Book review: ‘Alcohol Was My God’ author credits A.A. with help embracing sobriety

The author is writing under a pseudonym. He had a drinking problem in his youth, during high school and college, and after he finally stopped drinking alcohol he has not consumed it again for over fifty years. He credits the organization Alcoholics Anonymous for helping him to break out of that alcoholic cycle to embrace sobriety.

This is also a book about faith and spirituality. A.A. is not a religious organization but the twelve steps that members “work” to try to achieve then maintain their sobriety do rely upon embracing a higher power so it does have some spiritual aspects to it while it isn’t about religion.

The author was raised Catholic then he fell away from his faith for a time. In this memoir he reveals that as he was curtailing his alcohol consumption he was also able to embrace his Catholic faith again as well. As he stopped drinking he began to immerse himself in theology and this became the gateway to a long career as an academic and theologian.

First he had to hit bottom. He drank until he blacked out. It was the lubricant engaging the gears of his social life. As he sank deeper into that existence he began driving away his friends while any romantic relationships frayed as well. What was he doing to himself?

He writes: “my cousin took me to my first A.A. meeting. Before I entered the room. I thought that joining A.A. meant that my real life was over. No drinking, no life. I imagined that in A.A. meetings the participants included my cousin plus a bunch of extremely old men sitting around in wife-beater tee-shirts playing checkers.”

He had a huge ego. After joining A.A. he began to look at himself. He tried to stop drinking and had a relapse. He began attending meetings again. As he worked his way through the twelve steps he began to find some peace and a clearer comprehension of his own faults.

The philosopher William James wrote about the two kinds of people he observed in the world, the “healthy-souled” and the “sick-souled.” The author recognized himself as one of those “sick-souled” individuals “that “they are people who live with extreme fear, anxiety, self-loathing, and mistrust.”

While the author is a retired professor he is not delivering a lecture here. He got help and he’s offering others what he has found and needed in the event they might be desiring some of the same things, too.