Bill Wilson

"I was aghast.  So that was it__last summer an alcoholic crackpot: now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion.  He had that starry-eyed look. Yes, the old boy was on fire all right, But bless his heart, let him rant!  Besides, my gin would last longer that his preaching."  __Bill Wilson

The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. there was something about his eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened?
I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had got into the fellow, He wasn't himself.
'Come, what's all this about?' I queried.
He looked straight at me. Simply, but smilingly, he said, 'I've got religion."

 The cheery voice of an old school friend asked if he might come over.  He was sober.  It was years since I could remember his coming to New York in that condition. I was amazed.   Rumor had it that he had been committed for alcoholic insanity.  I wondered how he had escaped.  Of course he would have dinner, and then I could drink openly with him.  Unmindful of his welfare, I thought only of recapturing the spirit of other days. There was that time we had chartered an airplane to complete a jag! His coming was an oasis in this dreary desert of futility.  The very thing--an oasis! Drinkers are like that." __Bill Wilson

"Near the end of that bleak November, I sat drinking in my kitchen. With a certain satisfaction I reflected there was enough gin concealed about the house to carry me through that night and the next day. My wife was at work. I wondered whether I dared hide a full bottle of gin near the head of our bed. I would need it by daylight." __Bill Wilson

"How dark it is before the dawn! In reality, that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes." __Bill Wilson

"Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man.  Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insanity of the first drink, and on Armistice Day, 1934, I was off again.  Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end." __ Bill Wilson

 
"No words can tell of the loneliness and despair
I found in that bitter morass of self-pity.
Quicksand stretched around me in all directions.
 I had met my match. Alcohol was my master."
__Bil Wilson

"...the frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski-jump. After a time I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum." __Bill Wilson

 
"It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months the goose hung high. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer--self-knowledge." __Bill Wilson

" My writhing nerves were stilled at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn't. That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No--not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Gin would fix that. So two bottles, and--oblivion."
__Bill Wilson
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