The Language of the Heart

Our co-founder examines the nature of communication

This is an article that Bill W wrote to commemorate 25th Anniversary of AA. Because the article is a huge one, I am presenting the document in segments.

The disease concept from Dr. William Duncan Silkworth:

MY WORKSHOP stands on a hill back of our home. Looking over the valley I see the village community house where our local group meets. Beyond the circle of my horizon lies the one world of AA: eight thousand groups, a quarter of a million of us. How in twenty-five years did AA get the way it is? And where are we going from here?

Often I sense the deep meaning of the phenomenon of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I cannot begin to fathom it. Why, for instance, at this particular point in history has God chosen to communicate His healing grace to so many of us? Who can say what this communication actually is--so mysterious and yet so practical? We can only partly realize what we have received and what it has meant to each of us.

It occurs to me that every aspect of this global unfoldment can be related to a single crucial word. The word is communication. There has been a life-saving communication among ourselves, with the world around us, and with God.

From the beginning, communication in AA has been no ordinary transmission of helpful ideas and attitudes. It has been unusual and sometimes unique. Because of our kinship in suffering, and because our common means of deliverance are effective for ourselves only when constantly carried to others, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart. And what is that? Let's see if I can communicate to you something of what it means to me.

At once I think of my own doctor, William Duncan Silkworth, and how he ministered to me with the language of the heart during the last shattering years of my alcoholism. Love was his magic, and with it he accomplished this wonder: he conveyed to the foggy mind of the drunk that here was a human being who understood, and who cared without limit. He was one who would gladly walk the extra mile with us, and if necessary (as it often was) even the last mile of all. At that time he had already tried to help over twenty thousand drunks, and he had failed with nearly all. Only here and there had this dismal experience of futility been brightened by a genuine recovery. People wondered how he could go on, how he could still believe in the possibility of help for chronic alcoholics. Yet he did believe with a faith that never faltered. He kept saying, "Someday we'll find the answer."

He had developed some ideas of his own about what ailed drunks: they had an obsession to drink, a veritable and a destructive lunacy. Observing that their bodies could no longer tolerate alcohol, he spoke of this as an allergy. Their obsession made them drink and their allergy was the guarantee that they would go mad or die as they kept it up. Here, in contemporary terms, was the age-old dilemma of the alcoholic. Total abstinence, he knew, was the only solution. But how to attain that? If only he could understand them more and identify with them better, then his educational message could perhaps reach into those strange blind caverns of the mind where the blind compulsion to drink was entrenched.

So the little doctor who loved drunks worked on, always in hope that the very next case might somehow reveal more of the answer. When I came to him his more recent concepts and tactics had begun to produce slightly improved results. So he was encouraged, and he went after my situation with something of the enthusiasm and hope of a young doctor on his first critical case. He told me what an infernal malady alcoholism is, and why. He made no promises and he did not try to conceal the poor recovery rate. For the first time I saw and felt the full gravity of my problem. I learned, also for the first time, that I was a sick man emotionally and physically. As every AA today knows, this knowledge can be an enormous relief, I no longer needed to consider myself essentially a fool or a weakling.

This new insight, plus the little doctor's account of a few of his good recoveries, brought me a surge of hope. But above all, my confidence rested on the understanding, the interest, and the affection he so freely gave me. I was not alone any more with my problem. He and I could work it through. Despite several discouraging slips I truly believed this for quite a while. And so did he.

But the hour finally arrived when he knew that I was not going to be one of his exceptions. He would have to begin to walk that last mile with my wife Lois and me. Characteristically he found the courage gently but frankly to tell us the whole truth: neither mine nor his nor any other resource he knew could stop my drinking; I would have to be locked up or suffer brain damage or death within perhaps a year.

It was a verdict I would not have accepted from any other person. He had spoken to me in the language of the heart, and so I was able to receive the truth he offered me. But it was a terrible and hopeless truth. He spoke in the name of science, which I deeply respected, and by science I seemed condemned. Who else could have driven home this indispensable principle on which every recovery depends? I seriously doubt that any other man alive could have done it.

Today every AA member implants in his new prospect just what Dr. Silkworth so powerfully lodged in me. We know that the newcomer has to "hit bottom"; otherwise not much can happen. Be cause we are "drunks who understand," we can use that nutcracker of the obsession-plus-the-allergy as a tool of such power that it can shatter the new man's ego at depth. Only thus can he be convinced that on his own unaided resources he has little or no chance.

The message from Ebby, Bill W friend in the next segment.


For a real deal visit Crossroads.

Crossroads, Inc. is a non-profit, drug and alcohol recovery, organization located in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. Crossroads is a Level Four transitional facility licensed by the State of Arizona. The Crossroads program addresses the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of alcoholism or drug addiction, by providing food, shelter, 12 step structure and discipline. We can help you find direction to sober living. Pick up the phone and call us: 602-279-2585. Visit our website at: http://sober360.com