Sublime

What recovering alcoholics “have” is not a stake on ultimate wisdom or a lock on virtue, but a way of life that accepts imperfection as imperfection, permitting such spiritual qualities as “serenity” and “the joy of living” to coexist with such earthly realities as “defects” and “shortcomings.”

A.A.’s earliest members “tried on” the ideas and insights of these brilliant, often eccentric thinkers, and whatever matched their own experience became part of the patchwork.

“The Big Book of AA,” Jamison notes, “was initially called The Way Out. Out of what? Not just drinking, but the claustrophobic crawl space of the self.”

I took a medium-sized bottle of Jim Beam and drank from it under the covers while reading No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton. Without God, we are no longer persons. We become dumb animals under pain, happy if we can behave at least like quiet animals and die without too much confusion.

He penned an autobiographical tract that he called “Discourses on the Sober Life,”