Endigar 906 ~ Silkie
Step One: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”
1st Step Principle: We will find enduring strength only when we first admit complete defeat over our isolated, obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior. (Adapted from 12 Steps & 12 Traditions, top of page 22)
AA Extracted Value: Honesty
ACA Extracted Values: Powerlessness & Surrender
Other Extracted Values: Acceptance
Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal: “Doctor, I cannot go on like this! I have everything to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!” Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy. Although he gives all that is in him, it often is not enough. One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change. Though the aggregate of recoveries resulting from psychiatric effort is considerable, we physicians must admit we have made little impression upon the problem as a whole. Many types do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.
~ Alcoholics Anonymous, The Doctor’s Opinion, page xxix
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Dr. William Silkworth was the neuro-psychiatrist who treated Bill Wilson the last three of the four times he was admitted to Towns Hospital for detoxification. Silkie, the “little doctor who loved drunks,” carried no illusion that medical science could do anything to help alcoholics recover. Based on the meager treatment options of the time, he estimated alcoholics had a two percent chance of recovery. Perhaps that was why he encouraged Bill to hang on to whatever had happened to him during his white light, hot flash religious conversion experience at the hospital in December of 1934. Silkworth knew from his own clinical experience that no human power could get alcoholics sober, and he was honest enough to share that observation with his patients.
Do I accept the fact that it is highly unlikely professional medical therapy alone will be able to get and keep me sober?
~ Practice These Principles by Alex M.
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I had strong suspicions during the heavy drinking I did in the military that I seemed to be responding to intoxication differently than other airmen and soldiers. Eventually I “white-knuckled” my way to abstinence and got married and had children. When my marriage blew apart because of deeper issues in my life, I gave up and returned to drinking. When I began to rack up consequences, I attempted to stop. I was shocked that no amount of will power was sufficient to put the brakes on. When the military sent me to rehab, I was still dumbfounded at my situation. The best thing that professionals could do was to point me to the rooms of AA. Now I am just as surprised that I am able to live a sober life. I was saved from suicidal despair and able to give my children an example of overcoming rather than the burden of a tragic end. Medical therapy has its place, but the Twelve Steps was what opened the door to a Power greater than my hell. I more than accept this reality, I rely on it.
Daily Reprieve 
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