Remember

‘Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful’, p58, The Big Book.

This is a line from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, well known to those who’ve hung around ‘the rooms’ for any length of time. ‘The Big Book’ is the colloquial term for AA’s guiding text, which is formally titled ‘Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism’, and from which the organisation itself takes its name. It’s one of the bestselling books of the last century, having sold over 30 million copies.

Of course, being a drunken idiot, I’ve managed to lose my copy (I have a version on my phone instead) but when I first got it a couple of years back, I thought I was being clever by removing the dust jacket so that no one could see the words ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ beaming out from the cover. What I didn’t realise is that the plain blue hardback underneath has the famous words written horizontally in big, gold block capitals on the spine. So, when I casually placed it on the bar of a coffee shop I was visiting, the guy serving me immediately clocked this and said loudly, ‘Oh, are you an alcoholic then?’ So much for anonymity. This tactic also had the effect of outing my then sponsor who arrived to meet me carrying his own, identical, copy of the Big Book, similarly without its dust jacket. ‘Oh, are you an alcoholic too?’ said the guy behind the bar, causing dark thoughts of clubbing the wretched man to death with the tome in question.

Anyway, me and my sponsor – we shall call him ‘R’ for fear of outing the poor man again – headed for the beach with our coffees, there to pore over the sacred text in question. This is the advised way to do it. It’s fine to read it on your own of course, necessary in fact, but with the help of someone who’s read it multiple times and can point out the subtleties, much more becomes clear. And so it was that we reached page 58, where these words appear:

‘Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful’. R looked at me and asked, ‘What’s the most important word in that sentence?’. Of course, being dumber than I sometimes seem, I was stumped. Reaching for what I knew I cried, ‘Alcohol!’ Nope. ‘Powerful?’ Nope. ‘Baffling?’ Nope. Every time missing the word that mattered, which even drops a massive clue as to its importance by appearing at the very front of the sentence: ‘Remember’. This hit me like an epiphanic freight train and for a moment I was genuinely stunned by the insight. But of course: Remember. Remember what happens when you drink. Remember who you become when you’re drunk. Remember the people you love. Remember who you really are. Remember who you want to be. Remember.

So struck was I by this enabling and powerful thought, that I considered immediately heading for nearest tattoo parlour (which are legion in this neck of the woods) and having the word tattooed on the underside of my right forearm – the one I would use, for instance, to reach into a fridge or a shelf and grab a bottle of wine, only now to be confronted by the startling word: Remember. I didn’t get a tattoo largely because I’m a coward and am told that having the inside of your forearm done is quite painful. Besides I’m wary of having AA tattoos, popular in the fellowship, for a number of good reasons. A friend of mine at AA, decided that a certain day would be her sobriety date, and promptly had it tattooed proudly at the top of her breast – only to go out and get raging drunk the very next day. Next stop the laser parlour.

But despite forgetting to enact it on numerous occasions since, the enabling thought of remembrance has stuck with me. It’s easy for all of us to forget who we are and what we’re doing from time to time. The world rushes by after all and clinging onto any notion of self can be hard enough as it is, worse if you’ve just imbibed three bottles of wine in the space of two hours, and are hell bent on repeating that feat.

So now I simply try to do as advised and remember. Not in despair and sadness or recrimination, but in the hope that memory brings with it action and wisdom and with that, a better day tomorrow.

One day at a time.