The Big Book Chapter 3 ‘More About Alcoholism’ begins with a warning about what happens when we attach ourselves to the old idea that we can control our drinking:
“The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals – usually brief – were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization” Big Book Page 30
Our journey in sobriety has this foundation of withdrawing or surrendering from the fight of trying to control our drinking.
I found this short reflection on ‘Withdrawal’ by the outstanding poet and author David Whyte in his book Consolations very useful in helping understand the paradoxical phrase you hear in AA rooms ‘surrender to win’. It also helps to connect surrender/withdrawal with humility. Bill W says “the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.’a Twelve Steps”. (12&12 p. 70) I hope and trust you’ll also find this short reflection quite relevant to how we can change our lives as we change our stories. It also speaks clearly to me about accepting myself, my alcoholism and my llfe as it is ; not as I wish it to be. – Bruce M.
Withdrawal – Consolations By David Whytte
We stick to the wrong thing quite often, not because it will come to fruition by further effort but because we cannot let go of the way we have decided to tell the story, and we become further enmeshed even by trying to make sense of what entraps us, when what is needed is a simple, clean breaking away.
To remove ourselves entirely and absolutely, abruptly and at times uncompromisingly, is often the real and radically courageous break for freedom. Unsticking ourselves from the mythical Tar Baby, seemingly set up, just for us, right in the middle of our path, we start the process of losing our false enemies, and even our false friends, and most especially the false sense of self we have manufactured to live with them: we make ourselves available for the simple purification of seeing ourselves and our world more elementally and therefore more clearly again. We withdraw, not to disappear but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way: a clear, rested, embodied voice, our life as a suddenly emphatic statement, one we can recognise as our own, and one from which, now, we have absolutely lost the wish to withdraw..