Anne V. is a former alcoholic. But she remained Alcoholic Anonymous. She hasn't drunk for years, but she will never leave this fraternity of former drinkers who not only saved her life, but made her “drunk with life”.

Looking back over the years, she delivers a moving account of her journey of suffering, then of rebirth. It is indeed a real birth that Alcoholics Anonymous proceeded. So much so that the anniversary date of his new birth took precedence over the first, the civil one. “And here today, thirty-two years ago – she realizes while writing these lines – just thirty-two years since I walked through the door of Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time, and all day, carried, bathed, invaded by gratitude, I celebrated a secret feast in my heart. What's surprising about that? Where would I be if I hadn't encountered AA along the way? I was not born into Alcoholics Anonymous – I had lived before them, intensely, and experienced the taste of happiness, and tenderness, and wonder at the beauty of the world. But when all was pain to me, they allowed me to let go of this unlife like a worn garment slipping off my shoulders. Rebirth? Resurrection? It doesn't matter: I know it well, I am alive today thanks to them”.

We do not always know that Alcoholics Anonymous is an American association, but that the idea was suggested to its founder by CG Jung, to whom one of his compatriots had turned to free himself from his alcoholism. After a first failure, Jung had confided to him that the few who got out of it were people who had had a vital spiritual experience. As he protested his faith, Jung replied that it was not about that, not about an ordinary religious faith, but about an experience of conversion. “I can only recommend that you immerse yourself in the religious atmosphere of your choice, recognize your personal defeat and dedicate yourselves to whatever God you recognize. Perhaps you will then be struck by the flash of this transforming experience of conversion”. The intuition that "at the root of alcoholism - a sacred evil - there is a nebulous but overflowing feeling of God", which must be transmuted, was the basis of the success of the "program of AA, a non-religious movement despite an explicit reference to God (or a "Higher Power").

The author, who knew Gitta Mallasz well and worked with her on the translation of Talking with Angels, found there this founding intuition of AA. She quotes in her book fragments of this intoxicating passage from Interview 15 with Gitta:

All drunkenness is a foretaste of the Weightless.
That's why man seeks it...
but on the wrong path.
BE DRUNK ON GOD! (*)
That's the symbol of wine: it's HIS blood.
Virtue, kindness, good intentions
are only chipped pots, empty pots, without the Drink.
With an unquenchable thirst
be thirsty for IVRESSE,
who alone can deliver.
What do you want to give, if there's nothing in you!
You are miserable pots without the Drink.
TO ONE WHO REALLY ASK FOR A DRINK,
THE DRINK IS GIVEN.

 Until I'm thirsty. Reborn from alcohol, Anne V, new paperback edition from Robert Laffont (Documento). 353 pages, €8.90. The book actually contains three, more or less intertwined: the testimony, an introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous, and a practical guide for alcoholics and their loved ones.

We can also reread chapter XV of the Dialogues as I experienced them, entitled drunkenness and weight.

(*) Close translation of the Hungarian: "Enivrez-vous en Dieu!

EL