September 26

September 26 – AM          Page 174-175, Doctor Bob’s Nightmare, Part I

When those two years were up, I opened an office downtown.  I had some money, all the time in the world, and considerable stomach trouble.  I soon discovered that a couple of drinks would alleviate my gastric distress, at least for a few hours at a time, so it was not at all difficult for me to return to my former excessive indulgence.
By this time I was beginning to pay very dearly physically and, in hope of relief, voluntarily incarcerated myself at least a dozen times in one of the local sanitariums.  I was between Scylla and Charybdis now, because if I did not drink my stomach tortured me, and if I did, my nerves did the same thing.  After three years of this, I wound up in the local hospital where they attempted to help me, but I would get my friends to smuggle me a quart, or I would steal the alcohol about the building, so that I got rapidly worse.

September 26 – PM          Page 156-157, A Vision For You, Chapter 11

But life was not easy for the two friends.  Plenty of difficulties presented themselves. Both saw that they must keep spiritually active.  One day they called up the head nurse of a local hospital.  They explained their need and inquired if she had a first class alcoholic prospect.
She replied, “Yes, we’ve got a corker.  He’s just beaten up a couple of nurses.  Goes off his head completely when he’s drinking.  But he’s a grand chap when he’s sober, though he’s been in here eight times in the last six months.  Understand he was once a well-known lawyer in town, but just now we’ve got him strapped down tight.”*
Here was a prospect all right but, by the description, none too promising.  The use of spiritual principles in such cases was not so well understood as it is now.  But one of the friends said, “Put him in a private room.  We’ll be down.”
Two days later, a future fellow of Alcoholics Anonymous stared glassily at the strangers beside his bed.  “Who are you fellows, and why this private room?  I was always in a ward before.”
Said one of the visitors, “We’re giving you a treatment for alcoholism.”

* This refers to Bill’s and Dr. Bob’s first visit to A.A. Number Three.  See the Pioneer Section.  This resulted in A.A.’s first group, at Akron, Ohio, in 1935.