Getting to . . . and Through . . . . a Fouth Step Inventory

It IS a RACE

Don’t you get at least a little cagey when you hear stuff regarding Inventories that comes from outside the AA Big Book — new terms, words and ideas not used by the co-authors? Does hearing non-Big Book phrases, terminology and ideas that cannot be reconciled with the Big Book itself make you feel a little bit uncomfortable? Maybe it is your God given BS radar alarm sounding. Maybe you ought to at least investigate and discover the truth. Yes, even if you read it here. Some of us like to take an already clear idea and re-title it – as if to re-invent it all over again. For example terms like “the turnarounds” when talking about about what the co-authors of the Big Book simply called “our mistakes”. What’s wrong with calling it “our mistakes”? NOTHING is wrong with it. It works fine. It may not be that big of a deal by itself but you will find that there is fire behind smoke, usually. Peek under the kilt of a Big Book Step sponsor blowing that smoke and you could be in for a shock. Things are not always as they appear – nor are people. If you fall for it without first looking you could find yourself ‘hooked’ and it is too late. But if you fall for it without first looking you could find yourself ‘hooked’ and it is too late. New ‘lingo’ and calling AA and that sort of thing just reeks of re-vised techniques that are the products of someones ego injecting its own juice into what is otherwise already clear and detailed precisely as intended. The original language isn’t good enough for some egos – it must insert its own so it can glean some credit for things. There are Big Book Study Groups and other kinds of groups that ‘attract ‘ such predators into their memberships the way Boy Scouts of America or a Summer Camp might subconsciously attract sexual deviants to those organizations to pursue avocational work. Newcomers need to be able to recognize those kinds of predatory individuals so they can attend those fantastically focused meetings and belong to those wonderful Groups without fear of being spirituality raped. You people with sponsors using the “12 & 12″ or Eckhart Tolle, Emmett Fox, Deepak Chopra, and Wayne Dyer books to assist in taking you through the steps know exactly what I am talking about – even if you won’t admit it. That stuff is all over the fellowship in different forms masquerading as the genuine article. But the genuine article is like water to their oil. Often there is more ‘meddling’ lurking underneath. When it come to AA’s spiritual Program of recovery – called The Twelve Steps – if it isn’t in the Big Book then it IS bullshit — and if it says it’s in the Big Book and it still isn’t . . . . then it’s lying bullshit.

PART II

Here is an interesting concept: “If you do a fourth step too soon you will relapse or commit suicide”. Or another favorite: “If you do a fourth step too rapidly you will not be thorough enough and you will relapse or commit suicide”

Have you heard either of these inventions? Most of us have. Could you imagine that advice being given to Bill Wilson when he and his “sponsor” Ebby Thacher did this work from Bill W’s detox hospital bed? How about Doctor Bob in Akron or Bill D the lawyer, Clarence Snyder — all of the co-founders? We can even hear this stuff from self-styled AA veterans who aren’t “old-timers” at all but are really just longtime fellow-ship addicts attending meetings meetings and more meeting – Jesus Christ, two three meetings a day- seven days a week, when do they ever “work with others” (they don’t) . Does this seem like freedom to you?

It is no wonder that we cannot keep folks in the fellowship for much longer than a typical five year ‘tour of duty’. We have people going to so many meetings, clinging to our selfish cultish clannish cliques that they become AA Burn-Outs – over-heated on their self-inflicted and guilt powered excessive fellow-shipping — always before they have ever even been properly introduced to the Twelve Steps. Most have never even been taken through Step One.

Where the Grand Daddies of Recovery – the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous were – back in the thirties and forties – turning out spiritually weakened recovered alcoholics – we are today are turning out hypnotized POP-AA zombies who continue a newer tradition of mantracized treatment center jargon, sing-songish recovery slogans masquerading as AA wisdom and holding fast like dingle-berries to their church basement folding chairs because “I don’t want want to drink today.” and “I need you people to stay sober today” — instead of rapidly moving through the Twelve Steps detailed in beautiful clarity in the Big Book, “Alcoholism Anonymous”. Don’t you just want to puke?

Yet there are folks who will push that idea of it always being “too soon for inventory” to newcomers in order to get them to delay their approach to the Twelve Steps–

– or at least slow down their progress toward the promised spiritual awakening. These are arrogant bastards – sorry but that is what they are.

Yet consider for the moment the person saying such a thing. When you do, for one crisp moment, the idea almost does carry some weight. Not a whole lot. Just some. Almost. Some.

There is reason for this. The painful past is of great value to the real alcoholic about to awaken spiritually and recover from his malady. The obsession to drink at all is about to be removed. It is a positive. Not so the heavy, hard drinker hanging out in AA meetings. To him the past really can be a trigger because he is someone who drinks (drank) solely to help him bear the strain of a painful past and maybe even a present. The drinking of the real alcoholic isn’t tied to pain.

Please pay careful attention to what you are about to read: Alcoholism is not tied to anything other than his insanity and proclivity to drink no matter what and his utter inability to stop once that mental aberration gets him started. That is all there is to the kind of alcoholism that is the “our description of the alcoholic” clearly delineated in the first forty three pages of “Alcoholic Anonymous.”

Alcoholism is not tied to ‘consequences’ (Sorry Dr. Drew you could not be more wrong that) It is not tied to behaviors. It is not tied to environment, slippery places, the wrong crowd. It is not even tied to post-traumatic stresses or youthful trauma.

‘Alcohol abuse’ might be but alcoholism is not. This is one of the reasons why non-alcoholics who erroneously call themselves alcoholic and who advertise themselves to newcomers as AA ‘members’ are dangerous to the AA fellowship and to a threat to the health, well-being and very lives of newcomers. Non-alcoholics in AA must de-spiritualize the process for themselves and others. They must diminish or even eliminate the requisite self-searching, pride leveling and admission of shortcomings that are in the fourth and fifth step process. If the pain of the alcoholic can be his touchstone of spiritual growth then for the heavy drinking non-alcoholic it may be a “trigger”.

It is not uncommon for someone doing a forth step to experience a ‘need’ to drown their sorrows somewhere in the process. Sometimes a barley resistible and even irresistible urge. This is not necessarily a horrible thing. If a real alcoholic hasn’t yet recovered – still being too soon in the process – it is actually to be expected. It isn’t “obsession” but it isn’t exactly a pleasant thing to endure either — but endurable it is. Urge is not obsession and obsession is not so weak. Urge is absolutely unendurable. There is no forethought in obsession.

In obsession, the alcoholic simply gets struck drunk! BAM! One Drink and then the vicious cycle is set off by the ensuing crave for more. For someone who isn’t really an alcoholic this desire to drink during a fourth step inventory is understandable.

Non-alcoholics drink because they don’t like the way they feel. Real alcoholics drink no matter how they feel.

If you are not an alcoholic such as is described in the first forty three pages of the book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” – if your idea of being alcoholic is based upon anything other than the “our description of the alcoholic” (60:3) - then you may not understand this. You may also be one of the arrogant assholes circulating within the AA Fellowship harming and maybe even killing us real alcoholics with your opinionated, agnostic treatment center drivel written about frequently on this blog site.

A man going through his forth step is supposed to feel like shit. What he discover is supposed to be “objectionable”.

Objectionable – Arousing disapproval. Unpleasant or undesirable. (The Winston Simplified Dictionary, 1938)

Feeling like shit is good business for the real alcoholic – not only so that he can finally once and for all admit to his innermost self his powerlessness over EtOH — but so that his pain will fuel the spiritually psychic energy he will need to perform a sixth and seventh step – a step devoted to the miraculous removal of defects.

If our defects aren’t objectionable enough then who would experience enough of the mortification to take such drastic measure as to permit the leveling of pride – relinquishing removal to another being – named God? A fourth step inventory frozen in midair might be tasty enough to lick for a moment but despite the sweetness in its promise for ultimate recovery unless one gets beyond it and moves toward being of maximum service as a spiritually fuel being then the physical inventory will ultimately prove not to have been the real dessert at all.

It’s more like a hor’d oeuvre for the main course that never arrives. Inventory Freeze will give you a headache worse than ice-cream. It’ll pull and tug and pinch your soul into a throbbing spiritual migraine finally you will drink. You will drink. That is not a blind prediction. It is based upon experience repeated through year of taking men through the twelve steps and repeatable at anytime.

Entire Groups sometimes sprout egos too. That’s right entire groups begin to ooze with the prideful juices of their own membership – thick and syrupy and congealed like fatty gravy. The object of being sponsored into AA and through these Twelve Steps is NOT to become a working Member type of any specific Group. The object is to have a spiritual awakening. The object is not to become a good little Primary Purpose Grouper or a BBSS guy or a Wally P. Aficionado – it is to have a spiritual awakening. Period! Those entities can be wonderful and can serve as virtual Houses of the Holy for alcoholics but motives are what counts — not affiliations – nor is any validation by things “man made”.

Motives falling outside of attaining sobriety – freedom from alcohol through the teaching and practicing the twelve steps, secret or bandied – blatant or subconscious – are deterrents to recovery from alcoholism – for the real alcoholic anyway.

For the heavy drinking non-alcoholic these are less of a hindrance and can actually serve to assist such ‘problem drinker’ in staying away from a drink and improving his lot in life – as long as he “keeps coming back” and “remembers the last drink” and look to “YOU PEOPLE” for human aided support instead to take the place of a loving God who can solve the problem once and for all.

Becoming a hypnotized Big Book Study Hobbyist or a POP-AA sloganeer – there is no difference – can work — unless one is a real alcohol. Non-alcoholic study hobbyists seem to have a knack for getting stuck in “Inventory worship” which is debilitating for a real alcoholic. A real alcoholic who is “still writing” his 4th step inventory after a month will be a monster – yet restless, irritable and discontent – not truly a “recovering” alcoholic in any sense. A person who is “still writing” four, five and ten months after making his beginning in Step Three is NOT ‘launched’ and not being “”vigorous.

Sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous – un-recovered and not recovering from alcoholism – announcing to be “still writing” week in — week out– for months on end is not a badge of courage or honor. It is moniker of fear, doubt and faithlessness and a testament what happens when the Big Book is sodomized by ‘recovery perverts’ and it a disgrace to the process detailed in the book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

This is despicable. It is disgusting and nauseating thing to witness the wasted time and effort while pushing their own agendas under the guise of “Twelve Step Recovery” while real alcoholics are dieing from unterated alcoholism every day because they aren’t being presented with the “this” message of the wonderful book, “Alcoholics Anonymous”.

It is phony. It is deviant and predatory behavior.

When we hear “vigorous” some of us think we mean rigorous. We can confuse being rigorous with being vigorous.

Rigorous means demanding strict attention to rules and procedures; vigorous means strong and active physically or mentally. There is a world of difference.

Strong and active launch into action the first step of which is this inventory is necessary and the truth is that if your inventory is taking weeks or months then you are not being vigorous. Perhaps you sponsor failed to communicate to you what it is you are looking for in your inventory or you didn’t “get” what the Big Book directions gave — or perhaps you have forgotten, more than likely you are procrastinating. Procrastination is anti-”launch” and anti-”vigorous”.

If you believed that there was a great benefit to be had from walking across a bed of broken glass or hot coals – that you would be a better person once you successful got to the other side but you would have to suffer great pains as you crossed in order to receive that benefit– – do you think you would do well to get across it as soon as you possibly could – trudging and with purpose and dignity – or would you want to move as slow as possible to risk morbid wounding? What if you stopped part way across? There is no need to over-explain this — is there?

So how long is a forth step and how much time should it take to complete one? Look back to the result desired. The idea of a fourth step inventory is that there ought to be an effort that is thorough enough and honest enough to be contributory toward having a spiritual awakening. That is, “. . . the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism” (Appendix II)

That’s it man! Nothing more than that. It is NOT to be thorough enough to provide an amateur psychoanalytic experience. Not thorough enough to keep one sober or happy or relived. Those are nothing more than an EGO trying to do something it hasn’t even the ability to do. A fought step had better be thorough. It had better be honest – it had better be launched, done with vigor and it had better be completed damned soon – before that deadly meteor hurtling though space and heading here right now – called the insanity of the first drink – breaks the atmosphere and strikes earth right where our man is standing.

Anyone pushing anything other than that is screwing with your head. Stay away. I don’t care how much they think they are doing “it” as laid out in the Big Book. They are not.

A man on a porcupine fence
Used me for an ashtray heart
Hit me where the lover hangs out
Stood behind the curtain
While they crushed me out
You used me for an ashtray heart
- Captain Beefheart – Ashtray Heart

Peace and Love,
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

Bridge Traffic Jammed

The beautiful thing about the message of the Big Book is that once optioned, the spiritual awakening that occurs as the result of the Big Book’s Twelve Steps not only saves us from alcoholic obsession and solves all of our problems but it even saves us from reliance on the Big Book itself.

It doesn’t matter what it is – a woman, a man, a car a job or a ham sandwich, yes even the Big Book itself can become an obstacle to full recovery when it is abused – when it is put before God.

There is a mountain of difference between worshiping the Big Book and adopting the Twelve Step design for living that is its message. You may have experienced with folks so focused on THE BOOK and THE INVENTORY that they never seem to get unstuck from that ‘mid-span’ of the bridge — over to God and maximize their usefulness through continuous spiritual growth.

Having been on both sides and having been stuck in that jam some of us are happy to report that once we give up our addiction to the written word – stop worshiping the book and its message and instead live and practice it – our guidance, inspiration and direction comes direct and not out of the materials. The heavenly intuition at subconscious and conscious levels doesn’t come from “human aid”. Looking for inspiration and messages form God out of the Big Book is a misguided attempt to glean the spirituality of the co-authors off the written page is spiritually sophomoric and a distraction from the fact that we aren’t following the direction chronicled on the very pages of the vehemently place on a pedestal. Only God Himself is so deserving but when the Biog Book becomes our God . . . . . we worship ‘it’ instead of reflecting back a positive example to others – the fruits of living aligned with our Creator – then we will wind up revealing to others the hypocrisy of our self-described ’spirituality’ which may indeed involve ’spirti’ but the question is which one? There is more than one ’spirit’ in spirituality and anyone pursuing the Spirituality of goodness will encounter its antithesis. Its axiomatic.

Big Book worshipers capable of reciting chapter and verse with incredible aplomb yet whose live remain entangled in abject manageability and obvious pursuits of character defects that still bring about harms and need for Fellowship ’support’ and human aid that comes in in the form of “meetings, meetings, meetings” or “service, service and more service” are — good examples.

A hundred men and women were being spiritually awakened – had recovered from alcoholism and had begun living the Twelve Step design that is aligns its adherents with God’s will for many years BEFORE the Big Book was published telling us in printed prose precisely what they had done. So we know that the Big Book isn’t even the mandatory element of AA Twelve Step recovery. The Steps are. The binding and the glue and paper and ink of The Book are not.

Guidance and divine intuition comes coincidental to a spiritually awakened state that is proposed and chronicled by the the co-authors of the Big Book – not guidance and direction out of the Big Book. Not from Emmett Fox. Not from Joe and Charlie, or the “Twelve and Twelve” – not from some self-appointed Big Book Study AA Group poo-bahs, not blogs like this one, not from CDs and circuit speakers. Not even the Bible. These might all be good things and each worth a value of its own with something to offer. What they definitely do not do is serve as a source of spiritual direction and it is a given that they are each with severe limitations in-as-far-as being a central source of guidance.

Those who have tried it find out the hard way and it is their misery that is the evidence.

Why not do as the co-authors of the Big Book suggest and did themselves? The put their reliance upon a God has no limit.

Getting to a place where that line of communication opens up and happens through daily prayer & daily meditation (Step Eleven) and it grows and improves continuously in daily Steps 10 and 12. Things get a lot smoother. There is no middleman. There is no “preacher” – no spiritual ‘guru’ – no bullshitting creep with vibrating stones and tarot cards or steaming incense stenchers.

Now THAT’S REAL FREEDOM!

But some people get stuck in that book. It comes from not following the directions in their entirety

Of course you could always just get around to the Steps at some indeterminate date, just suit up and show up, read the Big Book ad infinitum, go to open discussion meetings and chant AA slogans and “Just don’t drink” “One day at a time.” grinning like a good little POP-AA Fellowship-bot

That’s worth something too. Probably.

But somehow it just does not seem worth the establishment of a huge worldwide spiritual fellowship when compared to the experiences just described in the first several paragraphs of this article, does it?

If you still think God speaks through people – who told you that? Your Big Book? Nope. Your Big Book tells you to avoid “human aid”. THE OPPOSITE!

Your Bible? No. No, Scripture is more a testimonial — not a set of directions. Your Sunday morning Preacher? . . . . .

. . . . Uh, wait a minute! I know who told you that God talks through people. It was ‘People’, wasn’t it? Probably “people” who similarity gets their spiritual “messages” through still MORE people. Nice of them to say. That’s quite an assignment reserved for “people” isn’t it?

That’s not exactly relying on God INSTEAD of people, is it?

It is no wonder then that so many of us are still a mess thinking that we have a design for living that supposedly works, has worked for so many others yet still seems to evade us.

We would rather put hours into studying the writings of Emmet Fox than the minutes in Step Eleven required to get our inspiration from God.

We still get caught up with bedevilment and unmanageably that should have been shed a long time ago. No wonder we go to meetings, thump our Big Books, go to church, thump our bibles and still our kids are on drugs, we can’t keep our ‘units’ inside of our own pants, are addicted to internet porn, smoke like chimneys and are going to early graves clutching Twinkies and Ho-Hos besieged by the physical ailments brought on by self-inflicted diabetes.

Oh crap, we might as well drink, no?

What if God has got something to say directly to you? Don’t you want to get hooked up? The answer to that is Step Eleven – prayer and meditation. Or else a burning bush. Waiting for a burning bush maybe?

“He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his Creator. Thus was our friend’s cornerstone fixed in place. No later vicissitude has shaken it. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it disappeared.” (56:2)

Peace and Love,

Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com/

Growth vs Ego

Can spiritual growth co-exist with human ego?

It had better because if it cannot then we are truly doomed. Have you ever noticed that a newcomer barely off the sauce for a scant thirty days is suddenly talking as though he is suddenly OK? Compared with his condition – emotional, physical, and financial – just two months ago it is easy to understand why he feels this way. Truly it is amazing. The contrasting lifestyle and mental outlook therein can be quite enjoyable and it does tend to elicit a bit of gratitude.

Yet one look at him and hearing sixty seconds of his ‘talk’ reveals that he is still quite mad – still un-recovered – and still suffering from self-absorbed delusional spiritual illness – but dry and feeling better.

The problem is that he maybe feeling just better enough to skip the Twelve Step part of the AA experience — or, being void of the desperation with which he was afflicted only weeks before – falls to temptation to adopt methods of achieving Twelve Step “knowledge” that had nothing to do with the actual spiritual awaking and full recovery from alcoholism. We have Big Book Study groups right here on the Peninsula of Doom – the deportment of which has been hijacked by individuals promoting half measures of “action” under the guise of Twelve Step adherence and fool a lot of people into thinking that they promote the Twelve Steps “as laid out” in the Big Book.

If ninety nine percent of what they do is laid out in the Big Book – it is the one percent that is of their own invention left to taint the otherwise pure spiritual process of recovery.

Hey, maybe they balk on a forth step by deciding to ignore the examples set by the co-founders and take a month or a year to complete it becoming subservient to cultish ‘sponsor-people‘ and quasi-Big Book Study methods – and relapsing as the result. There are proponents of that kind of happy horseshit in the AA fellowship – operating under the otherwise divinely inspired Big Book Thumping umbrella too.

They are not too difficult to recognize. You can spot an oddball immediately if you are attuned. Just like the KKK kook is not hard to recognize even in a roomful of otherwise conservative folks — nor are Marxists hiding out in the Democratic party difficult to spot – not once they open their mouths. They are impostors and they can be seen for what they are. That is called discernment. Discernment without resentment is not judgment. It is spiritually inspired vision and something we learn to live by once we know the age-old secret to accessing it.

Show me a man who is “taking a year” to complete a fourth step inventory and I will show you one still sick mutha with little hope of a Twelve Step induced spiritual awakening – having too long ago lost the original abject desperation of his last drinking debacle he will need to compel him to thoroughly complete the drastic work of the Twelve Steps – until the drinks again that is. And he will drink again if he is a real alcoholic. If not he may get away with it.

Half measures do work very well for non-alcoholics. After all our way of living does have benefits for all — even those who do not qualify for AA membership.

Maybe it is the absence of hangovers and perhaps he reachieved a little shot of confidence from his family or the work-front because he isn’t drunk today but he will still find himself wrought with doubt, indecision, misunderstanding and misdirection.

Or how about us Recovered Alcoholics? We talk about how we no longer live unmanageable lives, how the desire to drink has been miraculously removed and how until that happened we thought we alright by simply staying dry

But NOW? Now, we know better. “Today we are OK. “

We used to think we were OK but we were not really. We didn’t know that we didn’t know. Now we are “OH so much wiser” and ‘weller‘. The promises are being realized. Page fifty two is but a horrible memory and we are today so much closer to God and by golly dang-a-lang-a-ling-ding-dong-day – we are TRULY trudging the Happy Road of Destiny. Oh thank God we aren’t like we used to be!

Man, we’re even paving that sucker ourselves and painting the yellow lines on it so everyone is clear on which lane is ours – which is theirs and there is room for all if we just keep to the rules of the road.

Even a ten, twenty of thirty year veteran to Big Book spirituality will often speak of how messed up they used to be even AFTER taking the steps – even after having been spiritually awakened and how they used to think that was OK then … but NOW . . . NOW! They are REALLY OK!

Man I used to think I was spiritually awakened – and I guess I was but NOW – NOW I am REALLY REALLY REALLY there man!

Yes it is a little humorous but isn’t it just really human nature? Is it entirely harmless. No, but manageable if recognized.

It exists because of two things. Growth plus the never dyeing ego. Shrinking ego? Yes. Eliminated ego – it ain’t happening. We can and we do grow despite our utter inability to kill the ego. At best Ego deflates to a manageable size but I never goes away entirely. The most spiritual holy-man walking the face of the earth today – whoever he is – still has an ego that separates him just ‘this’ far from his Creator so that he will not walk on water or change water into wine or heal the sick with nothing more than the wave of his hand.

That space of separation, that crack, is the only thing keeping us from seeing a “heaven on earth” and the only thing keeping us from falling into in the “hell on earth” both – at the same time. We are either narrowing that schism or it is widening automatically depending upon how well we live or lives by doing ‘will, His work instead of our own. Once we establish conscious contact with God, and this is the very point of the Twelve Steps we are then in a position to keep that communication open with Him so we can know an receive two thing:

1. Knowledge of His will
2. The Power to carry it out

   THAT’S IT! That’s all we are here for. Of course what “His will” entails may be a load of footwork and action but its is His will not ours and their isn’t a damned thing we can do about that – matter how hard and how may times we have and my continue to try. That kind of struggle of ego is exactly what ego need to grow and will tempt us to fight it every time. Yet it’s destruction is what we are here for and we aren’t here to do anything less nor are we to live our lives by any other way – unless of curse it claims us. Every time we inject OUR will into the mix it pollutes the whole thing and what we have is nothing more or less than a toxic drink

Pray for Acceptance. POOF! GONE.

Pray for a cure to aunt Matilda’s cancer? Or for Haitian refugees Poof! and POOF!

OK OK Then for Haitian refugee CHILDREN! Surely if its for the kids it is noble enough. No?

POOF!

Pray to keep me away from a drink today? Bye Bye humility. Poof!

Oh . . . but it is for the “Good of others” we claim. and therefor altruistic and proper. Oh yeah like we humans know what is “good for others”.

We are to pray only for our USEFULNESS in this regard.

Maybe confronting a puffed up ego is what we need in order to grow spiritually and we can welcome opportunities to judge and allow pride to rule once again – and either become complete assholes by giving in — or else incomplete ones by letting go.

Peace and Love,

Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

 

 

 

 

“AA Doesn’t Work!”

Guest article

by Clifford B.

One of the saddest statements I have ever heard is, “I’ve been to A.A. and it doesn’t work.” There is no way I can count the number of times over the past couple of decades I have found an alcoholic coming off a drunk who made that statement. Just today, one of my protégés called to tell me of a man, holed up in a cheap motel room, he was asked to locate and see if he could help him.

My protégé was successful in locating the suffering alcoholic and did what he had been instructed to do on a Twelve Step Call. He told him some of the story of his drinking and how he had come to know it to be an illness over which he had no control nor did the medical profession have a solution.

The suffering alcoholic finally said, “You’re going to try to tell me about A.A. aren’t you?”

“That is where I found my Solution.” said Jake. “I have gone to A.A. meetings for the last eight months and did what they told me to do. It doesn’t work for me.”

“Did you take the Steps with a Sponsor who had been blessed with a spiritual experience as the result of having taken the Steps?”

The sick one said, “I think I did but the main thing they told me was just keep coming back and you’ll be OK. When I asked what else I should do, I was told, ‘Don’t drink and keep on going to more meetings.’ I did what they told me to do and A.A. just doesn’t work.”

Driven to Drink

A member of Alcoholics Anonymous found me near death in 1964 and told me he could help me. He said to me, “I understand. I have been where you are and I want to help you if you will let me.” I was willing to do anything. He took me to his A.A. Club and began sobering me up on Orange Juice with some honey mixed in it. When I began having Delirium Tremens, they added some Bay Rum to the mixture. There were no treatment centers in our area at that time and hospitals would not admit us for alcoholism. We either shook and sweat it out in jail or at an A.A. Club. By far, most of them made it to the end sober or they still are. I wasn’t one of them.

I saw an opportunity to return my ego to its earlier level by getting involved in a new and exciting profession and so I went for it. Sixteen years after my last drink; eleven years after my last meeting, on a day without a cloud in the sky, I thought having a beer would be a good idea, so being in a very dry county, I drove seventy miles for a Six-pack.

It took me two years to make it back to Alcoholics Anonymous — very, very drunk.

What a difference thirteen years can make! There were no alcoholics laying around the Club with dry heaves. There were no blood shot eyes, sweating faces, no vibrating bodies, the aroma of alcoholism was missing. There was no orange juice in the refrigerator nor honey near the coffee pot. There was no Bay Rum in the file cabinet. It was no longer needed because almost everyone had gone to “treatment” and been medicated through the process of what is termed “de-tox.”

They had missed those wonderful Golden Moments of the misery, suffering and pain of sobering up. At first, I thought the new approach was good but then I began to see the results. There was less and less commitment to the Group and the action necessary for long term emotional sobriety was being ignored.

There were very few Big Book Study or Speaker meetings but a large number of “Discussion/participation” meetings where everyone was given an opportunity to talk about whatever was on their mind whether on not they knew anything about alcoholism or recovery from alcoholism. There were even non-alcoholics participating in these meetings. This newer approach of learning to live with alcoholism was beginning to prove to be a dismal failure.

We Work ‘It’

I heard a tape of Joe McQ. and later attended a weekend of Joe McQ. & Charlie P. presenting their “Big Book Comes Alive” program. It then became very clear why so many were returning to the bottle. Not only were we without sick alcoholics laying around the meeting places, there was so little Program in our meetings, it was almost hidden from the newcomers. No wonder so few were finding more than a few months of physical sobriety. They were denied what is required for long term emotional sobriety.

Without the sick alcoholics laying round the meeting place, I had to find a place where I could again see and smell alcoholism. I needed a frequent reminder of where I came from and what was waiting for me if I didn’t continue to pay the price for emotional sobriety. Over the years since I have been blessed to have been given another opportunity to survive the deadliest disease known to mankind, I have volunteered in many wind-up places where those coming off a drunk are present and available to talk with. Again and again, I heard that sickening statement, “I went to A.A. and it doesn’t work.”

Of course, they are right. Alcoholics Anonymous does not work! We MUST WORK IT! But they were never told.

Where Are The Sponsors?

My Basic Text reads, “Rarely, have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path” The “Path” being the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as outlined in a book titled “Alcoholics Anonymous.” My Basic Text does not read, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of don’t drink and go to meetings…” It reads, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all our affairs.”

Our real problem is weak and ineffective sponsorship. Proclaimed members of our Fellowship who have never taken the Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous will assume the responsibility for the life of a newcomer and will proudly announce the number of “sponsees” they have.

As one of my dear friends said, “The manner in which we now fail our responsibility to the newcomer borders on slaughter.” The demise of our sense of responsibility to those seeking help for alcoholism is one of the greatest tragedies of our time in history. It works if we work it! That is a Promise. (A.A., pg. 84)

Cliff B.

CBBB164@aol.com

Axiomatic Spirituality – Ain’t It The Truth?

“It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.”
_{Bill W. from “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions”}

An “axiom” is simply a ‘truth’. That is all. If it’s true, if it’s a spiritual idea, then it has always been  — and recognizing it is nothing more and nothing less than something the spiritual mystics and ancient holymen have been doing for thousands of years.

Every aha moment is just gratitude for being shown a truth. “AHA! Now I see!”, we might say.

Sometimes it is a specific truth – about oneself containing specific details of a specific life crisis or situation. Sometimes it might be a broad and general truth that applies to all of mankind.

We know that Bill was a spiritual “seeker“. If he weren’t then wouldn’t not have been practicing these principles. Being a seeker of truth, naturally he would have had insights, as do ALL seekers of truth who have honest motives.

When reading this quote we hear Bill W passing on an observation – writing about it so as to deflect credit for it. The truth is that when we are disturbed, resentful, upset – use whatever word –it ALWAYS includes being spiritually off-beam and that means that something is wrong. The ancient mystics – even Jesus Christ has made this simple and basic observation. It is nothing new.

Looking for Bill source for this information is probably an exercise in futility. He did not necessarily “get it” from anywhere but out of his own seeking of truth. Why not give him some credit for having a little AHA moment in his searching – passing it on to us in his writing and THEN instead of taking credit for some self imagined spiritual genius – giving credit to others who may have thought of it long before he ever did.

This quote from Bill W. sounds as if he is thinking, “I didn’t invent this idea. It already IS an idea that already exists as a spiritual ’standard’. “Bill’s humility here is very clear. It is also one of the most profound things he has ever written.

It ought to cause us to trust him and his writings instead of continually focusing on the human frailties of the first co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. We don’t worship human beings – but that does not mean we have to condemn them either. All of us are just what we are.

There is truth in Bills observation. It is not clear whether he really understood any of the ‘whys’ of it all – what happens and what is the solution to this age old problem.

Knowing the horror of resentment doesn’t automatically solve the problems it presents. The pain in knowing the awful truth can be enough of a motive to act by sparking a yearning for a solution to it.  Just knowing that God is the answer and will save us from it does not remove it either – not any more than coming to ” . ..  believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” means an instant solution –  just for believing –  will result in a solution to spiritual illness and alcoholism. Belief accomplishes nothing. It only frees up up to receive motivation to act. The Twelve Steps is a Program of ACTION not a system of belief.

Knowledge can be like knowing that you will die when you leap off a cliff then are still mysteriously drawn to it anyway — just before falling off into death. Intellectual knowledge of what the answer is cruel.

Yet there is a solution. The co-founders discovered it and craftily embedded it into the twelve steps. Do you know the solution?

They embedded it two ways. Once into Step Ten and then a more enduring solution into Step Eleven No we cannot “pray away” the deadly damage cause by resentments and we cannot even pray away our own consciousness of the resentment that is about to strike – not in a way that makes us immune to its killing power.

There is something else we can do – something that the co-authors of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous recognized and propose to us – that will absolutely render us absolutely immune to all resentment. Real or imagined. It is key. Our only hope is to see it for what it is and allow it to flee from us under the light of day.

Peace and Love,

Danny S – RLRA

Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com

What Works in Alcoholics Anonymous?

Is just–not-drinking and going to AA meetings kicking your ass? When will you reach the pain threshold and drink? Never you say? OK. When the pain gets bad enough we will be here. In the meantime I guess you will have to suffer. You would never want to be a recovered alcoholic now would you?

Sorry to say it but suffering form untreated alcoholism just might serve you right. Maybe you ignored those Big Book thumping recovered alcoholics who have offered to carry the “this” message to you through the teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps.

Maybe you’ve done so because you are a self serving, self absorbed, selfish son-of-a-bitch whose head has been stuffed so far up your own ass there is no hope of ever extricating it. It is no wonder you do not die of colitis before you die of old age. Or maybe no one ever told you the truth.

If that is the case then it all that can be said is “sorry”. I am truly and deeply saddened and sorry that my Fellowship has failed you – the light of vision seen by our co-founders died out and been all but extinguished by forces that can be found in the “Treatment Industry”, the hospitals, courts and yes even in the church basements themselves. Maybe even the GSO.

We are very ill and we have been afflicted with our own cancerous form of a mass selfishness that our co-founders had not the foresight to predict for us. If you will read the Chapter “A Vision For You” in their Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” and you will see that their vision for us consisting of having us proactively going out and twelve stepping other alcoholics -not sitting in folding chairs ’sharing’ our troubles like we are in some cheap cut rate buck an hour group therapy session. Recovered alcoholic who talk about God, spiritual awakenings and experiences and carrying THIS message to to other alcoholics —- THAT was their vision for us.

The misery you feel is what you get when you listen to too many POP- AA, middle-of-the-road solutionists who will ‘push’ just about ANY ’sound-good’ concept even remotely related to a “not drinking today” regimen as well as any other amateur pop-psychiatry “feel good” philosophies — as long as it doesn’t include full recovery from alcoholism through a spiritual awakening. The typically AA meeting-goer, if asked, will absolutely insist that they will never recover than that no one ever need to take the steps as long as they “just keep coming” to AA meetings – everything will be alright – an outlandish notion that is so totally opposite their own Big Book.

Just about anything that has been published and printed in between those blue hard covers of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, has been gleaned by plenty – only to be reconfigured into a new “what works for me” program that barely scratches the surface of alcoholism and hardy resembles the original – either that or resembling it just enough not to send the AA Zombie programmed into sloganism and barrages of bytes of treatment center doctrine that more closely; resembles religious cultism than the AA Fellowship ever did – into recovery Siberia, un-affectionately termed as “Out there”.

Welcome to The First Church of Applied Recoverology. Now please pee in this cup, have a Seroquel, a blanket and our Three Step handout sheet written by one our friendly counselors . . . . oh you will just adore him . . . he has chose not to drink now for one whole year! Can you imagine?!? Now sit down – just don’t drink and go to ninety meetings in ninety days – oh and may I please make a copy of your Health Insurance card? Thank you. (And your VISA card too. Yes, thank you so much)

“What works for you? Works For YOU? . . . . Holy Cow! Are you even alcoholic? I mean maybe you just need grab the bull by the horns and stop!” How about what worked for THEM – the co-authors of the Big Book? Isn’t that what we are hear to learn and teach? Who ought to give a flying fig about what works for YOU?? Who are YOU anyway?

What “works for me” always – AWAYS turns out to be just a select mini-arsenal of cherry picked sentences, words and spiritual ideas plucked out of the Big Book in order to reassemble a personalized, newfangled pseudo syllabus of some kind of ersatz, AA sounding system of sobriety. Then it can be custom-fitted to the un-recovered alkies liking who is bent on maintaining a self-reliant style of living. Throw in a schedule of AA meetings — add a pinch of pithy quotation out of a well dog-eared and colorfully highlighted “Twelve & Twelve” – then sprinkle with some Emmett Fox or American Indian philosophical quotations and . . . viola!

Finish this magnificent creation with a garne of a Hindi mantra or some Native American spiritual sounding observations and what results is as a whole new presentation of AA that is very far removed from what worked for the co-authors of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, but can be a very attractive alternative to the horrible obvious consequences to over drinking on a regular basis. It seems so bloody spiritual – what with all the quotation profundity of the ancients intersperse throughout — and since it is alcohol free it is therefore intriguingly exotic and saleable. It’s adherents—who are dry and as irritating as dessert dust – still must struggle and suffer the effects of unmanageable lives filled with fear and bedevilments. This must be some sort of cruel joke, must it?

Or was Dr. Bob right? Do we screw it all up when we fail to keep it to the simple level as outlined in the Big Book. Why not let God through inner guidance do His thing? According to the co-authors of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous that works for every alcoholic. It is the single solution that is common to us all.

Peace and Love,

Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com

Don’t Get Mad – Get Max

As long a you hold on to the believe that “acceptance” is the answer to your problems then you will never rise above them. You will continue to cling to the false believe that “Acceptance” is an AA principle that will solve problems and the Twelve Step solution of “Alcoholics Anonymous” will still elude you.

One very good way to minimize our usefulness is to ignore resentments. By allowing tiny injustices, annoyances and just simple things gone wrong – not in our favor – to affect us without having them neutralized we subject ourselves to forces that many of us do not even understand.

There are other things we can do to make ourselves miserable too. Either stuffing resentments or allowing ourselves to get carried way with the negative thought stream that they always generate is a very excellent way to ensure that we will “have a bad day” – that our finances go awry – that no one understand us, that our kids behaviors erupt and that our relationships slide sideways. For a Twelve Stepper this means to forget to go through the day WHILE performing Steps Ten, Eleven and Twelve as we go along.

When you backup your computer you might have a little message box that tells you. “Backup has been completed “and then we puff a little sigh of relief — but then there comes the small print to inform us that although our backup is complete that it is done “with errors”.

Well that sucks, doesn’t it? There is the small burp – the popping of a gaseous bubble in the psyche that will release the small dose of toxic resentment just for knowing that there is a lack of absolute perfection in our data. God I hate that! In that moment I re-renter the world as a fallen being and become subject to everything that will kill all of us. I become mortal – and it is because I am now out of step with God having been separated from Him by trying to be Him. Is this too extreme?

Do you think that this is all too much to attribute to a simple act like backing up computer data? You may think so but if I could convince you otherwise then I would be convinced I am doing my job well.

If I fail to get back into step then I cannot be very useful to others — or if I am useful at all then it only in a limited and ‘un-maxim’ way. “Minimized” usefulness is really the truth. If I could go on living that way – that would be one thing – but having been made aware there is no choice but the get back on the beam and move once again toward being ‘max’.

Being “Mad” is not being “Max” and that means that I am laying down on the job.

When driving a car and seeing that the “check engine” light is the objective to see that I have a ‘burning’ light bulb problem? Since the bulb is supposed to be off and it is on obviously I must need to do something to correct that offending bulb? Is that right? Hopefully you do not think so.

On the other hand, when I am driving and that “check engine” light is off – should I take that to mean that all is well because my bulb are in good condition? See what I mean?

When thinking in this twisted manner I would have to conclude that in order to have a car in good working and useful order then my goal ought to be the make sure my bulbs are good – right? Of course not. The bulbs only act as the indicators. That my call runs smoothly and has plenty of power and uses fuel efficiently are BETTER indicators and are the RESULT of good maintenance – they are not goals unto themselves.

Likewise – that we do not feel “acceptance” - in other words that we lack courage and are faithless and agnostic – is another way of saying that - this is the indication that there is resentment festering inside us. Conversely if the proper handling of resentment has been operating thereby keeping opened the channel to God then the feeling of “acceptance” is with us and means that the ‘God-channel’ is opened. We can live with assurance, confidence and there is a glaringly evident lack of fear.

If there is an ‘acceptance’ that opens the clear channel to God and if that is all important then it is understandable that someone might say “acceptance is the answer to all my problems”. But it doesn’t.

Acceptance is therefor chicken or the egg and we are either having fricassee or an omelet – one or the other there is no same reason for the vicious cycle or arguing which is first, is there? Just freakin’ eat!

But therein lies a subtle danger – the tip of the slippery slope. Believe that “acceptance” is the answer to your problems then you have left God out of the solution – perhaps conveniently, let’s not judge, but because then you are freer to insert your own will into any perplexing situation — you will. Trust me. Isn’t that so very alcoholic? ACtually it is so very everyone who does not have a spiritual basis of living isn’t it?

Do that and you are in mortal danger.

‘Acceptance’ is just the theory that alcoholics actually know what they need and deserve to get it right between the eyeballs .Seeking the indicator (acceptance) instead of the action (a method of handling resentment – in our case it is Step Ten) to bring about a desired result is a diversion technique – an ego centered promotion of self reliance. It exist in AA – in religions in schools and in the government, especially in government schools and religious schools.

Many people who see this have been repulsed by it and have removed their children from religious schools or government sponsored school systems – in order that their children be free from this kind of mind control that they themselves do not fully understand but they have a sense that ‘something is wrong’.

In AA it takes the form of “take your time to do the steps” and “list your assets” kind of “Just don’t drink today and you are a winner” brand of POP-AA hypnosis. People who say this in AA meetings are zombies. Buy into that kind of mantra and you have subjected yourself to forms of suggestion and mind control that the anti-AA folks have found themselves stuck with. It stick to them like bubblegum on hot sidewalk and they can’t scrap their feet enough to walk comfortably. They have been smart enough to get away from the zombified AA-Bots even if they are too angry to escape get a way completely.

They have been infected with the disease of POP-AA bullshit – the kind of self-serving acid-reflux that any one of us can go and experience right now in almost any open-discussion meeting in any town USA – instead of the Fellowship of the Spirit that might have helped them.

The very idea of it bothers them. It eats at them. These are folks who have been harmed by narcissistic POP-AA promoters, probably YOUR sponsor and your “Home group” members and other AA sloganeering treatment center “board certified” addictions specialists who themselves are brainwashed by their own ‘certifiers’ and who continue to suffer the gnawing of their own spirits even though they no longer “go to meetings”. They are now ‘carriers’ of the POP-AA disease. They are subject to a Pavlovian programming so that the mere mention of “Alcoholics Anonymous” makes their resentments glands salivate with venom. They don’t even know it.

They they drool on themselves and its just a big wet mess that is at least as bad and probably worse than the mess they thought they had left behind in the church basements when they abandoned a spiritual solution to life’s traumas through and Alcoholics Anonymous kind of Twelve Step method – through a spiritual awakening.

In schools and religions it takes other very subtle and devious form soften embedded in educational and doctrinal syllabus and even scriptural interpretations – but it is there -just as cunning baffling and powerful as alcohol itself.

“Acceptance” is the indicator — not the goal. Living happily, joyfully and free from despair, depression and anxiety tells us that we are in Grace. They are never the goals themselves. Anything that steers us toward willfully seeking “acceptance” is part of some cruel evil joke. Only it is not a funny joke. It kills.

Resentment separates us from God. It is the divider.  Acceptance – that we accept – is the evidence of the absence of resentment. It tells us that our resentment handling ‘equipment’ has been in good working order and we are walking in the Sunlight of the Spirit. To the extent that we extract resentment from the human condition there is an exact parallel of an absence of error.

Until such time as we learn to transcend our subjectivity to the forces around us that have the potential of harming us and all those and that which we love and touch — then all we can do is make use of a pre-developed method of neutralizing resentments and adopting the protective mantle of grace in which to live in this world but not of it. That means Steps, Ten, Eleven and Twelve. Each day. All day.

Peace & Love,

Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

Taking The Big Book Personal

The “personal stories”  -  the ones in the back of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous”  were included in the Book for a reason and the criteria for story selection was established by the co-authors.

1) Reason for including personal stories is IDENTIFICATION:

“We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women, desperately in need, will see these pages, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, ” Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing” (29:3)

But for whom are they intended?

The “Personal stories” that follow the directions – the first one hundred and sixty four pages – are for identification purposes directed to AA prospects. Prospects are not yet members. They were not for inspirational reading AFTER a prospect has already decided to try AA.

If you have already said “Yes, I am one of them too; I must have this thing.” Then it is time to put down the stories and come get this “thing”. The stories would be pointless by that time.

2) The criteria for which stories to include toward this objective is to “push” GOD:

“These are followed by forty-three personal experiences. Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God. These give a fair cross section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has actually happened in their lives.” (29:2)

If I read a personal story in this Book, say….in the Fourth Edition…..and I cannot find in that story “the way he established his relationship with God.”, – What do you suppose has happened – and is that OK?

The Big Book is not really designed for casual reading. It is a textbook of directions for taking the Steps. I find many new folks like to give it a dry run first though - I did. Unfortunately then there was a temptation to glean and cherry pick quotes and concepts for repeating online and in meetings – without actually taking the directions – to sound knowledgeable or spot wipe life’s stresses as they were spilled.

When people at the point where they take the steps, those directions are in the first one hundred and sixty four pages.

Peace,

Danny S

Do It With Your Tongue

Not Your Tome

One of my favorite stooopit POP-AA rhetoric tricks is the old “I was too jittery to read the Big Book when I first came in here”. “I could even hold a cup of coffee let alone a Big Book” -as an excuse for avoiding the Twelve Steps and staying dry solely on the fellowship without actually recovering. “Shaking too hard to hold a book” — ‘Too in the fog to comprehend the reading” all that bottom of the barely scrapped excuse making and justification for God avoidance. But do Know it well!!!

“I HAD THE SHAKES! I couldn’t do the steps!“

“Excuse me? Good God! You don’t have a sponsor do you?”

We are not suffering from an illness that the Big Book can conquer. Reading comprehension skills are not a requirement for recovery – “reading the Big Book” isn’t a solution – if it were then half of the jittery men I have known, some who were illiterate – and the sightless could never take the Twelve Steps and recover from alcoholism which of course we know is not true.

For years the co-authors did this ALL WITHOUT BIG BOOKS so we know that “reading the big book” has NOTHING to do with taking the twelve steps – having a spiritual awakening being the result and solving our alcohol problem. Then as we go through the book and read all of the successful twelve stepping stories of sorry sick and puking drunks – we learn that it is all done with by word not ink.

There is only once when we talk about ‘reading’ the Big Book in the process. That “reading” of this book done is when making our ‘approaches’ – we ask him to read the book and we try to leave it behind until the second approach. This is all in “Working With Others”.

Trust God, Clean House, and read the Big Book? Nope!

To take the steps all anyone has ever needed and all they ever used back in Akron is a good sponsor who has himself recovered to talk to and take him through the steps the same that Bill did with Bob, Bill and Bob with Bill Dodsen then Clarence Snyder, et al. What we really need maybe is a patient, experienced and able sponsor who will TALK us through the steps – not one who would have us “read the book”.

It has always been “One alcoholic talking to another” alcoholic – not one alcoholic reading to another or passing out assignments to another.

Reading the Book? Of course. But it ain’t being sponsored. There is no syllabus in AA for recovery.

Peace and Love
Danny S – RLRA

We Teach – We Practice

AA Meetings – Are

they really “ALL GOOD”?

What do you do when you go to an AA meeting? Do you sit there waiting and listening and hoping to hear “the message?” Hope that someone will inspire you – that you will “get what I need”. What kind of selfish piggishness is that?

We aren’t in an AA meeting to stay sober. We are supposed to already BE sober – for good and for all. It is the guy who cannot stay sober for whom we go so we can grab him and get the message carried to him – not so WE can hear the message. Not so we can “get what we need”.

Practitioners of the Twelve Steps learn that all inspiration, direction, intuitiveness and discipline comes from a loving God – mostly through meditation – NOT through the “you people” experience of the fellowship.

Selfish use of AA meetings is very prevalent here in the North East, especial here on Cape Cod – yes, ‘especially’ meaning more prevent and in larger amounts than anywhere else in the world I have been to meetings and meet other AAs – down south, in Canada ,out west and overseas too.

Oh but Danny you are wrong – we are supposed to be selfish, self serving self centered sick and crazy people – ALL alcoholics are this way. No. we are supposed to recover and be living a life that has been relieve of that sort of lifestyle. Many of us are. Too many of us are not. Unmanageability is a thing of the past to we who have recovered we no longer find our lives described on page fifty two of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous”.

A newcomer walks in and no one approaches. That is because the group has lost its purpose and become a social scene — no longer the spiritual entity it was designed to be. A little shyness against each other like it’s the first day of school or a high school dance or something – the “new guy” and the established clusters of pal is normal for social gatherings and it’s an indicator of a toxic AA group too – one that slid right off the table and lies on the floor while we serve ourselves and step around it hoping someone else will pick it up or are too self absorbed to even notice it is lying there. Hells even an Amway meeting where they are money motivated would be more proactive than we are to help a newcomer.

“Sobriety—freedom from alcohol— through the teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps is the SOLE PURPOSE of an A.A. group.”

Bill W., the A.A. Grapevine, Inc., February 1958

(Affirmed as a guiding principle of A.A. and approved by the A.A. General Service Conference in 1969, 1970 and 1972.)

Teaching and practicing those steps is not merely ‘one of’ the group purposes. It is its SOLE purpose. That means there is no other reason for the Groups very existence. If you think we are here to serve YOU to keep YOU sober – to give YOU a place to dump your problems and “share” your troubles then you are sadly mistaken.

If we aren’t there for that, we may as well not even be there at all. If we come to meetings to “get our juice” or because “I don’t want to drink today” or – and here is the sickest message of all, “So I can see what happens to people who don’t go to meetings” then we are doing nothing for the newcomer alcoholic but showing him what selfish, self-centered sons of bitches we still are and reinforcing the very behaviors that got him there in the first place.

No one approaches the newcomer because too many – too often all it seems – haven’t got a clue as to what they are supposed to do or what the SOLE purpose of their group is SUPPOSED to be. No one ever showed them and they haven’t bothered to find out either.

Some people feel better if they can say they are “putting out my hand” – whatever the hell THAT means ‘ – or passing on a phone number or getting a shaky hand a cup of coffee. Nice but that’s NOT what we are here to do. We ought to be that nice to everyone everywhere anyway – not just in AA meetings. No cigar for that.

Most of us do not even know that we are supposed to put our lives on hold, grab that new comer, qualify them as either “one of us” or not, as it tells us to do in the Big Book and IF they qualify THEN take them through the twelve steps. Instead we are going to run home to catch American Idol - tell him “keep coming back” and “ninety in ninety”, see if he makes some friends and if we like them then we’ll allow them into our little clique of sober pals.

Well, if she was not a real alcoholic she’ll just come back another day and eventually make some friends and start to feel secure and start blubbering bullshale and ignoring other newcomers too.

The Twelve Steps. Teach them. Practice them. Then maybe we will have Groups with real POWER in them to which the newcomer can come and get some. That will happen when we see leadership in AA Groups that is much less interested in becoming head Social Directors and self-styled elder statesmen and more interested and qualified to being the Spiritual Guides to those yet unrecovered – to lead and point in the direction of their Creator.

Peace,

Danny S – RLRA