called God has to help. The spiritual struggle from that frame of mind is incomparable to any battle in life. It is the engagement of freedom or incarceration, the encounter of friendship or enmity, it is life or death. There is a long period of reconstruction ahead.

The argument that recovery is a matter of determination has some merit, but very little. The actual diagnosis is soul sickness. There is a spiritual cancer that eats up character, virtue, responsibility, and moral values. It can be contagious, but only for the ignorant or willing. Normally, the seed is germinated through a warped perception of a world that is chronically unjust. The condition usually seeks other sufferers with whom to commiserate. Misery does love company.

I went to meetings sporadically for the next thirty days. At that point in time, my relations with the spirit of the universe was nonexistent. I told them about me. They urged me to take responsibility for today. They said I did not have to accept anything about God except that he existed. In fact, they said, I could have my very own concept! I ended up creating a God that had created the universe and loves me so much that He sent his only begotten son that... but I am way ahead of myself, in fact, about seven years ahead of myself. I conceded that there may be an essence of nature, a energy force, or an aura of some kind. In the fall, I took some college courses, and I recall telling the English class that the colored ring around humans when they take those electromagnetic pictures was God. This seems crazy, but for me, it was a huge concession. It had been most of a full decade, if not longer that I had conceded that there was anything more than the human intellect that ruled this universe.

The observation that God does exist does have ramifications; old notions and perceptions immediately raise their ugly heads. As difficult as it was to abandon the idea that what my parents, friends, and church had taught me was wrong, that paled in comparison to the fight my intellect put up against accepting His presence. Over the years, I had developed stinking thinking and was driven by emotional whim. Although the active pursuit of God does include these aspects, they can be a hindrance. I was in no shape to think or feel. If you can't see, you can't see.

On April fool's day, I had to check in to the Brazos County detention facility to serve thirty days for my prior offenses. The only literature available was the King James Version of the Holy Bible. I read it. A dim light glowed from out of the bathroom. I sat in such a way that I could read. One night, while reading Scripture, one of the other inmates in our communal cell was caught stealing cookies I had saved from dinner. I jumped him. He didn't get my cookies. I was still angry as I sat back down.

I had set out to find the contradictions and the mistaken logic that millions of others had overlooked. As I read through the Old Testament to prove all religious fanatics wrong, something reached down and touched me and said, 'you know the Jews had a God and he was alive back then.' However anyone can interpret this insight, there was no doubt in my mind that God had lived back then. As an atheist, I had 'proven' there had never been a God, but now, I had to overcome a very convincing inspirational moment. It was plain to me that I had never been able to show that God had died between Moses and Jay.

Shazzam!! There must be a God!

What I had come across was a beginning. If there is no God, what have I got to lose? If there is one, maybe, just maybe He can help even me. hmmm...!!?

Seconds later, I reacted with a pious bravado,

"Oh, so you've been there all along?!!"

At two o'clock in the morning, my cussing God woke up the others. They indignantly told me to shutup. I sat down and fumed. My natural reaction was to blame God, but that just didn't stick. I knew I had been wrong. I knew.

And then,...

"Oh God, what have I done?"

The moment of repentance.

I'm not claiming any kind of conversion, but, at that moment, I knew there was something greater than myself out there. He, she, they, it, whatever,... something! What I came to believe was that for me, right then, it didn't matter what It was! There is a God! The Great I Am.

May God continue to bless my parents. I was unemployable, and a bore. I was normally angry or frustrated. I spent much of my time arguing. I was not fun to be around. I often wondered why they were noncommittal. In the next few months, there were plenty of times that I wanted to get a quick fix. I was in poor mental and physical condition. Emotionally, I was erratic and subject to deep depression interlaced with moments of giddy exhilaration. The anxiety and stress of having to live and breath in reality was unbearable. I yearned for the "'good ol' days." I do not want to take philosophical license here, but even a genius such as myself did not need much time to think those cravings through. No, I had to give my own life a fair shot. I had commenced to value my life again.

I had to develop new attitudes and habits. I knew that I needed to change playmates, play toys, and playpens. It's really good advice, and not as hard as it sounds. I know that we inherently want to be around people we know and understand. We like to be accepted and being in new places with different faces can be extremely uncomfortable, but so what? Being a failure along with my old buddies is even more exasperating. I found out that if I let them know that I was determined to avoid the temptations of my past, and did not come out to play, they didn't pursue me for long, in fact in short order they were avoiding me! It's really that simple! Just think about it. You don't want to be around people who are not of the same mind. Do you? No, of course not.

Many experiences were too painful to think about. Humans have a built in mental capacity to forget the bad times and remember only the good. This is called euphoric recall or selective memory. Actually, denial is a necessary component to survival, but it was necessary to work through a thorough self examination to commit my life to God. But for the grace of God, I would have joined the long parade of condemned souls marching into eternal loneliness. God is the power that saves. It is not possible without Him.

I always wondered what we were being saved from. Salvation always meant something surreal that had to do with the pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye. It never really mattered to me. I mean an eternal Hell with weeping and gnashing of teeth fight of the devil with a pitchfork, just didn't seem just. I mean not even for Hitler. And I think that He was one example of evil, but I think ten million years of that is fair, not forever. Forever is a long time.

No, for me, salvation has to do with the here and now. I mean if you don't have a relationship with God in the here and now, why would He want a relationship with us forever? That's a long time to be hanging around with folks you haven't shown any interest in, and I certainly didn't want to spend any time with many of the people I had run across in church.

No, I had to be saved from myself. Selfishness was not only my demon, it is the pathway through which the devil works. I had to be save from self and that is not possible without the power of God, I could not do it by myself. I knew that, but how?

Past the reality that God exists, the initial obstacle that hounds most of us is the concept that God can be personal. Furthermore, I was asked to believe, that He could actually redo me and manage my life. The example that I understood was the case of an individual purchasing a dilapidated Model T ford for five hundred bucks. The undertaking to restore it to it's initial glory involves scraping and painting and new parts. The process is time consuming, but very rewarding. When finished, that same junker might sell for many times it's original purchase cost. There are countless testimonies that reassure us that God is not particular, He is personally available.

Inscribed in my own handwriting at the end of the AA Big Book's fourth chapter, "We Agnostics," is my personalized ownership of AA's second step,

"I learned to have faith in an energy force that I can draw on that will renew me to a healthy mental attitude and relieve me from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body."

The moment of repentance had taken a form. That is the only way I knew that I had repented. It moved me to be different. It changed my loyalty, my allegiance. I was now focused in on the matters of a higher order than the profane.

And that was good. Most everyone who had been close to me had heard, 'this time it is different' or 'I'll pay you right back,' or most often, 'I'm sorry, I'll never do that again.'

Society, neighborhood, friends and family all agree on this one point:

Don't apologize. Just stop it.

That cannot be done without God's help.