I love the Mark Twain quote …”It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.
This article does a great job of exploring how indispensable an ‘open mind’ is to our recovery. – Bruce M.
If there’s one thing alcoholics are exceptionally good at, it’s being absolutely certain. Certain we aren’t as bad as those people. Certain we can quit whenever we really decide to. Certain everyone else is overreacting. Certain the problem is our job. Our marriage. Our parents. Our anxiety. Our luck. Our boss. The economy. The bartender who pours too heavy.
Just not us.
It’s fascinating, really. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, one of his recurring themes is that our brains don’t simply process reality. They build stories that feel true. Once those stories settle in, our minds become less interested in discovering truth than defending what we’ve already decided is true. Identification anyone? I can relate.
The Most Dangerous Sentence I Ever Believed
“I’ve got this.” Not because it was true. Because I never questioned it. See, alcoholism isn’t just a drinking problem. It’s a certainty problem (my mental states – pg. 35 More About Alcohlism). I had explanations for everything.
- Why I drank.
- Why I couldn’t stop.
- Why I didn’t really need to stop.
- Why tomorrow would be different.
- Why this time would be different.
My thinking had become like one of those GPS units from twenty years ago. Even after driving into a lake, it calmly announced: “Proceed to the highlighted route.” (LOL!) That’s alcoholism, which for the record has little to do with liquor.
Then Something Unexpected Happened
A friend invited me to an AA meeting (because the Dallas court system had invited him). I wasn’t all that curious. I was just trying to be altruistic. Perhaps I was just collecting evidence. Evidence that AA wasn’t for me.
I remember walking into a meeting and I mentally categorized people before they even introduced themselves. He’s probably lost everything. She’s probably here because of a DUI. That guy? Court ordered. My mind was moving faster than reality.
Then an older gentleman shared something so ordinary it completely disrupted my carefully constructed narrative. If memory serves me correctly he said something along the lines of, “I didn’t come here because I couldn’t control my drinking. I came because drinking had become the only way I knew how to control my life.”
While I didn’t fully understand exactly what he meant by that, something inside me broke just a little bit. That sentence bothered me all week. Not because I agreed with it but because I couldn’t dismiss it.
Sometimes that’s where recovery begins, not with belief but with disruption.
Curiosity Is More Powerful Than Conviction
The Big Book never asks us to become experts before we begin. It asks something much smaller and harder. Open-mindedness. That’s different.
Open-mindedness isn’t agreeing with everything people say. It isn’t checking your brain at the door. It certainly isn’t pretending every meeting is profound. It simply means holding your conclusions loosely enough that new evidence still has somewhere to land. Think about that. If your cup is already full, nothing else fits. If your mind is already full, neither does recovery.
What Finally Changed?
People sometimes ask what finally convinced me I was alcoholic. They’re usually expecting some dramatic disaster. There wasn’t one. It started off by reading the old pamphlet A.A. used to publish titled, “The 44 Questions.” When I read it 42 of 44 had my name all over them. That’s important because it was the first time the denial began to crack and when I began to understand what rigorous honesty was all about.
Instead, it felt more like standing in front of the old water tower in Grapevine after a Texas thunderstorm. The sky clears gradually. One cloud at a time. Then suddenly you realize you’ve been seeing everything through gray light for years. My certainty didn’t collapse all at once. It leaked. One contradiction at a time.
The Question That Matters
People often ask what makes someone ready for AA. I don’t think it’s desperation alone (even though desperation often plays a huge part). I’ve met desperate people who still knew all the answers. I think it’s something else. I think its that moment that certainty becomes exhausting. The moment defending your story requires more energy than questioning it. The moment you realize you are tired of negotiating with reality. That’s when curiosity sneaks in. Just a crack. Just enough light.
Recovery doesn’t usually begin when someone says, “I’ve figured it out.” It begins when someone quietly says, “What if I’ve been wrong?”
Curiosity Doesn’t Eliminate Fear
God does. The early members of AA weren’t asking newcomers to adopt a new religion, a new personality, or a new identity overnight. They were asking something much more practical. “Would you be willing to believe that your current operating system has a bug?” Not uninstall everything. Just run the diagnostic. That seemed remarkably reasonable. It’s also incredibly difficult. Because our egos don’t like software updates. Is it possible that there is a Power greater than you that can get your operating system running smoothly?
Looking Back
Today I still have opinions. Strong ones. But recovery (and my experience) has taught me to hold them with open hands instead of clenched fists. I’ve discovered that growth usually arrives disguised as discomfort. The ideas that changed my life were almost never the ones I instantly loved. They were the ones I initially resisted. And that’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Certainty kept me exactly where I was. Curiosity, with God’s help led me somewhere I never imagined. Maybe that’s why the first requirement for recovery isn’t intelligence.
It isn’t discipline.
It isn’t even certainty that AA will work.
It’s simply the willingness to wonder…
“What if there’s another way?”
Note – This article appears in the blog for Rick W’s excellent website ‘Take the 12’. Rick W has over 38 years of sobriety and offers excellent free resources including his outstanding book ‘The Prep Steps: Setting Up Action In A.A’ – Bruce M.