I thought of this line in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous the other day after talking to a client who had failed many times at getting clean and sober. He'd been in over a dozen treatment programs in the last several years. Yet, for some reason, he hadn't succeeded. He said he was totally depressed about his history of failure and felt like giving up. He felt as if he couldn't succeed at anything.
To me, this advice from the Big Book was way ahead of its time. Yet it was brilliant. Because if one follows this advice – as many of us have – we eventually learn what works. I've never read any statistics about those who went to the nearest barroom and took a drink and found out that they really weren't alcoholics. I'd assume there are a few. But the ones I'm familiar with have tried every conceivable way to use drugs and alcohol. They told me that each time they tried to be a social drinker they never succeeded. Their lives went into a tailspin and they ended up losing everything.
Failing over and over to get clean and sober doesn't mean we can't do it. We just need to never give up.
We can look outside of the world of recovery to see some excellent examples of those who tried and tried and finally succeeded.
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
- Albert Einstein was thought to be mentally handicapped as a child.
- Abraham Lincoln went to war as a captain and returned as a private.
- Walt Disney's newspaper editor told him that he 'had no good ideas and "lacked imagination."
- Elvis Presley was fired from the Grand Old Opry and told he should go back to driving a truck.
- Steven King's first book was rejected by 30 publishers.
