Panning for Recovery Gold

Yesterday a very nice lady from somewhere north of this strange Peninsula where I live asked me what a “prospect” was. She was referring to the AA Big Book use of the word.

So who or what is a “Prospect“? I do not speak for the spiritual fellowship called “Alcoholics Anonymous” – no individual does. When it comes to the Twelve Steps I don’t proffer opinions about things with which I have no experience either. I do have experience as a practitioner of the directions that AA’s co-founders passed on to the world and a subsequent understanding of the word that is conveyed straight off the pages of their book, ” Alcoholics Anonymous”.

I am a rare bird in this part of the woods – I am very sorry to say. Most AA folks around here have been told that they should apply Tradition Eleven to their personal recovery – which is about appropriate as applying toothpaste to a mosquito bite. Just because some people do it doesn’t necessarily mean it does anything. “Not worth Jack’s crap” we used to say back in the Bronx.

Sorry Mildred but those are from two separate and distinct sides of the triangle.

“Prospect” is a simple word and their usage is simple too. I have adopted it and I use it as my own- in my own Twelve Step work.

Anyone with a drinking problem – I consider a “prospect” for what we (I) am offering. I am offering them a solution to their alcoholism IF they are alcoholic and then they can come join us in Fellowship of the Spirit too. I can show them how to make that determination by making clear the distinction between the ‘the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic.”.

Sorry but those are from two distinct sides of the triangle.

“Prospect” is a simple word and their usage is simple too. In the book it is used always as a noun. I have adopted it and I use it as my own when doing Twelve Step work in identifying my Twelve Step targets. Some might call it ‘victims’.

Anyone with a drinking problem – I consider a “prospect” for what we (I) am offering. I am offering them a solution to their alcoholism IF they are alcoholic and then they can come join us in Fellowship of the Spirit too. I can show them how to make that determination by making clear the distinction between the ‘the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic.”.

If they get clear on that distinction – as clear as I am - and I am very clear on it because I have learned about alcoholism from the first forty three pages – the pages where out of their own bitter experiences the co-authors try their darnedest to smash home that distinction – then they will be able to come to the very same determination that I will come to about them — that either they ARE or ARE NOT “one of us”.

What is a “one of us”? It is someone who shares the common problem described in the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” — what the co-authors of that wonderfully spiritual volume call “Our description of the alcoholic.” Not my description. Not your description. Not Dr. Drew’s description. Certainly not the “addiction counselor” down the road’s description – shit, he might might not even know that there is such a thing as a “real alcoholic” and he might be telling folks that they can not and will not ever recover.

Hopefully, my ‘prospect will be honest about it and come to a ‘positive’ result ONLY IF it is their truth and not just say “I AM AN ALCOHOLIC” so that they can come to meetings and join the club or satisfy some other reason for attending AA meetings – like legal orders, espousal nagging or just plain lonely hearts club stuff.

If they come to a ‘negative’ result and not a ‘false positive’ –that although they may have a drinking problem, but perhaps their problems may be solved by less drastic means than a spiritual awakening, I would hope they would do so.

If so then I have done them a tremendous service and not been quick to play God and tell them that they “ARE ALCOHOLIC” simply because they have drinking problem.

They are not then pressured or condemned’ to going to meetings for the rest of their lives by group members of me either.

I have sponsored men OUT OF AA too – not just into the room.

We are not running a membership drive and the fellowship is already top-heavy with attendees who have never bothered or been show how to qualify themselves.

Not every “prospect” has successfully diagnosed themselves as real alcoholics or satisfied me that I should work with them. I have that obligation to them AND to the fellowship – to not bring non-alcoholics into the fellowship when they don’t need to be here.

They are then free to pursue less drastic means to solve their kind of problem – like counseling, putting the plug in the jug – all those willpower methods available to those who are not real alcoholics for whom the only solution is a spiritual awakening.

All this comes out of the Big Book . Don’t let me or anyone else do your Big Book reading for you. But if you read that book PLUS practice what it tells us to do in order to recover from alcoholism I am quite positive that you and I will land right on the same page. So far that has been the e case with virtually everyone I have ever met who does this deal.

Those who don’t? . . . the ‘readers’ and revisionists of the Big Book — the ones who love those Big Book and Twelve & Twelve “meetings” that are nothing more than reading circles and the POP-AA discussion meeting addicted attendees who are “still recovering” and “taking a lifetime” to take the steps . . . . .eh . . . .not so much.

Just to clarify, here are some contextual uses of the word “prospect” out of the book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.’ You tell me if I am ‘on the money’ or not.

• When you discover a prospect for Alcoholics Anonymous, find out all you can about him. (90:0)

• Remind the prospect that his recovery is not dependent upon people. (99:3)

• When your prospect has made such reparation as he can to his family, and has thoroughly explained to them the new principles by which he is living, he should proceed to put those principles into action at home. (98:3)

• Your prospect may belong to a religious denomination. (93:2)

• Under these conditions your prospect will see he is under no pressure.(91:2)

• That the man who is making the approach has had the same difficulty, that he obviously knows what he is talking about, that his whole deportment shouts at the new prospect that he is a man with a real answer, . . . . (18:3)

• Next day found the prospect more receptive. He had been thinking it over. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “God ought to be able to do anything.” (158:1)

• Your junior executive may not agree with the contents of our book. He need not, and often should not show it to his alcoholic prospect. (148:1)

• Do not be discouraged if your prospect does not respond at once. Search out another alcoholic and try again. You are sure to find someone desperate enough to accept with eagerness what you offer. (96:0)

• One of our Fellowship failed entirely with his first half dozen prospects. He often says that if he had continued to work on them, he might have deprived many others, who have since recovered, of their chance.(96:0)

• One day they called up the head nurse of a local hospital. They explained their need and inquired if she had a first class alcoholic prospect. (155:3)

“Like a gaunt prospector, belt drawn in over the last ounce of food, our pick struck gold. Joy at our release from a lifetime of frustration knew no bounds.” (128:3)

There’s GOLD in there thar meetings!

We call them “newcomers!

Peace,

Danny S

Make Heads Turn . . . .

. . . At Your First AA Meeting.

It was my first day in AA and I had gone to a Saturday morning meeting. There I heard a story that blew my mind. It was the story of a down and out stockbroker who drank his way off Wall Street and lived to tell it. Lived to write a book about it apparently. It shocked me. I was a stockbroker too – an Investment Banker – and it was as if I was hearing my own life read back to me. It brought me to tears and now here I was attending my second meeting in Little Neck, Queens, New York City. There were several meetings going on at once in this little Lutheran church on Glenwood Street. I wanted to go to whichever one where I could just sit , listen and not be noticed – where everyone would just leave me alone while I conducted my research.

There was guy at the door who everyone was passing by called Tony. ‘Big Tony’ I was to later learn. Big Tony pointed me toward what he called the “Beginners Meeting”.

“I’m not a beginner.“ I said. I was more than a little indignant.

“What do you mean?“ asked Tony. Two girls with shoulder tattoos and too short denim skirts flipped cigarettes into grey sand taht filled a plastic potato salad bucket holding the door opened and they passed through Tony’s post going straight in without Tony so much as blinking. They must be regulars . . . . . . or I guess you have to grow a set of tits to get in without a confrontation here.

“I was already to a meeting this morning.“ I was looking at him to see if he was reacting at all positively. He wasn’t. He was squinting and he grabbed the bottom of his left earlobe between his thumb and forefinger and twiddled it . A small diamond embedded in the lobe twinkled.

“It was a ninety minute meeting.“ I was hoping that this might buy me a little more credit than a one-hour meeting – maybe it would get me into an intermediate meeting. Or maybe an advanced meeting. Shit I could go straight to the top of this Alcoholics Anonymous deal.

“No No cuz. . . . you go into that far room in the back of the gym … ok cuz?”

I am not your fucking cuz. Instant resentment rose up in my chest – not unlike the heated glow that rises out of a too rapidly dumped and gulped shot of Jack Daniels.

I despised the idea of being placed into any kind of caste system -especially one created by a bunch of drunks. This guy Tony doesn’t know who I am. But I conceded that this fat guy with the diamond stud earring and who looked a little rough around the edges might know a little more than I did – but I didn’t have to like it and since he was obviously the bouncer I did not need to get into any trouble this early on.

My primary mission at this point was to get into a meeting and not bring attention to myself. I would sit in the back, where me and my sweaty six foot one, two hundred an twenty pound frame and the infant son I was carrying in my arms could go unnoticed. If anyone asked me to introduce myself I would definitely not say I am an alcoholic. That way no one would bother with me. If they didn’t think I was one of them then they might leave me the hell alone.

“Would anyone like to introduce themselves?”

I raised my hand and said, “My name is Danny and I am here just to find out if I am an alcoholic.”

WRONG ANSWER!

Just then fifty or sixty heads turned to see me. I was mortified. As if that were not bad enough I recognized nearly all of the same faces I had seen earlier in the morning meeting. They were there too! What the hell is going on here?

I cannot tell you one single word that anyone in that “Beginners meeting” shared. I cannot recall one slogan, not one scary drinking story, not one frothy emotional appeal or anything else said in that meeting. What I can tell you almost verbatim is what was said to me outside of that meeting – after it had ended and after almost everyone had gone home. It was then that someone loved me enough to tell me the truth about alcoholism – because he knew what the truth was. His name was Barry Gross – a strapping gentle giant of a man.

Barry told me his and explained to me the fatal malady – the mental AND the physical aspects of the two-fold illness that we call alcoholism. This is how he qualified me into this Fellowship – by making sure that I understood what “Our description of the alcoholic” is. He did not do any pronouncing “No one gets here by accident- you ARE an alcoholic” or use any other qualifiers other than the ones that AA prescribes. He just told me what he knew about alcoholism – what he had learned from the description in AA’s Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” and was now passing it on – so that I could identify and say “Holy shit” I am one of you!” – if it were true.

That is how I took step one – by learning what alcoholism is – seeing and admitting that I fit! I belonged. I held both conditions identified by AA that made me ‘one of them’. I could raise my hand at a future meeting and in good conscience say, “My name is Danny and I am an alcoholic” and I would know what that means. Not what I think it means. Not what Dr. Phil thinks it means. Not what Oprah thinks it means. Not what Dr. Drew thinks – not even what some arrogant white haired pissant sporting a grim face, a “few twenty fours” and wouldn’t know a Twelve Step call from an Avon call planted onto a folding chair in the back of a musty church basement thinks – but what the co-founders or AA thought it means and for which they designed a Program of recovery that works for that description.

That is all step one is about. It is about learning to distinguish between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic and seeing on which side of the fence I was.

The funny thing is that Barry was absolutely silent during the meeting – so no one knew how ‘smart’ he was. Yet he carried the “this‘ message to me that saved my life, the way we are supposed to – eyeball-to-eyeball with another alcoholic. One alcoholic talking to another. Not one alcoholic talking to sixty meeting attendees. That is not carrying the “THIS” message. That’s just “speaking”.

Every time I feel the need to ‘share’ at a meeting, to say something so pithy – so frothy and spiritually profound that someone’s life is bound to be saved – I try to remember this experience with identification of my first day in AA and how Barry G passed it on by taking me through Step One, on day one – in one hour – outside of a meeting on a hot August night in New York City in 1997.

No waiting. No getting “meetings under my belt” before beginning. No “Going to step meetings” No going to ninety meetings in ninety days and no telling me anything wacky like “Meeting Makers Make it” or “Keep Coming Back”. Uh Uh. Barry was not trying to kill me. His first priority was to start me on the Twelve Step Program so that I could get qualified and start to recover from alcoholism – before the insanity of the next first drink came around again. It was so simple and so vital and exactly the same way that the co-founders of AA did it and prescribe it in the first forty three pages of the book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Peace,

Danny S

Just Off The Sauce

This article originally appeared 8/16/05

What would I tell someone just off the sauce?

Get yourself a copy of “Alcoholics Anonymous” and read the first 43 pages, which is designed to help you make a determination whether or not AA is for you. In other words, “Are you REALLY an alcoholic?”

You may not be. In fact the chances are good you are NOT. (Only roughly 10% of the world population actually is.) If you are, its like winning the lottery with odds like that . (Because we have a solution.)

Unless I had LEARNED to answer that question – it was impossible to know if I was “In the right place” – AA members say they don’t like to proclaim individuals as alcoholic (Those don’t betray their own precepts that is.) — so I had to do it myself. Luckily the book showed me how, just as it was designed to do.

Then when YOU decide that you are “One of us”, or if there is anything you don’t understand about how to make that determination, tomorrow go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and get a sponsor who has experience in taking others through the 12 steps and identifies him/herself as someone who has has recovered.

If someone says they are still “recovering” politely pass, and keep looking till you find someone for whom the Program has actually worked.

Disregard how “Nice” or “Knowledgeable” the “Still recovering” person seems. “Still recovering” is the same as “Un-recovered“. If you want to be that person’s friend, fine – but do not permit yourself to fall under their sponsorship – unless they have recovered from alcoholism. “Not drinking” today does not count. YOU may NEVER drink again and this persons method to stop may KILL you – as earnest and nice as they seem,and as well as their method seems to be working for them.

Your sponsor will refer to him/herself as “RECOVERED”

He’ll know EXACTLY what to do with you from there, and you can trust that without reservation. WARNING: These knowledgeable people can be a chore to find – even in AA meetings, unfortunately. But don’t give up – show up as a student and the teacher will show up.

Do not let anyone sponsor you whose solution is “don’t drink and go to meetings”, or “Just don’t drink” or “One day at a time”. These concepts are not part of our Program, but they are rampant never the less. If that is their solution, and it works for them, it may KILL you, if you are a real alcoholic as described in those first 43 pages.

If you determine from that book that you are a “Real alcoholic” then that kind of advice does not work. Never has, no matter what they tell you.

If anyone tells you “Aren’t ready to take the steps” RUN! If anyone tells you they did it slowly, therefore so can you RUN! They may not be “one of us”.

If anyone tells you that you ARE an alcoholic, just because you showed up. RUN! We don’t like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic. YOU must ascertain it yourself, by those 43 pages.

Take the 12 steps as fast as you possibly can. It is a race. You must recover before the next first drink comes along, and don’t let anyone tell you that THEY know when that is for you. You do not have to be prey to arrogance.

And then after you have worked the Program in the book, and the desire to drink has left, (That’s a promise that it will), then you will be in a position to go find another alcoholic to work with as your sponsor has done and pass it on to another in the position you are in now.

Soon you will be free from alcohol, sponsoring others and joining us in the trenches. Your life will have become usefully happy and whole.

You could be recovered and enjoying the life by summer. Now THAT’S simple.

What would I tell a drug addict?
Nothing. Although I’ve abused a lot of drugs, especially cocaine, I don’t know a thing about recovering from drug addiction — because I have NEVER DONE IT.

I put the drugs down on my own willpower and did not need any help with it. Over alcohol I was powerless and had to find a new power. I found it through the AA Fellowship which deliver the 12 Steps to me. When I picked it up, I recovered. That “It” is God.

Good Luck,

Peace,

Danny S