Is AA Still A Twelve Step Fellowship?

Satan Says . . . .

A buddy of mine called me this morning and wanted to know if I wanted to go the “opposites” meeting here on the Peninsula of Doom.(POD).

I’m like, “Huh?”

“Yeah, opposites. Like George C ostanza on Seinfeld.”

“Oh right” I said. “I get it. Whatever someone in that meeting says they do in order to stay sober, you do the exact opposite?”

“Yes. It never fails . . . ” he said. ” . . . doing the exact opposite of whatever I hear there.”

“Seinfeld” fans will recall that nebbishy character George Costanza feels that little ever goes his way – that fate is always running counter to his will and so he decides to consciously WILL in favor of the opposite. He believes in doing so that ‘Costanza’s will’ be done. In effect he tricks fate. (Or ‘God’ But we’re talking NBC here, now OK?)

An interesting concept. So I picked up my friend and off we went to the local “Loony Noonie” in here on the POD. (AA, “Loony Noonies” are all over the country. It’s an affectionately ascribed nickname for noon-time AA meetings held all across the United States.)

A man was sitting in the back who introduced himself to anyone sitting next to him, by saying “My name is Satan.” (Obviously it was some sort of inside joke to which my friend and I were not privy. It was still a little creepy though.) I wondered what it would like if I had come to my very first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, looking for a solution to your drinking problem, maybe even learning whether or not I was actually alcoholic, and some guy, the most vocal and visible in the meetings, identified and introduced as the Devil himself?” Holy shit!

Mr. Satan apparently had a very sophisticated comedic form and sometimes such subtle types of iconoclastic humor escape those who are barely holding onto life itself – know what I mean?

Anyway, so I get this thought. The Satan dude and how creepy he might seem to a newcomer gives me the idea: “I am going to pretend that I am my son Danny Jr. and that I suspect

I may be alcoholic and this is my very first meeting — that I have learned something of alcoholism from my Dad and from reading the incredibly spot-on volume titled “Alcoholics Anonymous”. I get the distinction between the alcoholic and the nonalcoholic. That book has made that much very much is clear to me and even though II have Twelve Step living already in my life – my whole family does through my Dad who is a recovered alcoholic – I still suspect that I may need a spiritual awakening since even though I honestly want to, I find that I cannot quit drinking completely, or if I do drink I have such little control over the amount I take I figure I might be suffering from alcoholism and if I have learned anything from my Dad it is that only a spiritual experience will conquer it. I figure, hey, let me go see what other peoples’ experiences are with this twelve step deal. Let me see if it works for them like it has for my Dad. I mean, it seems to have worked for him well enough let’s see it in the lives of others too. Then I just might give this thing a try. The stuff in that book sounds wonderful to me. Gatherings held where people like me can go with this trouble I am having – where I can go and see the Big Book depiction come alive in real-time real life. A recovery reality Show! In a church basement! A Group of spiritual people who have had a spiritual awakening and recovered from alcoholism – an assemblage of folks who are not glum but instead can laugh in the face of adversities past, meeting in a church basement solely for the expressed purpose of extending the Power given them to help others to people like me. They are waiting. For me. And just like in that Big Book they only want to help me have the same spiritual awakening that they had. Nothing more. Nothing less.

We, (me and my friend,) sat in that meeting for one hour. People talked about ICYPAA (a non-AA recovery entity that segregates into “young” recovery candidates, a very NON-AA concept) – someone ‘chaired’ a typical recovery story (a very sweet woman with thirteen years of sobriety) — other than that it was a typical, rhetorical, Open Discussion meeting – loaded with Rehabology Doctrine POP-AA talk and self-centered “shares” but zero solution to alcoholism ala AA. It seemd more as though this were the “group” annex of the local secular treatment center (Gosnold) than it was gathering of AAs with the AA message.

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous were mentioned exactly once. It was Mr. Satan dude himself who brought them up.

And what exactly did the Satan dude say about the Twelve Steps? He announced to the entire meeting that . . .

. . . . he had tried the Twelve Steps and they did not work.

No. Really. That’s what he said. (Well, he is Satan after-all. What did you expect?) This is what anyone coming to this AA meeting for the first time would have heard in this meeting. You hear right. In a Twelve Step fellowship meeting, the Twelve Steps was only mentioned ONE TIME and that one time was only to proclaim that it did not work!

Mr. Satan “took the steps” and the folks who told him he needed to do that to “stop drinking” were wrong. There were other ways for Mr. Satan and it included avoiding the Twelve Steps.

Could you imagine going to, say, a Jenny Craig meeting to learn about their system for weight loss and one in that meeting mentions the Jenny Craig system of weight loss to you at all, save for one person, (Named . . Oh I don’t’ know – I want to say, ‘Lucifer’. Yeah that’ll work for this example) and that person, or ‘demonic entity’, makes the point that the Jenny Craig Program DIDN’T WORK for them —- Oh but just love coming to Jenny Craig meetings anyway and owe their lives to Jenny Craig.

Would there be any reason for you to believe that that you were in the presence of anything less than pure psychosis? Would you feel like you might get the hell out of there? Maybe never come back?

You are dammed right! And you would be correct.

Yet this is exactly what happens, isn’t it. I know you’ve been a witness to this kind of insanity, not in Jenny Craig but in Alcoholics Anonymous.

My friend was right. Not only could George Costanza and his opposites system keep him sober here but he could also lose weight, grow hair, find the job of his dreams and get laid every night by a gorgeous woman. His penis would never ‘move’ when he came in close proximity to a handsome gay man and all of his friends would hold him in the same high esteem in which he holds himself. But George is the only one because remember George does the OPPOSITE of what he believes he is supposed to do.

Satan says, “Don’t do the steps.” And so George takes the steps.

Satan says, “Go to lots of meetings” George goes only to a few meetings.

Satan says, “People and your own determination key to your sobriety sand happiness” Instead George develops a life that transfers his old reliance upon self and other people to God. George never drinks again and lives a happily whole and useful life.

Then Satan goes back to hell – where he came from

I think you get the idea.

Thank God Danny’s Dad (me) does have spiritual awakening and growth to share with the family because in my scenario Danny Jr would be be S.O.L. (That’s spirutaleese for “shit out of luck”) . What the hell has happened to Alcoholics Anonymous?

The simple truth is that AA groups ought to be spiritual entities with Primary Purpose. Just because a group of folks meet regularly and are allowed, by Tradition” to call themselves an AA group doesn’t mean that they are one

If you want what Satan has – then do what Satan does. Fortunately we did not stick around long enough to find out what just what it is that Mr. Satan has. (Besides a bad case of middle-of-road- based AA bullshititis) We did however learn just what it is Mr. Satan has not got — and that is the solution to alcoholism. It isn’t about any one fellow. But types like Mr. Satan are all over the AA fellowship sowing misery and death for real alcoholics. I get around a lot. And I see it.

Yes “There Is A Solution”. We have a whole twelve pages of Big Book ‘chapter’ that talks about it just that specifically.

The upshot is this: If my son needed a solution to alcoholism and if he had attended this meeting in search for it he would have come away with the message that The Twelve Step solution does not work and they really are not discussed in AA meetings. The cool thing is though he knows middle-of-the-road, POP-AA bull-shale when he hears it. Thank God.

And THERE! With the publication of this article I just rendered Mr. Satan’s lack of solution void. His own arrogance is herewith helpful despite the secular promotion of deadly non-solutions, because now the thousands of readers who access this blog every day have another story with which to identify AA Fellowship abuse in their own neighborhood. So There Satan! Blow it out your goats horn.

Peace and Love,o

Danny S – RLRA

Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com