“…he must redouble his spiritual activities if he expects to survive.” –Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 120
Did you know there are people who own a 1939 dictionary for the sole purpose of understanding the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, word by word, better? I’m not going to judge because, for me, judgement means it will happen to me, redoubled, and I’ll end up owning not one, but two 1939 dictionaries, maybe the Webster’s and the venerable, 600lb OED, so I can understand the Big Book, word by word, double better.
It’s “redouble” I want to talk about.
I’m a hopeless compulsive eater and codependent. That’s what brings me to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. (If it works for the drunks, it can work for us food drunks too.) The first time I read this passage, in my most hated chapter, “To Wives,” I was in the middle of a week long binge, beating my brains out with program stuff, clinging to reaching out to newcomers like cellophane clings to a cold bowl (I stole that line), and still I was bingeing. Work work work, binge binge binge, what seemed like endlessly. And I read that passage and what it seemed to me was that it was saying that the efforts I already doubled, I had to double again if I expected to survive. I couldn’t imagine a more unfair thing. Not two times as much service now, but four. How long did they want me to spend in a day on this? Did they really want me to be accepting phone calls in the wee hours? (They did.) Did they really want this interfering with my work and leisure? (They did.) Did they really want me to let a food drunk codependent set my mattress on fire? (They mentioned that specifically.) Did they really want me to be this uncomfortable? (Sorta.)
What they really really wanted was for me to be sober. All that discomfort and interference stuff is how they got there and, double double toil and drunken trouble, that’s how they want me to get there too.
I have, just in the last couple of weeks—double a week—gotten food and codependency sober. I had to go through the process of utter desperation again (double), I had to go through the steps a third time (triple), and I had to redouble that service (quadruple), and, after all that, (especially the double desperation part), my Higher Power did relieve me of the compulsion. Turns out that redoubling stuff works even if I only sort of know what that word means. Where’s that old drunk dictionary?
And while we’re on the subject, along with my double dictionaries, I’d like a 1939 Urban Dictionary too because my “imperious urge” wants nothing more than to know what a “whoopee party” is and how to best word inviting myself to it.
-Michelle A.
If you’d like to talk more about Big Book focused 12 step recovery for compulsive eating and/or codependency, please feel free to email me at: BigBookBlogM@gmail.com
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