recovery

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."

"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

"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
.

"...I came home drunk, There had been no fight.  Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn't know.  It hadn't even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way, and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder, for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that. Renewing my resolve, I tried again. Some time passed and confidence began to be replaced by cocksureness. I could laugh at the gin mills. Now I had what it takes!  One day I walked into a cafe to telephone. In no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened? As the whisky rose to my head I told myself I would manage better next time, but I might as well get good and drunk. And I did."  __Bill Wilson

 "...I got a promising business opportunity. Stocks were at the low point of 1932, and I had somehow formed a group to buy.  I was to share generously in the profits.  Then I went on a prodigious bender, and the chance vanished.  I woke up.  This had to be stopped.  I saw I could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business.  And so i did.  Shortly afterward I came home drunk.  There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve?" __Bill Wilson

 
"My drinking assumed serious proportions, continuing all day and almost every night.  The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf.  There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness. Kept me our of those scrapes.