Page 411 - The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

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400 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
Then I hit on a clever solution. I have several aca-
demic degrees, and someone as smart as I was could
solve this problem. The idea was to put off the first
drink as long as possible and go to bed after the last
drink. That worked out okay, and I told the counselor
I was able to keep it to five a day with little or no
problem. But she said if you had to control something,
it was out of control.
During one session she suggested that I try not
drinking at all one weekend. “Okay,” I said. She also
suggested that I send the kids off somewhere for the
weekend because I might be irritable.
I used to watch a lot of late-night movies—it was
my time to relax by having a few drinks, a habit
that started in night school when I had a full-time job
and was studying chemistry at night. I had seen movie
versions of what happened to people who had
drinking problems: The Lost Weekend, Days of
Wine and Roses, and others. And so I was nervous
about raging, losing control, and maybe being violent
as my wife had said I was. So we packed up the kids
and the booze (all of it) and took all to my wife’s
parents.
Much to my surprise the weekend went well—no
problems—and in the next session I told my counselor
so. She said, “What about the meeting?” I said, “What
meeting?” She said, “The A.A. meeting.” I said, “What
A.A. meeting? We never talked about that.” She said I
had agreed to go to an A.A. meeting. So out came a
meeting list. She explained about open and closed
meetings. I decided on one I thought would be okay
for me—a men’s discussion group. They would be my
kind of people, and the time fit into my schedule. The