Is God "Board Certified"?

Intervention
Part II

An ad ran here on the Peninsula of Doom cable system a few nights ago – Monday, I believe. I think it came from The Drug Free America Foundation – if not then some other similar organization. The message was “Don’t wait till you hit bottom”.

Yes, I know they are talking about drug addicts – but they ALSO think that alcoholism and drug addiction are the same thing. So when DFA or whoever they are, is addressing drug addiction they are also telling alcoholics the same exact things. The point is, here is a message that is in direct conflict with what we know works for real alcoholics and it is being broadcast over mass media.

They believe that the solution to alcoholism might include not waiting to hit bottom. Hmm . . . could it be that they want you to come “in” while you can still pay? That would be better – considering the financial limitations of public assistance and insurance companies.

Here’s a bit of Bill W’s experience with “hitting bottom”: “Why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely tried to practice the AA program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing AA’s remaining eleven steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking.” 12 Steps and 12 Traditions page 24

And “all this insistence” is quite accurate. There’s a lot of it in AA.

This “not waiting to hit bottom” idea, mind you, come from folks who USE the AA Fellowship as their own “free” aftercare program. Yet they do not believe or prescribe that same ideologies or procedures of that fellowship. Is any wonder that so many real alcoholics get nothing but confused and dead?

We are talking about people here who have NO IDEA what an alcoholic bottom is. They are thinking in terms of material loss, feelings of self pity and grief – calling these “hitting bottom“.

If you are a real alcoholic who has hit a real alcoholic bottom, and are reading this then you know that these things, as painful as they are – as horrific as they can be – can still only be considered a cakewalk when compared to the true alcoholic bottom that we experience before we turn our lives and wills over to God and recover. And if not then you are dead and unable to read this anyway.

Experience, the kind that is sometimes grim and oftentimes joyous, tells us that recovery is best left to the Pros. And the real Pros are other alcoholics who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of body and mind through a means that does NOT entail human intervention. It is about Divine intervention.

So what if the above mentioned ad or ads like it were wildly successful? Suppose thousands of alcoholics who would have others eventually had their last drink – the one that brings them to the abject bottom – the soul sickness, of the alcoholic bottom – were prevented from having that last drink?

They’ll never recover.

When we intervene with an alcoholic’s progression we intervene with his recovery. And he’s dead. The problem is that interventionists have a whole ‘nother definition of a “bottom” than we have.

Here’s a good description of a bottom in the Big Book: “ . . . . unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end.” (152:0)

How you ever been unable to imagine even living anymore AND been unable to imagine dying either? Honestly now. This isn’t one your Open Discussion meetings where bullshit flies like mosquitoes over a Georgia swamp in August.

Did that type of loneliness even come CLOSE to the imagery of the lonely guy sitting in a full Yankee Stadium? (Another silly-ass fellowship analogy with which non-alcoholics can easily identify.)

Or were you just without much socialization, friends and loved ones – who had abandoned you or became distant because you’re such an asshole?

Maybe you were just “sick and tired of being sick and tired”? SHIT. I wish i could have stopped drinking just because I was sick and tired of doing it. I was there for YEARS, man – and still I drank. That’s no incentive to stop for a real McCoy!

You think that either of these even approaches the loneliness and pain of an alcoholic at his bottom then you are truly blessed. Ignorant – but blessed. Let’s call it blissfully ignorant. Your solution is simple: Just put the plug in the jug. If that’s too difficult then get yourself holed up in a rehab somewhere to assist. You don’t need AA.

Recovery is best left to the Pros. And the Pros are other alcoholics who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of body and mind through a means that does NOT entail human intervention. It is about Divine intervention.

Believe me, God is not “Board Certified. ” And neither are “we“. “We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.”

We doan need no steenkeen certificate.

Peace,

Danny S

* And neither are “we“. “We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.” We doan need no steenkeen certificate.

How to Kill A Real Alcoholc

Intervention
PART I

Ever seen them on TV? Ever had one? Amazing. Good entertainment. Do you realize that in the time it takes to plan and implement an “intervention” that an alcoholic could have competed all twelve step and recovered?

I kid you not.

• Bill Wilson did it in under two weeks
• Dr. Bob in under a month
• ALL of the early co-founders in under a month.
• Me? I’m a little slow – forty four days. A lot of unnecessary pain and suffering was had during that time, but none of us have done this perfectly. “We are not saints” and certainly not I.

I look at these people on the television and think, “Man I hope these aren’t real alcoholics.” I hope they are all just hard drinking drug abusers – because if they are not real alcoholics, then this sort of thing may work for them. But if they are the real McCoys – can kill them.

Interventions prevent an alcoholic from hitting bottom. That’s bad. FAMILY hit their bottom – not necessarily when the alkie hits his. And those “bottoms” are not the same. Families are miserable, hurt and tormented so they are going to force the issue. Implementing an intervention may be out of love – of course it is – but it’s also out of ignorance. The counseling that a family can receive as the result of an intervention may be good for them even if it is a poor substitute for the spiritual steps that they could take instead.

In AA, when the Big Book directions are followed, the whole family can benefit for the from SAME EXACT process. But that alkie may not have had his last drink – but hell or high water we are going see that he’s had it.

Non alcoholics cannot hit an alcoholic bottom. The lowest they can possibly get is dead. “Dead” is a break for the real alkie. If you aren’t one – you can never understand this. If you are not a real alkie what seems to be the worst kind of life – one of loss, poverty, self-pity and mental misery is a fucking cake walk to us real alkies.

We might feel bad for you when we hear of your hardships, your relationship difficulties, your financial problems – the children and spouses you’ve harmed – but we also then know that you have not known the true alcoholic bottom. An Alcoholic bottom is worse than these. It is a sickness of soul and spirit and it does not rely upon material and emotional losses to cut it’s wounds. It is powerfully, almost intelligently debilitating on it own, corrupting, imprisoning and torturing the spiritual of being that the simple tears of self-pity cannot touch.

There IS a bottom worse than death. It’s living in a place that can only be entered through the ages old iron gates of mental insanity – whereupon once entering, the afflicted must adapt and survive on terrain so treacherous that only a tiny percentage of those who enter ever find the way back. Even fewer ever live long or happily.

Anyone, alcoholic or not, can experience such soul sickness – but alcoholics for sure will. You want to help a hard drinker? Write a check and buy an “Intervention”. You want to help a real alcoholic? Bring him to God.

Peace,

Danny S

Some Threadbare Excuse

For many years no matter what the consequences of a spree, whether it was a twelve-hour spree or a four-day spree, I was always convinced that somehow, even if it got bad, it would be worth it.

There would be some “prize” at the end of the rainbow – like a good time, a skirt, or just a well deserved mini-vacation from whatever was eating at me in that moment – the problems du jour that are the excuses for drinking, when drinking is what we would do regardless.

You know . . . . some threadbare excuse for taking a drinking anyway.

“Even if I get sick and Nancy is mad, the experience is worth it.” Sorry to say, for a self-centered alcoholic like me it always WAS worth it, for YEARS.

Then the accumulated aggregate of consequences – the sack full of life being “not fair” in career, relationships finally built up to a grand case of self-pity.

Yet STILL that dreadful state was a mere cakewalk compared to the bottom I eventually hit – the alcoholic bottom where the soul is so sick it wants to kill itself.

I try not to mistake self-pity for an alcoholic-bottom anymore. I have been to both places – and sometimes can recognize the difference. Sometimes not.

Being sober for years – being the good fella – faking it till I make it – was not the solution for me. It was mere self-pity that drove me to seek help – not in any change of self, but in fellowship – AA meetings. But self-redirection did not last for this real McCoy.

I empathize with down-and-out folks who seek relief from the torch on their butts, from their burning consciences, from the losses of thing material. I wish I could convey to them that if they are really alcoholic the STILL may not find any relief before really hitting bottom. Even considering the degree of unhappiness they already find themselves, unless there is a spiritual awakening it gets worse, not better.

The good news is that once the awakening occurs, it is a transformation of total being that brings incredible awareness and power back into a life lost to selfishness, and recreates anew being to live a life that is useful, happy, and whole. Un-freakin‘-real.

I am presently the happiest I have ever been in my life. My family loves me, and I them, I can demonstrate it to them. My kids are well adjusted and live in what to me would have seemed a dreamland growing up. My wife’s dreams are coming true too. The plans we made together when we were sixteen and seventeen years old that never came together are HERE now.

We all go through each day one at a time. I feel useful for the first time in my life because I now know what I never knew and I keep learning, only having just scratched the surface.

I wish what I have upon everyone, alcoholic or not. If it gets any better than this, I just do not know WHAT I will do. It is beyond my comprehension. Pink clouds? No way. Gods grace for doing his work well? Definitely.

Peace,

Danny S

Nearly Lost My Head

At first, summer of 1998, it was not easy for me to stay sober , just not drinking and going to meetings. But at least I wasn’t drinking, and was put into a place of fellowship where I could hear the message, but only if and it was conveyed. And thank God it finally was.

The welcomed and wonderful band-aids of the Fellowship with which I had covered my wounds were beginning to reach their full saturation point. The spiritual bleeding continued.

It was five days short of my second anniversary on a curiously warm night, and a drink was the furthest thing from my mind. I was driving home from my office and I was feeling rather at ease.

It had been a productive night evening. Our production (sales) was excellent, I had hired some new very promising people, and I was in a fantastic frame of mind. I had just gotten off the phone with my sponsor, and we had shared some great AA talk. Suddenly it occurred to me that on such a great day, it is a damned shame that I cannot drink anymore.”

It would have been the ideal time to unwind — kick back, and REALLY enjoy my good fortune, my imminent sober anniversary and my apparent serenity.

Two days later I awoke in a motel room, five minutes from my office. I was in bed, naked, sweating and shivering cold, and coming off a blackout. I had relapsed. I have no memory of what happened to me from the time the insanity of the first drink entered my thoughts, to the time I came to.

I drove home. The pain in my soul was so extreme, I felt that death was the only possible way out. The sickness in my own soul had hit my absolute threshold. I knew it was not possible for me to take even one iota more. I had a shotgun in the house. I thought that if I put the barrel in my mouth and pull the trigger with my toes, I would be relieved.

But I knew the shells were old and with a shotgun in my crotch – if it misfired — it could be very painful and unfortunate if I lived. Yet death was the only way.

I did not know it, but THIS was a jumping-off place where I had never been before – the one spoken of in the Big Book.

I headed for the basement to bring the gun back upstairs to bed. On the way, I stopped. I stood on the balcony outside of the bedroom and looked down at my son’s room, where he lay asleep. “What about him?” I thought. “What of him growing up without a daddy like you did?”

Then I thought of my wife behind me, lying in bed. What horror would she experience to hear the explosion and watch as my head splattered across the ceiling; possibly with bits of my splattered brains dripping down on the bed next to her; my headless body lying beside her? Was this what she bargained for when she married me?

Had she any idea?
I turned around and headed back to my bed, and put my head face down into the pillow and I prayed to God. A cry that came from deep down from my solar plexus – my “soul” if you will.

I asked of God not to live; neither did I ask to die. I made no promises in exchange for anything. I just abandoned all hope for myself of doing anything and asked (prayed – begged) that anything He wanted would be. I must now either die or live, whichever was His choice, because only one or the other was possible in that moment. All I knew was the way I now am, could not possibly continue.

At this same moment, when death seemed so appealing, I had what would be termed as a spiritual experience.

With it came a sudden, breeze of cool, sweet smelling air through the room. The sheer draperies that lined the glass door leading out into the outside deck rolled and fluttered and I heard the voice of God. He said that He loved me and would help if I would have Him, that there was a better way to Him. It was a path paved by those who came before. It would lead me back to Him. I could see this with a vision and clarity that I still have today.

I got up to close the windows and door but was astounded to find that they were already shut tight and not even the hint of a draft was leaking into the room. The breeze had not emanated from outside. Confused but still grateful, I thanked God, and I cried for my past arrogance – returned to my bed and fell off to sleep

The next morning, after sleeping only a few hours, I awoke feeling well rested. An old-timer came into my life a few days later. He offered and I accepted his help in guiding me through and practicing the Program of recovery using the directions outlined by the first one hundred alcoholics who authored the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

I began to see the results immediately and forty-four days later, I was a free man. I began to seek out fellow alcoholics in AA who also followed or sought the same path.

It is the reason I am a moderator of Yahoo recovery Groups, maintain this blog and try to stay in contact with folks all around the world who follow this path – and why I endeavor to engage in any activity I can which might help others.

Peace,

Danny S