To Slake a Thirst: The Matt Talbot Way to Sobriety

Rating:
Summary: What I have been looking for!
Review: After almost 3 years in A.A., I was happy to see this book come out because I could not deal with A.A.'s concept of "God as we understand him" anymore. I would never sponsor anybody in A.A. because I had no intentions of telling them to "choose a god of your understanding". To me this is nothing more than suggesting that somebody create God in their own image and encouraging them to partake in idolatry. This book gave me what I needed to leave A.A. with confidence.

Maynard developed a system based on what is known about how Matt Talbot (d 1925) arrested his alcoholism well before A.A. was around. It involves offering your affections to alcohol to Christ as an act of love. It is one thing to say you love Christ but another to actually demonstrate that love which is what this method is about. It is a sacrifice of self based on a love of Christ. To have a love of Christ that will grow "without measure" is an integral part of this program. There are explicit steps to esure that our love of Christ is constantly intensified.

I am a Traditional Catholic who is very anoyed by most Catholic writting since Vatican II (1965) because of it's eccumenical orientation. Although eccumenical, I was able to easily overlook the eccumenical language of this book and extract the substance of what I needed to get away from A.A.

This is the only book I know of which could be used by somebody who does not want to make compromises with their Catholic faith.

Rating:
Summary: A Catholic book that's afraid to be Catholic!
Review: When I first heard about Matt Talbot I was fascinated. This was a saint I could relate to! An ordinary working-class man who struggled with alcohol and substituted a saintly life for drinking! But when I started to read this book, I grew disapointed. Matt Talbot was Catholic, and the author of this book is Catholic, but the author goes out of his way to "strip down" everything and make the book appealling to non-Catholic Christians (minimize discussion of Mary, etc). In doing this, the author strips away what made Matt Talbot's life fascinating; his devotion to his CATHOLIC (not non-denominational Christian) faith. What a let-down.

Rating:
Summary: Spirits and the Spirit
Review: You won't get any dreary "Here's how I finally hit bottom" tales from this book by an alcoholic who stopped drinking more than 15 years ago. Instead, Philip Maynard lets us look into the mind of the alcoholic. According to Maynard, drinking provided a release from daily stress and the feeling of being lifted "above the world" to a realm of unsurpassed pleasure and self-knowledge. The drinker is, in effect, "fooled into believing he has hit on the key to an easy transcendence over the world."

After drinking heavily for most of his adult life and repeatedly trying to quit, chiefly with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, Maynard was able to stop for good when he realized that the thirst he was trying to satisfy was actually a spritual one. His life changed when he acknowledged that the "transcendent" feeling he got from liquor was a crude and destructive substitute for the love of God. Maynard came to that realization when he learned about the life of Matt Talbot, a Dublin dockworker, a confirmed alcoholic by his 20's, who gave up drinking at 28 and whose spirity so soared in the process that he is now a candidate for sainthood. The Matt Talbot way to sobriety, as laid out by Maynard in this book, is a set of spiritual exercises intended to keep the drinker focussed on God, through Jesus, instead of on the alcoholic high. Maynard claims the Matt Talbot Way can be followed by any Christian; it seems to this writer that it holds promise for anyone who can recognize a spiritual dimension in him or herself.

Rating:
Summary: What I have been looking for!
Review: You won't get any dreary "Here's how I finally hit bottom" tales from this book by an alcoholic who stopped drinking more than 15 years ago. Instead, Philip Maynard lets us look into the mind of the alcoholic. According to Maynard, drinking provided a release from daily stress and the feeling of being lifted "above the world" to a realm of unsurpassed pleasure and self-knowledge. The drinker is, in effect, "fooled into believing he has hit on the key to an easy transcendence over the world."

After drinking heavily for most of his adult life and repeatedly trying to quit, chiefly with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, Maynard was able to stop for good when he realized that the thirst he was trying to satisfy was actually a spritual one. His life changed when he acknowledged that the "transcendent" feeling he got from liquor was a crude and destructive substitute for the love of God. Maynard came to that realization when he learned about the life of Matt Talbot, a Dublin dockworker, a confirmed alcoholic by his 20's, who gave up drinking at 28 and whose spirity so soared in the process that he is now a candidate for sainthood. The Matt Talbot way to sobriety, as laid out by Maynard in this book, is a set of spiritual exercises intended to keep the drinker focussed on God, through Jesus, instead of on the alcoholic high. Maynard claims the Matt Talbot Way can be followed by any Christian; it seems to this writer that it holds promise for anyone who can recognize a spiritual dimension in him or herself.