Jane You Ignorant Slut

Alcoholics Anonymous must be run by a bunch of drunks. It is a twelve step fellowship – one where if you attend one of their meetings and want to articulate your experiences with those twelve steps – someone or even many someone’s’ will object to your talking about it. Chances are you may even be “cross talked” – those little heiney spanking egologues where one gets spanked – into happy-horse-shit, church basement oblivion for daring to mention God or the Steps in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous – even if it is your experience – by a self appointed bleeding deacon who ‘does not know how this works he just know that it does.’ EEEYUCH!

You may now swallow the vomit that you just throw up into your mouth.

How darest thou speak of your experiences with the Twelve Steps and a spiritual awakening or experience that you have had as the result of those steps in a meeting of a Twelve Step fellowship! But if you want to talk about how you have NO experience with the twelve steps – and how you “Keep It Simple” by not doing shit – then that is just fine and dandy!

By the way, ‘cross talk’ is often nothing more than grinning idiotic attacks made on your own experience – indirectly ad hominem – naturally. They can often be more ‘Point-Counterpoint’ than a constructive addendum that can be helpful to others which is what crosstalk is supposed to be. The only thing missing is “Jane you ignorant slut.” Or “Danny you idiotic douche bag”.

Fact is I am perfectly capable of being an idiotic douche bag – but when I am talking to others about my relationship with God and the spiritual awakening I have had through the Twelve Steps – I am about as wise, noble and divinely inspired as any other recovered alcoholic who through the grace of a loving God has had their problems solved and been given the power to help others. I am not so sickeningly self-deprecated as to cross into that creepy false modestly that we hear so often in meetings, so that I don’t know the power that I have been given – that you have too – if you have recovered. If you have not recovered . . . .. eh, then not so much. If you will NEVER recover – then you can be sure that you will NEVER have the power to help others. Being ‘right sized’ means not too big – but it also means not too small. Size matters baby!

You people out there trying to INJECT God into to your idiotic open discussion meetings that have about as much spiritual power in them as a wet fart in church are walking out of those meetings with two black eyes and bloody noses. I know that. Other of you are just going home adding AA meetings and people in them to your nightly inventory.

Is THIS how you imagined our fellowship to be when you first came around – a constant struggle with truth and anger and faith and love and hate and intolerance and patience – being made to feel like a stranger in your own fellowship? After a while, you have this very important question: “WTF?”

Look. We are NOT going to ‘OUTSHARE’ our way through the thick of POP-AA bullshale that surrounds us and that is choking the newcomers to death – pushing them back into their cups and bottles that bring them in to us in the first place.

We do not have to be martyrs. Martyrs bleed a lot. They also get buried and do more good dead than alive – - and we need you alive so you can Twelve Step others.

I know what you are up against. There are people who actually come to meetings specifically to tell newcomers what their inexperience is with the twelve steps.

It can best be heard in their own words, which sound like, “I don’t drink and I never took the steps – so you don’t have to either. People that tell you to do the steps are creeps and Nazis’ and we who don’t do the steps are your best bet for sobriety. Ignore that this is a spiritual fellowship or anyone who tells you it is and just show up and don‘t drink.”

Is it no wonder that such a large percentage of the entire Addictions Treatment industry scoffs – laughs at us – and advertises “NON-TWELVE STEP” rehabilitation programs for sale?

It reminds me of the “Have It Your” ad campaign of Burger Kings back in the 70s where “The King” is going after the dissatisfied McDonald’s customers who were turned off by McDonald’s employees only begrudgingly helping customer’s to customize their sandwiches. It was genius marketing then and it probably is now too. And AA has dug its own whole and permitted it – just like arrogant McDonald’s had back then.

Not everyone who comes to AA HAS TO have a spiritual awakening as the result of the Twelve Steps in order to remain sober. That is the Gods honest truth. There are many who can just get sick and tired enough and stop. The fellowship is full of folks just like that. Not everyone has to – because not everyone IS an alcoholic of our type.

Or another term that goes back to AAs very beginnings: “One of us”. If you are “one of us” then you are going to drink even if you are “sick and tired or being sick and tired.”

There has been an infiltration into AA of interlopers who have decided that they do not need to qualify for membership anymore, that anyone “with a desire to stop drinking” even non-alcoholics, can become members. They have surgically cut and pasted a few cherry picked lines out of AA literature to “prove” their right to ignore our Traditions in their entirety and to do things their way while the fellowship melts away into it’s own soupy remains.

At most of the meetings I attend the great majority of attendees are not members of Alcoholics Anonymous – even if they SAY they are. Such declarative power is granted only to ‘Alcoholics’ fitting AA’s “Our description of the alcoholic”. Of course there are those reading this who getting pissed off at me for even writing this, but I’ll bet that they want everyone to use THEIR description and not “Our description” which is clearly delineated in the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous”. It is no wonder then that so many of us have been hypnotically hit with the idea that “cramming a big book down our throats” happens when we suggest the Program of AA called The Twelve Steps?

The Big Book, Step One in particular – is a wonderful ‘filter’ to ensure that only alcoholics hold the privilege of becoming members “when they say so”.

After the fact it also exposes the non-alcoholic frauds already inside the rooms for what they are – just assholes who liked to drink too much – too often and needed to get the hot torch off their burning asses – and so they put the plug in the jug and started coming to AA meetings.

No spiritual awakening to solve the problem. No working with other alcoholics. No new avocation or Employer – just “don’t drink and go to meetings” and that is all they need or want.

I’ll tell you what. I had that NO GOD and NO STEPS crap crammed down my throat and it damn near killed me. DO you know why? It was not because I suffered from a disease that ninety meetings in ninety days could conquer – or that “just showing up” could conquer or that “asking God to keep me away from a drink for one day and thanking Him at night” could conquer.

It was because I was suffering “from an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer.” (44:0)

If you do suffer from a disease that meetings and human aid can conquer well, then that is good news for you. But we true alcoholics are beyond human aid. I think that’s why Big Book Thumpers are thought to be so mean and rigid sometimes – We are pissed off that we had to do all that hard work and change the ways we live from the moment we awaken in the morning – before we even get out of bed . . . .all throughout the day . . . . and then up until the moment we are ready to sleep at night – in order to stay sober.

Shit . . . . all everyone else had to do was “just don’t drink and go to meetings.” It isn’t fair! Going to any length for some of us is about as hard as having to go to meetings every day. THAT’S HARD? How long is your length? an inch? Once again size seem to count. But oh my gosh – what a freakin’ cakewalk when compared to what me and the alcoholics with whom I hang have have to do – and still do in maintaining it.

You meeting addicted, people dependent, POP-AA, middle-of-the-road, AA Hobbyists are such lucky bastards! Just suit up and show up and the magic in the coffee pots escapes like a genie in a bottle and fixes you right up – and you are now happy joyous and free. HOT DAMN!

You all don’t even have to sponsor others. You think you have to wait a year or whatever other crap some still recovering newcomer with “a few 24s” or twenty years of sobriety “under his belt” told you. Man, you guys get off so easy!

And therein lies the solution. Primary Purpose – helping other alcoholics recover from alcoholism – and means getting into a group situation where that group will carry the message of sobriety: freedom from alcohol thorough the teaching and practice of the twelve steps. Doing that is when the fellowship we crave forms around us like a shield.

So the next time you seem overtaken by “easier softer way” types – made to feel like you have only little in common with the folks sitting in the same room with you – just remember that there are seats in that room that YOU can fill by getting off your fat flat alcoholic ass -going out and bringing in our own – real true alcoholics of our type – and if you do that then that room will get so hot that the interlopers in there for cheap buck an hour group therapy sessions will have to go find somewhere else to go. That may be back to a treatment center where they came from – but we cannot help the world with all of its problems even if those problems – to the untrained eye – sometimes seem to mimic alcoholism. When it comes to alcoholism, we ARE the pros – let’s act like it and get to work prospecting new blood for a Fellowship of the Spirit and let the ‘fellowship of the fellowship’ run away scared or simply drop by the wayside to do it’s own thing.

Whatever I do I am NOT going to stop going to meetings because I don’t like what the people are saying there. It is true – they might be talking shit about everything under the sun except Primary Purpose but I am going to go anyway because that’s where another alcoholic might show up and if he does not run into the likes of ME or you then his ass is scuhroooooowed - and so is is little kids and wife he is leaving behind in tears wondering how come daddy doesn’t love them anymore. I have no right to discard AA because of a self-centered idea that I should there to “Get what I need”. The selfish bastards who think that way make me sick to my stomach. I do have a duty to show up and bring the newcomer what HE needs – and that is God.

Peace,

Danny S