"Credentials" – Who are the REAL DEAL People?

Many Treatment center staffers give big lip service to our Big Books Twelve Step Program – but how many of them are speaking from an experience they have actually HAD? I have to wonder.

Many “Addictions Counselors” rewrite the steps (Usually only the first three) and mold them into new forms and formats – you know . . . Xeroxed “Handouts” that can be used in group sessions and such – supplemented with Internet materials from all sources except the Big Book.

Anyone with experience with the actual Program can look at those materials and weep. They are garbage – not even resembling the Big Book experience and directions. They are interpretations, reinterpretations and downright perversions. IMPOSTERS.

I worked at a place called Gosnold here on the POD. (See link) It’s pretty much all there is on the POD and as far as treatment facilities go, Gosnold is a big fish in a tiny pond – but there’s more food in that pond than you can imagine.

Cape Cod is after all a beautiful peninsula strewn with quaint drinking villages that has a severe fishing problem.

Since most of the AA Program in the Big Book invalidates their “treatment” methods most Treatment Centers are always on the lookout for anyone who is familiar with the Big Book so they can prevent them from speaking to their clients on “incoming speaking commitments” or even worse – getting “On-staff”. Our types are very bad for business.

It took them all of two weeks to figure out that I was “One of those” (“Those” typically have more experience in successfully helping others to recover than do the treatment center personnel.) - and of course I got canned.
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Here is a guy employed at a twenty eight day treatment facility – telling people about AAs Twelve Steps – and literally knows NOTHING about them.
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While at this facility I read one of the senior counselors handouts on Step One. It was unrecognizable as Step One.Three quarters of it was an opinion about Step Two! I was shocked! It was absolute crap that he had written himself.

So now here is a guy, employed at a twenty eight day treatment facility – telling people about AAs Twelve Steps – and he literally knows NOTHING about them – thinks he does – and has convinced others that he does, simply because he’s been sober and licensed for so many years. And there’s no one to check on him because THEY DON’T KNOW EITHER!

I can’ think of a worse tragedy in that deal.

Addiction Rehabilitation services are not cheap. Facilities like this charge ten to thirty thousand dollars for a single stint – and when it doesn’t work, blame the client. It is outrageous.

Many “clients” finance these charges on credit cards and secure loans by putting liens on their houses or relatives homes. Distraught relatives are often forced by “Love” to withdraw bucks out of their retirement funds in order to come up with the dough.

How sad is this – and Gosnold is not an isolated case. These are people (Not only staffers at Gosnold but at treatment facilities all over the country) who individually kill more people each year, on their own, than Charles Manson ever did. Manson only killed nine people on two occaiisions.

These counselors are in DIRECT contact with perhaps a dozen “Clients” each month. Every day that they are in contact with a real alcoholic is another “occassion” fro them.

I realize that I do have a penchant for hyperbole. I am a writer – but this is no exaggeration. It is THAT BAD. These folks are often lauded for their work, receive weekly paychecks for it, and are known to bask in their own “Charity” for working for such low wages considering all they “Good” they do.

The good news about treatment centers is that many clients DO have a problem with alcohol and drugs but CAN probably stop without the “Real Deal” anyway – if only they will – and can learn some good Rehab “tricks“.

Perhaps you have heard some of the tricks: Having a plan, keeping in a structured environment, (“I need structure”) staying away from “Slippery places”, sharing their problems at meetings, going to lots of meetings (Sometimes three or four a day – what a life huh?) The centers teach them that stuff. But pity the real alcoholic that falls into their domain for whom the only solution is a spiritual awakening.

Professional Jealousy against “We” who actually try and often succeed in carry the message to the alcoholic is rampant. The “Johnny Come Latelies“* - and that’s what the treatment industry is – are doing all they can to discredit AA. I get press releases every day about non-spiritual and “non-twelve step” approaches to alcoholism and AA is getting a huge bashing in these efforts and in the press. Don’t think this isn’t all intentional.

“There’s money in them thar hills!”

There are always exceptions. And in that respect there are some GOOD TREATMENT CENTERS. But there are a HELL of a lot of really bad ones. There are some exceptional counselors out there. They operate under the radar of their employers for as long as they can. Some wind up in private practice. God bless them. They must take a lot of heat! Their jobs are exceeding more difficult than the well-meaning but misinformed, middle-of-the-road based solutions “Addictons counselor“ who hangs a certificate, collect a salary and lies by telling people that he is “Pro AA” but “a drug is a drug is a drug”, and and unwittingly put alcoholics into the dirt. He is not “Pro AA” – he is “Pro-meetings” and “meetings” ain’t the AA Program. The Twelve Steps are.

WHAT NERVE!
If you want to really get sick to your stomach then have a look at this news article Headline.

You will freak. Are there REALLY people out there calling themselves “AA Counselors“?

Peace,

Danny S

* “Alcoholics Anonymous” (1939) was written and it’s Step were being practiced at a time when doctors were routinely committing our type of alcoholics – the hopeless variety – to asylums to “Solve” the problem. Some solve.

Terror on The Penninsula of Doom

“Many of us have been so touchy that even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to beandoned.” (48:0)

Here on the Peninsula of Doom, Cape Cod, the “Bristling” with “Antagonism” at the mere casual mention of God in a meeting is sometime matched with direct implications of “Hey don’t listen to that God stuff. Just don’t drink, come hang with us in meetings and everything will be alright” and “Groups don’t drink, but people do” – and other phrases useless to the real alcoholic.

I mean, if that were true then the meeting makers would be making it – and we see that meeting makers relapse ALL THE TIME – even ones who go to two, three or four meetings a day. MAN! Can you imagine being so meeting reliant for sobriety? It’s no wonder so many newcomers get burned out and give up on AA.

This idea is further supported with their own experience “That’s all I did. My sponsor was GREAT because he never pushed that God stuff on me – and now I am great because I am not like that last guy who just shared – who mentioned God.”

Are these people lying? Probably not. I believe them. It’s their experience. Who am I to question it? If they say that If their will was sufficient to solve the drink problem, I believe it.

But I also know from experience supported by the experiences of the first 100 alcoholic co-founders – and clearly documented in “Alcoholics Anonymous” that anyone who can stop drinking or moderate without God – ALREADY HAS POWER over alcohol and isn’t “One of us”.

“WE” are powerless – and just because someone else exhibits power over alcohol – can utilize the human-aid of meetings and “Hanging in the middle of the pack” or “Putting the plug in the jug” - does not mean that everyone can do it – and how arrogant is it to tell others that THEY CAN! Some of us are truly powerless even if they are not.

Do you thing Ebby (See He Got Off His Ass) held back on the “God talk” because he was afraid to scare Bill W. off? Hell, no. That’s not the way it started and not the way it was done back then – when AA had a seventy-five percent success rate. Ebby even went further than that with Bill W when he said, “I’ve got religion!” – and STILL Bill managed to recover. Why? Because there is this little escape hatch for the religiously “Allergic”. It is called “God of YOUR OWN understanding”.

We don’t have to accept anyone else’s concept of God, as long as it IS GOD. My Big Book tells me that any human concept of God will be insufficient anyway – so why get bogged down on that? We don’t. And when I follow the directions in the Book – I LEARN that!

This may not be prevalent where you are located, but here on Cape Cod, it is. (I don’t want to say the entire Cape – I mostly attend meetings “Mid-cape” in the Hyannis area.) There are small crews of folks, men mostly, who seem to have made it their mission to contradict those whose recovery experience has been spiritual and in step with a God of their own understanding.

According to my Big Book – NOT solely my opinion – these people are probably not really alcoholic. If they are, MAN they must be miserable. (They even look miserable too – rarely smile, always seem depressed, and just have no life-energy about them. No twinkle in the eye that we hear about.)

No wonder these folks eschew the Big Book. They are TERRIFIED of it! Learning from it might show them the truth – they ARE in the WRONG PLACE!

What business is it of mine? Well, I nearly died listening to it. That’s all. Just death – leaving a fatherless family behind with my head blown off by my Winchester. No big deal. (See “Nearly Lost My Head)

I can’t change them – and I don’t even try – I can at least be aware of it – because it helps me de-program newcomers who have to hear it and then hear something totally different from me.

GOD CRAMMING

Peace,

Danny S

The Greatest Enemy

What is my greatest enemy? Not going to enough meetings? The first drink? How about alcohol?

“The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear.” (145:3)

And I always thought my greatest enemy was alcohol. Somuch for that!

There is a continuum of AAs up here on lovely, Cape Cod – mostly back-row type old-timer types – who seem to have adopted a concept I have not heard of anywhere else I have been in AA . Not anywhere off-cape, not down South, not out West or down in Texas, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, or anywhere.

This does not mean this is not said anywhere but here, but to date I have not heard it. Of all the many non-AA one- liners I HAVE heard in this Fellowship however, THIS is by far THE MOST ASININE.

Not quite as asinine as “Keep coming back”, and a close second to “Don’t drink, no matter what”, but perhaps at LEAST as asinine as “Just don’t drink today and everything will be alright”, if it were possible.

Whenever someone talks about their powerlessness, God, or their problems in dealing with resentment or fear, one of these dry folk will hold up their thumb and forefinger to about the size of a shot glass, and say “My problem is only this big”. As if to say their alcoholism has nothing to do with God, power, resentment or fear.

My problem was NOT “Only this big”. There were no “Onlys” about it. The problem I had was ENORMOUS. So HUGE, that I could not do anything about it! Separation from God is no trivial matter.

If ever I get to believing once again that I am bigger than my problem, that’s when I’ll probably convince myself that I have power over it.

And I can say bye bye to my sobriety. The persistent illusion that alcohol causes alcoholism has killed more alcoholics than the last four wars has killed soldiers, I think. On both sides!

Peace,

Danny S

AWOL IS NOT AA – The Truth

If you love “POP-AA” – then you will ADORE AWOL.

If you live in the New England area this article may be of particular interest to you. Over the last decade alcoholics in the New England area have begun to resort to an OVEREATING Program of Twelve Step Recovery. Why has AA failed these people? Why have they had to go outside of the AA Fellowship to “take the steps”? And how come many of them don’t even know that AWOL is not designed for alcoholics? Oh and if you are an AWOL “grad” and go around AA telling folks in AA meetings that AWOL is AA and that you’ve “done the steps” – be prepared for an intense inventory tonight. You will need it. You are about to get your ass spanked.

If I told you that there was another Fellowship – a non-alcoholic Fellowship – which had adopted The Twelve Steps for their own purposes (A problem other than alcoholism – but a serious problem – deserving of a treatment non-the-less) and that this fine, non-alcoholic Fellowship had designed a new method of taking the steps for their own “Members” – what would you say?

I know what I would say.

I would say, “Bully for them!” That is what I DO say! If our Twelve Step wholesale method of getting to God and recovering can help others overcome their problems too – then it’s a beautiful thing! ” . . . we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all.” (Forward to the First Edition)

There are, in fact, very many such Fellowships out there – modeling their recovery methods straight from our Twelve Steps. The best known I suppose would be Al-Anon, NA, CA, OA, GA – there are oodles more of them. Some are listed here: 12

Are you with me so far? Good.

Now . . . . what if I told you that one of those “Non-alcoholic” fellowships – say one which dealt with people with food addictions (not alcoholism) – had developed a schematic for their own use, straight out of the Big Book – The Twelve Steps – and additionally provided diet regimes etc – renamed their Twelve Step method to say, G.O.D. (Good Orderly Direction?) and that thousands if not millions had been helped with their food addictions and become healthier and more prolific – perhaps even happy joyous and free? Still good, no? Of course!

Now here comes the punch line. I call it a punch line because it so closely resembles a joke it isn’t funny – albeit a cruel one:

Now what if I told you that folks who call themselves alcoholics and “Members” of AA, the originating Fellowship of all this – the Fellowship which named itself after the book “Alcoholics Anonymous, which contains the pure, unadulterated version of the Twelve Step instructions designed specifically for alcoholics – would rather follow the G.O.D. method than the Big Book method of taking the steps?

It has happened. And it’s not funny. It has become a virtual sub-cult right within the AA Fellowship itself!

. . . it is an adaptation of The Twelve Steps that has gone from from alcoholics to food addicts and now back to alcoholics again! Do you really we want to put your life or death that kind of dilution and third degree of separation from the AA Program?

There is a fine Fellowship know as Greysheeters which have a system of step taking – they call AWOL (A WAY OF LIFE) which AA’s in this area (New England) use to take the Steps INSTEAD of the Big Book! These AA’s do not necessarily join Greysheeters. They just get together and take the Greysheeters facsimile version (AWOL) of the Twelve Step instructions.

Few if any of these AA’s know that AWOL is TWICE REMOVED from AA’s 12 step procedure and actually THINK that they are using the AA method of recovery in taking the steps the AWOL way.

Let me repeat that: They think AWOL is AA!

What is wrong with this picture?

I know many people who just WILL NOT follow the Steps out of the Big Book – so they will eschew their own Big Book and instead gravitate toward sponsors and Groups that have managed to re-invent watered down version of the steps – perhaps using a 12 & 12 – which ARE NOT the instructions so there is total freestyle 12 step-ability available.

OR they will enroll in an alternate facsimile with an adaptation like AWOL which is just about the SICKEST most watered down and most sinister versions of the Twelve Steps that I have ever seen – for alcoholics anyway. I could NEVER stay sober and recovered using AWOL! All of the key ingredients that help maintain recovery have been filtered out! And so it probably should – it’s for people with FOOD PROBLEMS! Not ALKIES!

AWOL purports to be “THE STEPS” out of the Big Book – and it isn’t. All you need do is get a copy of it and read it for yourself. IF you are familiar with the Big Book’s directions you will not believe how middle-of-the-road AWOL is. Unfortunately many folks do not have the experience with the Big Books Twelve Steps to make that evaluation, so they believe it. It is a LIE!

I can hear it now, “Well, AWOL gave me the support I needed”

SUPPORT? YOUR needs? Sorry but “your” needs and “support” is not what the Twelves Steps are about. They are about Finding God, serving Him, HEALING – MIRACLES and helping other to do the same. But AWOL is prefect for self-centered folks wishing to remain that way – the Big Book is the tool that takes all of that selfishness away – and what self-serving drunk wants to do that? Only a few.

AWOL may be very suitable and successful for food addicts but it is horribly deficient for the real alcoholic. It is an attractive facsimile though – and since it’s easier folks gravitate toward it to claim their “I TOOK THE STEPS” credentials. And they have done no such thing

It’s not Greysheeters fault. They GOT what THEY need! God bless ‘em and Bravo!

But for an alcoholic, AWOL is an absolute half/measure – just about the most awful thing I have ever seen tossed into an already MOTR* fellowship.

So all these still-crazies stand up in meetings – still suffering from untreated alcoholism OR not suffering from it at all because they never had it to begin with saying “I’VE taken the steps” – still un-recovered – still crazy as loons and horrible examples of what the steps really do for real alcoholics who adopt and practice it’s principles.

I am waiting for someone to break out in tears of gratitude from a podium one day saying “AWOL SAVED MY LIFE”. I am waiting to hear from an AWOL alumni, those ever important words, “I have recovered”. But so far I have never heard it. And I doubt I ever will.

Yet folks up here in the Boston and Cape Cod area will promote another Fellowship’s twelve Step method like AWOL from podiums absolutely unchallenged. Do they realize the harm they do to our Fellowship and to newcomers when they do this? I doubt it. I don’t know if they even care.

Please . . . the next time someone says “Wanna do an AWOL?” (“Again” in many cases) remember that it is an adaptation of The Twelve Steps that has gone from from alcoholics to food addicts and now back to alcoholics again! Do you really we want to put your life or death that kind of dilution and third degree of separation from the AA Program?

What happened to keep it simple? Good Grief!

It is no wonder the AWOL sub-cult folks – in AA – still sound and act like newcomers – middle-of-the-road AA hobbyists.

Folks if you seek a solution to your alcoholism – stick with with the genuine article! If you have a problem with food – maybe try Greysheeters AWOL. Apparently they have a great diet system (Distributed on Grey “sheets” I understand) and “A Way Of Life” – A.W.O.L.

But if you want to recover from alcoholism and be apart of AA – we in have a “Design For Living” and a “way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes” that results when we follow and live it – on, that doesn’t end when the AWOL sessions complete and then leaves you to your own devices and to the sloganeering and lip-service crap doled out by shitty-assed sponsorship.

If you are an alcoholic and live in New England and want to take the Twelve Steps – PLEASE stay away from AWOL or any alcoholic who embraces it. That person will kill you. Get a hold of me and I personally will either take you through the Steps of I will find you someone who will. That is a promise.

SEE: “AWOL and Other Ways”

Peace,

Danny S

* Middle-of-the-road

AWOL IS NOT AA – The Truth

If you love “POP-AA” – then you will ADORE AWOL.

If you live in the New England area this article may be of particular interest to you. Over the last decade alcoholics in the New England area have begun to resort to an OVEREATING Program of Twelve Step Recovery. Why has AA failed these people? Why have they had to go outside of the AA Fellowship to “take the steps”? And how come many of them don’t even know that AWOL is not designed for alcoholics? Oh and if you are an AWOL “grad” and go around AA telling folks in AA meetings that AWOL is AA and that you’ve “done the steps” – be prepared for an intense inventory tonight. You will need it. You are about to get your ass spanked.

If I told you that there was another Fellowship – a non-alcoholic Fellowship – which had adopted The Twelve Steps for their own purposes (A problem other than alcoholism – but a serious problem – deserving of a treatment non-the-less) and that this fine, non-alcoholic Fellowship had designed a new method of taking the steps for their own “Members” – what would you say?

I know what I would say.

I would say, “Bully for them!” That is what I DO say! If our Twelve Step wholesale method of getting to God and recovering can help others overcome their problems too – then it’s a beautiful thing! ” . . . we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all.” (Forward to the First Edition)

There are, in fact, very many such Fellowships out there – modeling their recovery methods straight from our Twelve Steps. The best known I suppose would be Al-Anon, NA, CA, OA, GA – there are oodles more of them. Some are listed here: 12

Are you with me so far? Good.

Now . . . . what if I told you that one of those “Non-alcoholic” fellowships – say one which dealt with people with food addictions (not alcoholism) – had developed a schematic for their own use, straight out of the Big Book – The Twelve Steps – and additionally provided diet regimes etc – renamed their Twelve Step method to say, G.O.D. (Good Orderly Direction?) and that thousands if not millions had been helped with their food addictions and become healthier and more prolific – perhaps even happy joyous and free? Still good, no? Of course!

Now here comes the punch line. I call it a punch line because it so closely resembles a joke it isn’t funny – albeit a cruel one:

Now what if I told you that folks who call themselves alcoholics and “Members” of AA, the originating Fellowship of all this – the Fellowship which named itself after the book “Alcoholics Anonymous, which contains the pure, unadulterated version of the Twelve Step instructions designed specifically for alcoholics – would rather follow the G.O.D. method than the Big Book method of taking the steps?

It has happened. And it’s not funny. It has become a virtual sub-cult right within the AA Fellowship itself!

. . . it is an adaptation of The Twelve Steps that has gone from from alcoholics to food addicts and now back to alcoholics again! Do you really we want to put your life or death that kind of dilution and third degree of separation from the AA Program?

There is a fine Fellowship know as Greysheeters which have a system of step taking – they call AWOL (A WAY OF LIFE) which AA’s in this area (New England) use to take the Steps INSTEAD of the Big Book! These AA’s do not necessarily join Greysheeters. They just get together and take the Greysheeters facsimile version (AWOL) of the Twelve Step instructions.

Few if any of these AA’s know that AWOL is TWICE REMOVED from AA’s 12 step procedure and actually THINK that they are using the AA method of recovery in taking the steps the AWOL way.

Let me repeat that: They think AWOL is AA!

What is wrong with this picture?

I know many people who just WILL NOT follow the Steps out of the Big Book – so they will eschew their own Big Book and instead gravitate toward sponsors and Groups that have managed to re-invent watered down version of the steps – perhaps using a 12 & 12 – which ARE NOT the instructions so there is total freestyle 12 step-ability available.

OR they will enroll in an alternate facsimile with an adaptation like AWOL which is just about the SICKEST most watered down and most sinister versions of the Twelve Steps that I have ever seen – for alcoholics anyway. I could NEVER stay sober and recovered using AWOL! All of the key ingredients that help maintain recovery have been filtered out! And so it probably should – it’s for people with FOOD PROBLEMS! Not ALKIES!

AWOL purports to be “THE STEPS” out of the Big Book – and it isn’t. All you need do is get a copy of it and read it for yourself. IF you are familiar with the Big Book’s directions you will not believe how middle-of-the-road AWOL is. Unfortunately many folks do not have the experience with the Big Books Twelve Steps to make that evaluation, so they believe it. It is a LIE!

I can hear it now, “Well, AWOL gave me the support I needed”

SUPPORT? YOUR needs? Sorry but “your” needs and “support” is not what the Twelves Steps are about. They are about Finding God, serving Him, HEALING – MIRACLES and helping other to do the same. But AWOL is prefect for self-centered folks wishing to remain that way – the Big Book is the tool that takes all of that selfishness away – and what self-serving drunk wants to do that? Only a few.

AWOL may be very suitable and successful for food addicts but it is horribly deficient for the real alcoholic. It is an attractive facsimile though – and since it’s easier folks gravitate toward it to claim their “I TOOK THE STEPS” credentials. And they have done no such thing

It’s not Greysheeters fault. They GOT what THEY need! God bless ‘em and Bravo!

But for an alcoholic, AWOL is an absolute half/measure – just about the most awful thing I have ever seen tossed into an already MOTR* fellowship.

So all these still-crazies stand up in meetings – still suffering from untreated alcoholism OR not suffering from it at all because they never had it to begin with saying “I’VE taken the steps” – still un-recovered – still crazy as loons and horrible examples of what the steps really do for real alcoholics who adopt and practice it’s principles.

I am waiting for someone to break out in tears of gratitude from a podium one day saying “AWOL SAVED MY LIFE”. I am waiting to hear from an AWOL alumni, those ever important words, “I have recovered”. But so far I have never heard it. And I doubt I ever will.

Yet folks up here in the Boston and Cape Cod area will promote another Fellowship’s twelve Step method like AWOL from podiums absolutely unchallenged. Do they realize the harm they do to our Fellowship and to newcomers when they do this? I doubt it. I don’t know if they even care.

Please . . . the next time someone says “Wanna do an AWOL?” (“Again” in many cases) remember that it is an adaptation of The Twelve Steps that has gone from from alcoholics to food addicts and now back to alcoholics again! Do you really we want to put your life or death that kind of dilution and third degree of separation from the AA Program?

What happened to keep it simple? Good Grief!

It is no wonder the AWOL sub-cult folks – in AA – still sound and act like newcomers – middle-of-the-road AA hobbyists.

Folks if you seek a solution to your alcoholism – stick with with the genuine article! If you have a problem with food – maybe try Greysheeters AWOL. Apparently they have a great diet system (Distributed on Grey “sheets” I understand) and “A Way Of Life” – A.W.O.L.

But if you want to recover from alcoholism and be apart of AA – we in have a “Design For Living” and a “way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes” that results when we follow and live it – on, that doesn’t end when the AWOL sessions complete and then leaves you to your own devices and to the sloganeering and lip-service crap doled out by shitty-assed sponsorship.

If you are an alcoholic and live in New England and want to take the Twelve Steps – PLEASE stay away from AWOL or any alcoholic who embraces it. That person will kill you. Get a hold of me and I personally will either take you through the Steps of I will find you someone who will. That is a promise.

SEE: “AWOL and Other Ways”

Peace,

Danny S

* Middle-of-the-road

Lonely? Take Up A Hobby – Like AA!

A great lot of treatment center “Clients” are able to be helped through the psychological counseling offered through treatment centers. Since such a small percentage of those who have a problem with alcohol are actually real alcoholics, fitting AA’s “Description of the alcoholic”, the empowerment methods taught to them in rehab facilities are probably quite helpful.

A problem only surfaces when a real alcoholic tries those same methods which promote “Human aid” as a solution. Real alcoholics are beyond “Human aid” (25:3) and since treatment centers do not QUALIFY the real alcoholic, differentiating us from “Alcohol abusers” we get taught to try methods which history and experience with working with real alcoholics has taught us will not work. The problem can be attributed to money. My wife Nancy is not an alcoholic. No way. No how. She can never become one. She’s just not wired the right way.

But if she walked into a local rehab here with a check for $10k- $30k – she’d be labeled “ALCOHOLIC” or “DRUG ADDICT” or whatever she wanted in a New York minute. The prevailing attitude is “If you can pay – your one!”

It would be a great experiment to expose this sham one day – I’d love to- if I had some extra cash to let go of until the lawsuit settled. Maybe one day.

Unfortunately a similar situation exists in our Fellowship too – where the motive apparently is not money, but some other unhealthy need. I know that the same would happen if she walked into an AA meeting. Apparently we AAs LOVE to pronounce individuals as alcoholic (Despite what our Big Book tells us). She’d be told “If you’re here on a Friday night – you must be an alcoholic” and “No one gets here by accident” or other such hypno-speak.

Then she’d make a bunch of new friends, get some socialization, and AA meetings would become her new hobby. Most of the meetings I attend here on Cape Cod are attended by AA hobbyists – not alcoholics who are suffering from an illness that only a spiritual awakening can conquer.

Peace,

Danny S

Is There A God On Cape Cod?

Now this is not anything to be overly concerned about, but it does deserve honorable mention.At least the 15 minutes it will take me to write this.(Or is it dis-honorable mention?)

I got sober in NYC. I moved to this particularly beautiful but strange area called Cape Cod, a peninsula of teenie weenie drinking villages, each with huge fishing problems.

In the center of this gorgeous peninsula, right around Hyannis, believe it or not, there are actually tiny roving bands of AAs sitting in meetings, waiting for the opportunity to cross talk anyone who mentions the Program part of AA. That would include God, the 12 steps or spirituality.

The idea is that by talking about God, the work, or most other aspects of the AA Program, one will “run the newcomer out of AA”, should he hear it. “If someone had crammed that God stuff down my throat I never would have stayed and I’d be dead” is the oft repeated battle cry of this rather mean spirited tribe of ex-problem drinkers. What they don’t realize of course, and what is obvious to the experienced recovered alcoholic who truly understand the disease, is that their efforts never accomplish what they think they are accomplishing.

This is because if a real alcoholic is ever “driven out” of AA, the alcohol just drives him back in again! And eventually to his knees.

They would like, and do their darnedest, to see to it that that all members speaking about the Program are properly countered with a “their way” alternative — or what we who have recovered from alcoholism through AA spiritual treatment refer to as “watered down AA”.

Talking about the Fellowship is fine, but leave the Program out of it. I kid you not. The intimidation tactics I have witnessed in an effort to enforce this unwritten policy of theirs of having AA “their way” is amazing.

My imagination you say? My own character defects, alcoholic paranoia and self-centered fears playing tricks on me you say? Maybe. However, come here and attend meetings with me, and you will be astonished! And the most astonishing thing about it is, I don’t think they know it!

I don’t want to believe that they meet in coffee shops and review their mission statement, goals, objectives and accomplishments. (Please tell me they don’t do THAT)* But the net effect is the same – as if they do. As they say, you begin to sound like whoever you listen to in AA; it becomes amazingly obvious that these gentlemen have actually generated into their own little AA sub-cult right here on Cape Cod.

The result is that controversy is created where only another drunk’s experience previously existed. If one walks into a 12 step meeting with any of those guys present and share real life experience with those 12 steps, they will take great exception to it; and are likely to “out-share” to the contrary. Folks knowing this, having seen it so much are intimidated and alter the way they share. I personally know people who have left AA seeing this mini-trend. Pretty sad, huh?

Hopefully they will fade out with time. But they’re here on Cape Cod now, thankfully limited to the Hyannis meeting areas. I have never witnessed such a thing anywhere else in AA, and my AA experience is not limited to this region.

Over the last 3 or 4 years though I have begun to lighten up over it. I find that people who are going to find God, are going to find God whether people who stop drinking through their own willpower are talking in AA meetings or not.

I remember that no one kicked me out of AA just because I wasn’t doing the steps or I accepting God. Those situations were solved by relapsing again, not by AA “saviors of the heathen”.

I drank again for those reasons, but it brought me finally to my knees and prayer. Like the first of the 10th Step promises says: “And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned.”

Peace,

Danny S

* Since writing this artice several years ago I have learned that indeed they do meet outside of meetings and actually do pre-meditate their efforts. DS

I Had A Huge Problem

What is my greatest enemy? Not going to enough meetings? The first drink? How about alcohol?

“The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear.” (145:3)

And I always thought my greatest enemy was alcohol. Somuch for that!

There is a continuum of AAs up here on lovely, Cape Cod – mostly back-row type old-timer types – who seem to have adopted a concept I have not heard of anywhere else I have been in AA . Not anywhere off-cape, not down South, not out West or down in Texas, New Jersy, Connecticut, New York, or anywhere.

This does not mean this is not said anywhere but here, but to date I have not heard it. Of all the many non-AA oneliners I HAVE heard in this Fellowship however, THIS is by far THE MOST ASININE.

Not quite as asinine as “Keep coming back”, and a close second to “Don’t drink, no matter what”, but perhaps at LEAST as asinine as “Just don’t drink today and everything will be alright”, if it were possible.

Whenever someone talks about their powerlessness, God, or their problems in dealing with resentment or fear, one of these dry folk will hold up their thumb and forefinger to about the size of a shot glass, and say “My problem is only this big”. As if to say their alcoholism has nothing to do with God, power, resentment or fear.

My problem was NOT “Only this big”. There were no “Onlys” about it. The problem I had was ENORMOUS. So HUGE, that I could not do anything about it! Separation from God is no trivial matter.

If ever I get to believing once again that I am bigger than my problem, that’s when I’ll probably convince myself that I have power over it.

And I can say bye bye to my sobriety. The persistent illusion that alcohol causes alcoholism has killed more alcoholics than the last four wars has killed soldiers, I think. On both sides!

Peace,

Danny S