Don’t Get Cocky!

January 1945

By: J.W.T. | Manhattan, New York

The purpose of this little piece is to pass along to you an experience. Believe me, it is not an effort to moralize. It is not an effort to push any beat-up platitudes down your throat. It is simply something that happened to me. If you have had a similar experience, you will understand. If you haven’t, my experience may help you.

About two years ago, I heard of the A.A. way of life. Several of us were sitting around the newsroom of a New York newspaper and the subject of alcoholic drinking was being kicked around. A photographer, who had been completely sober for a long time, was telling us how he did it.

It was 2:15 a.m. and I had a hangover. I was suffering through the last fifteen minutes of the shift before beating it over to Sam’s for a required number of “doubles.” I had been drinking steadily for two weeks and had reached the point where my drinking was for relief rather than for pleasure. In other words, the drinks I would take at 2:30 were a necessity. There would be no fun in them for me.

The photographer was saying that there was a group of alcoholics in New York who were staying sober with no trouble at all. He told us that he hadn’t believed it until he went around to an A.A. meeting and saw for himself. He informed us that he had become a member of A.A., but he didn’t have to remind us that he was staying sober. Don’t get me wrong. This guy wasn’t preaching to us. He simply stated that A.A. gave him the answer to his problem.

As a consequence of the photographer’s story, I went around to the 41st Street Clubhouse meeting on the following Tuesday night. I was still extremely shaky because I was only three days away from the two-weeks binge. The meeting was interesting and, despite my jittery condition, I stayed it out. I left, after meeting a few A.A.s, with the hope of solving my drinking problem.

So far, there is nothing unusual about my story. I continued to go to A.A. meetings; offered my services as an orderly at Knickerbocker Hospital; went out on 12th Step work; and made at least three meetings a week a part of this new way of life. I stayed sober. More important, I didn’t seem to miss drinking and I was finding a new happiness. Then it began to happen.

It was about five months after my introduction to A.A. that I began to get a little bored by the meetings. By then, I had heard it all. When the speakers walked to the platform, I knew what they would say. Unless someone “was amusing” or “told an especially interesting story,” I was beginning to get a little fed up with it all. I began to attend only two meetings a week. Later, I went to one meeting a week–maybe.

It was about this time that I began to lose my humility about my drinking problem. I was feeling fine. I was sober. Undoubtedly, my work had improved. Somehow, I had gained a new feeling of self-confidence in my affairs. I had found the solution to my problem and therefore I had no further use for A.A. Thank God, I wouldn’t have to go around to “that damned church” to be bored for two hours!

When someone asked me why I stopped drinking, I would say that I had found a way to “lick the stuff myself.” When fellow A.A.s would call me for lunch or ask why I hadn’t been around to meetings, I made excuses. When the non-alcoholic drinkers on the newspaper went over to Sam’s for a few drinks, I went along just to show them how I could stay there without drinking and have as much fun as anybody. Oh! Brother, did I have the answer!

Of course, the inevitable happened. Over at Sam’s one morning I felt particularly cocky and ordered a glass of ale. I sipped the ale with anticipation and pleasure. I had another. After a third, I left and went to my apartment for what I later claimed was the “best night’s sleep I’d had in years.”

The next day, I felt fine. I was more convinced than ever that I could “hold my whiskey” like anyone else. And so, I gradually returned to my old way of life. In less than two weeks, I was in the squirrel cage. This time it took me about six weeks and two trips to the hospital to get sobered up. Somehow, I kept my job and when I returned to the newsroom, the A.A. photographer was waiting for me.

He asked me to go over to the club with him but he didn’t lecture to me. In fact, he laughed about it. He told me that when he saw me drinking he knew what would happen. He felt that I had to learn to accept A.A. “the hard way.”

I am back again in A.A. I am attending meetings two or three times a week. I have been sober about ten months now by living the A.A. way. And I have learned something: If you get cocky in A.A., brother, you’re going to lose A.A., and if you lose A.A., you are losing the only solution to your drinking problem.

Copyright © The AA Grapevine, Inc.