Today’s topic is that odd experience that some people cite as the starting point for their sobriety. It’s the equivalent of a “blinding flash of light” that suddenly, mysteriously, removes their fierce craving for alcohol or drugs.
Permanently.
This is not exactly common. I can’t think of more than a few I’ve met or read about that cite such an experience. Now one of them, the great actor Anthony Hopkins, is sharing his as he comes up on 50 years of sobriety.
Here’s how he described it to a journalist: “I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout, no clue where I was going, when I realized that I could have killed somebody — or myself, which I didn’t care about.” Suddenly, he hears a voice in his head that he describes as “vocal, male, reasonable, like a radio voice” — promising him that his drinking is finally at an end.
“Now you can start living,” the voice in his head assures him. “And it has all been for a purpose, so don’t forget one moment of it.”
According to Hopkins, “the craving to drink was taken from me, or left.”
He doesn’t pretend to fully understand what happened, or why he was chosen for what amounted to a minor miracle . “I don’t have any theories except divinity or that power that we all possess inside us that creates us from birth, life force, whatever it is… It’s a consciousness, I believe. That’s all I know.”
I’ve heard a couple of other such accounts over the years. One young man, now a respected figure who runs a street ministry in California, described a moment when, homeless, he wandered into an empty church, mainly to escape the weather. While sitting by himself in a pew, he hears a voice, and feels the desire for drugs emptying away.
I told him that sounded a bit like Bill W’s experience. “Who’s Bill W.?” he wanted to know.
That young man attributed his conversion to God, but some others do not. Nonetheless, they were all deeply grateful that it had happened when they most needed it.
And the desire to drink or use drugs had not returned.
“At least not yet,” one averred. “I was given no guarantees.”
Something else worth noting: at the time of the experience, all were either currently or very recently intoxicated, including one who was languishing in a hospital bed, recovering from the DTs.
Does that make a difference? Your guess is as good as mine.
