What Is Your Truth?

I am a recovered alcoholic.



Is them fightin‘ words?

Someone who has has the spiritual awakening as the result of these steps and who practices these principles in all of their affairs wouldn’t be looking for a fight – if they have recovered then they have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol – even other AA members. Their motives would not be so questionable.

I can tell you why I identify as “Recovered”.

I am saying something different because I am having a different experience in AA and have had different results from being a member than many others who aren’t recovered and aren’t recovering either.

When I identify with my truth – that I have indeed recovered – oftentimes someone will come up to me afterwards to ask me to explain it to them. That one word is sometimes a walking billboard of more hope than they have yet to hear in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I am more than happy to oblige them and take advantage of the opportunity. I have gotten sponsees this way.

Lives have been turned to God and people have recovered, because I identify as a “RECOVERED” alcoholic. No one has EVER asked me to explain “Recovering”.

As a real alcoholic newcomer, and not a Disco Drunk, it was a dismal prospect to think that I might never recover and would be sick and insane for the rest of my life. I would not want what a person who never recovered has, no matter how great they thought it was to not have to work with a headache, get into bar fights or how much they thought it was a boon to their existence to have a drivers license back.

I couldn’t give a tittly toot about their DMV issues or how unhappy they have been without their kids Those were never issues for me and I know plenty of people who never drink that have those same issues or worse.

And damn the grimacing torpedoes of middle-of-road disco drunks who disapprove and hold contempt for the miracle.

Many people just don’t seem to understand how low and how deep the soul sickness of a real alcoholic like me gets. “Recovering” holds no banner of hope for me. It carries has no depth – no weight, hardly any promise at all. “Recovered” is an offer of the hope held out, for inspection, ready to be passed on. And Damn the grimacing torpedoes of middle-of-road disco drunks who disapprove and hold contempt for the miracle.

“Recovering” is not attractive to me as a real McCoy. A life filled with work problems, divorces, fits of anger fear and loathing, because after all “I’m STILL RECOVERING, I am NOT A SAINT, I AM LEARNING TO LIVE MY DEFECTS” with no alcohol to ease the misery is no offer of hope to me. I wouldn’t want it!

“Recovered” on the other hand, is VERY attractive. It may be repulsive to the non-alcoholic who can never recover from a disease he hasn’t got, whose drunkologue and whose sad-sack bottom sounds like a cakewalk to the real alcoholic – but to me as a real alcoholic I want what “Recovered offers.” Not what “always be sick” and recovering offers, which is nothing but fellowship and a lifelong commitment to meeting addiction.

Personally I can’t imagine an unrecovered alcoholic having the nerve to say m>“I am a recovered alcoholic” even when looking for a fight. His yet unaddressed fears or what people might think would prevent it. And those who aren’t even real alcoholics who say it, aren’t’ my concern.

Hopefully they’ll just peter out of the fellowship in a few years anyway once they figured out that they aren’t powerless over alcohol and CAN stop on their own willpower.<!–p>

I don’t EVER enjoy fighting with ANYONE over these issues or what I say in a meeting. There is such a thing as healthy debate - but looking for fights in AA over my own experience is a waste of time. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone thank God.

Peace,

Danny S

Sit The Man Down

Periodically I will be asked how I begin working with a newcomer. Ok, so here’s how I do it – why not:

I sit the man down. I tell him my story. I tell him what I know about alcoholism – the parts which clearly illustrate

1) Mental Obsession and

2) Physical allergy.

Then he either identifies with those two conditions and can apply them to his own history – or not. If he says he can, he tells me those stories.

If he can’t tell me specific examples where it is clear to both of us that he indeed has BOTH conditions – I pass.

If he CAN identify and tells me so, THEN I am “satisfied that he is a real alcoholic” (92:1) and not just a Disco Drunk or someone who drinks too much because he “doesn’t want to feel” or has “stuffed his feeling and needs to escape his problems” or whatever other reasons heavy drinkers typically give for drinking and think they are qualifying – then I begin to dwell on the hopeless feature of the malady. It’s very simple.

We both may have totaled a bunch of cars, and run over some babies and that’s great if we want to have a conversations about how expensive bodywork is or how horrible prison conditions are these days. But it does not allow us to have a meaningful discourse about alcoholism.

This is why a park bench wino is able to identify with the story of a nun, and visa versa – and they can effectively 12 step each other – while a heavy drinker will walk away and say “I don’t identify – I’m not a nun.”

It’s why a newcomer barely six months sober can help a 20 year old-timer, suffering bedevilments and dying a slow miserable death from untreated alcoholism – AND going to AA meetings – getting sicker and sicker and sometimes joining with others of his type making his own home group sicker and sicker.

This is exactly how they did it back when AA had a near 100% success rate. And it worked. Unfortunately we’ve gotten away from what worked. Nothing else has depth and weight except this type of talk.

BTW, this can all be reconciled in the Big Book, on 18:3 and more.

Peace,

Danny S