Alcoholism and the highly intelligent person
We had to reconsider or die
“To the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman, many A.A.’s can say, ‘Yes, we were like you—far too smart for our own good…Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brain power alone…The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers.’
‘But John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die.’”
-As Bill Sees It p. 60 (also in Step Two of the Twelve and Twelve)
I remember my last drunken holiday season very well. I was a desperate drunk who had no idea that my real problem was alcoholism. Instead I honestly believed my problem was the end of my marriage and my many troubles with work. It was not until I got sober almost six months later that I considered just how clearly my alcoholism had progressed that last Christmas and New Year’s.
I flew home to the Chicago area with my young son for Christmas. I had been hiding out in a local casino hotel for the past two weeks, having left my husband and waiting for a restraining order to be served. I will never forget the liquor store in that casino, the one I bought my vodka from every day. Or how the police called me to do a well-check, instigated by the husband I had left with our son. Or sitting in the bathroom at night in that small hotel room drinking nonstop while my little boy slept.
When I got to my parents’, my grandparents, who were still alive, were there. It was Christmas. I needed a drink. My parents still had the Smirnoff strawberry vodka I had purchased the previous summer on a visit. I sat across the table from my grandmother, who never drank, and proceeded to get drunk.
On New Year’s Eve we went to a family friend’s party and I found the Absolut Vodka—and it was game on. I hovered at the table with that vodka until I was good and drunk. Only then could I interact with the others at the party—good people who were all friends of my parents.
It didn’t take me long to become a full-blown alcoholic. I got sober in 2005. That Christmas and New Year’s of 2004 I remember clearly, but I do not remember much from the two years before. I have many blank spots to this day and those memories have never really come back. I am grateful, however, that God has let me remember those last horrible six months.
By the time I entered AA on June 28, 2005, I had certainly become an all-time loser. I had lost two jobs in the past six months. I had legal trouble. I just couldn’t function at all. And the sad thing is that I was a highly educated woman who had been very successful in my career. I was intelligent. But alcoholism took me anyway. Alcoholism takes people like me and reduces us to nothing.
I had to get very dumb very quickly once I started going to AA. My thinking that I had all of the answers would not work. Because my drinking had beaten me so badly, I became very open-minded to the idea of the Twelve Steps, meetings, sponsorship, and God. I truly did admit defeat—and that was the beginning of sobriety.
As I went to more and more meetings—usually twice a day and never missing a day, my memory of that holiday season began opening up to me, and I felt incredible guilt and shame. And that is exactly why I had to stay. The people in AA loved and supported me once I began to realize the damage I had done. I began to realize the truth—this was the real me. I was no longer the successful and smart girl I once was. I was broken and had made a complete shambles of my life. It was me—not them.
To my readers: Yesterday I reflected on the fact that I started writing exactly three years ago on January 1, 2021. That was the day I began writing With Gratitude, and I wrote every single day until that book was finished on October 31, 2021. And I have never stopped writing thanks to my stack! It still seems like a miracle to me, but then I remember that we are living in the age of miracles—our own recovery proves that. Thank you for helping me carry the message for another year.