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

Say The Secret Woid

Do you know the secret words to say from a podium when speaking that will bring the puking, suffering alcoholic in from the cold – and motivate him so much that he just HAS to pickup the spiritual kit laid in front of him and recover?

Me neither.

It took a long time – too long, years – to see that looking for those “Magic quotes” from the Big Book or that one compelling story out of my drunkolgue and tossing them like some sort of an ertsatz lifesaver to the drowning drunks sitting in front of me – is not going to convince one single real alcoholic who is headed for his next first-drink to not take it – not if that person is beyond human aid. As for the non-alcoholics – who gives a crumb? They have other solutions. They don’t need the one I have found.

Today I don’t speak from the podium or in any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous about anything with which I have no experience.

I do not say what I think this or that means or how this will be or that will be when I get around to doing it. I am no longer arrogant and pompous enough to presuppose God is talking through me and someone is being helped, no matter what asinine, stupid things happen to pour out of my mouth. I am arrogant – don’t get me wrong - just not THAT arrogant anymore.

I have a living experience with what is in that book, have had spiritual experiences and spiritual awakenings and can tell others about it, so they can have some hope too. And for folks who also have what I have, I don’t need to say anything, except “Get any good newcomers lately”?

Today I am able to look a room of a hundred or so drunks in the eyes and say “My name is Danny, I am an alcoholic and I have recovered” - and tell them what I was like, what happened and what I am like now, without over qualifying, without giving a drunkalogue that will be boring them to tears. SOME drunkologue perhaps – but not a story that begins with, “I was born into an alcoholic family”. . . OH GOD SPARE US!

Peace,

Danny S

Relief or Recovery?

I am not suffering from a disease which only a ‘good share’ or “ninety meetings in ninety days” will conquer. If I were then I would be able to solve my problem in the care of a good therapist and bunch of therapy sessions.

Misbehaving kids, drinking co-workers and spouses, flat tires and ripped pantyhose – how long my mother breast fed me or which way she faced me on the potty have nothing to do with why I drank – not if I am a real and true alcoholic. We’ll skip the pantyhose jokes. OK? OK. These are the types of reasons that non-alcoholics might drink, but not I. Not any real alcoholic

None of this is to say that sharing and hearing others problems is not useful and helpful in some way – but is it helpful in solving our alcoholism problem? The answer is no.

What has ‘sharing in meetings’ it got to do with our Primary Purpose? Sure, it helps us feel better. It relieves pressure. It is good for the stressed out alkie. But does sharing that crapola help anyone besides us?

It is good to feel better – but that is not the objective of an AA meeting and spending time toward that end displaces precious time needed to share experience strength and hope to the newcomer regarding our solution to alcoholism.

As long we are talking about problems, we are not talking about the solution.

If ‘sharing’ at an AA meeting prevents me from drinking – then I’m probably NOT an alcoholic. Alcoholics drink – no matter what!

My Big Book makes it very clear to me that if I am a real alcoholic then I am beyond this human aid and I am suffering from an illness which ONLY a spiritual experience will conquer – and if it takes “you people” to keep me sober, then I am probably not a real alcoholic – not the kind for which the Twelve Step Program of AA was designed .

Peace,

Danny S

Come Back To Sanity

Most of us have heard all sorts of pretty illogical logic from sponsees or just folks sharing in meetings. In fact haven’t we all heard some of the most insane things from these folks? It’s as if they can talk out of every hole in their heads! Many time you just have to laugh.

Most of us have even said or thought them ourselves so hopefully we can laugh at ourselves as well. But SOME of the shit is just so far out there – too far to even laugh at. We can just hope the person eventually comes back to earth. (It can sometimes be too cruel to laugh aloud until AFTER they have re-entered the atmosphere and “landed” safely.)

For example, once they might say they are “mad” at God – the next moment – and with equal conviction – say that they don’t believe in God. What the phuck? How can we hate someone who isn’t even there to hate?

I don’t think that confusion anywhere near ones last drunk – or in between drunks for that matter – is all that uncommon. Personally I think it’s a mixture of non-thinking and pent up resentment rather than the ideas of a clear thinking, thoughtful person who has recently thought through the existence or non-existence of a Higher Power. Alkies mostly think about themselves –as God – when bound up with spiritual sickness.

My own situation didn’t touch such atheism. I already knew that God existed. I’d had a drastic spiritual episode during meditation in my early twenties that changed my life and perceptions in a big way. The problem was that this experience was flip-flopped by my own egotistical nature and I slowly became convinced that I was “special” - even “chosen” and finally “superior” to other “earthly” humans for having gained the unbelievable gift – and the personal fireworks display accompanying it – I had been given.

It sounds funny now. Almost comical – like a real life version of young Anakin Skywalker who turns into Darth Vader. It also sounds sick too. And believe me, I did become sick. I firmly believe that the inner conflict I had brought on caused me to drink and do drugs in order to blot out the conscience so that I did not have to see what I had become.

The continual abuse of ETOH over time eventually damaged my body and kicked it over “the line” – bringing the physical component (allergy) to meet up with the insanity or obsession to drink.

Getting shitfaced was fine medicine – but not being able to stop once mentally satisfied can really ruin THAT solution.

When it came time to “Come back” to sanity – there was still no question in my mind that God was. Hell running from Him for all those years I was convince He was out there somewhere – chasing me – apparently all the way to Hell if He had to! I had been with Him before and THAT memory and experience was still there. BUT I was ashamed. I was guilt ridden – like a child afraid to face Daddy after misbehaving, doing something terribly wrong.

Even though I was “In AA” and now abstinent through fellowshipping, I also had new come to live in my previously numbed conscience.

The conflicted and pained conscience was becoming more and more intolerable. It as if I were living in Hell. No, I take that back — I WAS living in Hell – on earth. I was hitting a real alcoholic’s bottom – right under the eyes of the AA fellowship. I was falling apart and all the meetings and all the fellowships men couldn’t put Danny back together again – despite their lofty collective claims to have that power. I relapsed.

My spiritual experience BEFORE taking the steps – on the very night that I came out of a blackout in a hotel room – included the voice of God telling me directly that He still loved me despite my playing god and that He would help me come back, IF I would do certain things.

Just what those things were to be, I did not know – except that it would somehow be through the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. He made that very clear. I can still to this day recall the words and knowing clarity that accompanied those words. We are talking “words” – words from God – and I don’t give a crumb how crazy that sounds.

What I was to do – the actions I was to take – did not remain a mystery for long, because within hours I was standing outside of one of the worst, most middle-of-the-road, toxically infections discussion meetings one can imagine and was approached by a man I had known for several years and who was qualified to start me back on a path to God and human usefulness. Out of the blue, he offered to take me through the Twelve Steps – and I accepted. I had no idea he was capable of doing that. But he was. And he did.

The result was yet another spiritual awakening that entirely removed the insanity, the obsession, to ever drink again. In less than 45 days from the date of my last drink on October 5th 1999, I was a free man. I use that day, November 18, 1999 as my sobriety date rather than the date of the last drink I remember taking. Those forty-four day in the life of this 18,250 day old man are the most important ones I’ve ever had on this planet.

I don’t know why I decided to tell you all this. I guess I am just feeling grateful tonight for having had a third step experience as powerful as the one I did. I am grateful that there is nothing that any MOTR asshole could EVER say to me or to anyone of you, my fellow Trudgers, that can dissuade (us) from knowing that what happened to us is anything less than a God given miracle. A miracle freely given out of His love and which we can pass on to others who suffer.

Peace,

Danny S

Come Back To Sanity

Most of us have heard all sorts of pretty illogical logic from sponsees or just folks sharing in meetings. In fact haven’t we all heard some of the most insane things from these folks? It’s as if they can talk out of every hole in their heads! Many time you just have to laugh.

Most of us have even said or thought them ourselves so hopefully we can laugh at ourselves as well. But SOME of the shit is just so far out there – too far to even laugh at. We can just hope the person eventually comes back to earth. (It can sometimes be too cruel to laugh aloud until AFTER they have re-entered the atmosphere and “landed” safely.)

For example, once they might say they are “mad” at God – the next moment – and with equal conviction – say that they don’t believe in God. What the phuck? How can we hate someone who isn’t even there to hate?

I don’t think that confusion anywhere near ones last drunk – or in between drunks for that matter – is all that uncommon. Personally I think it’s a mixture of non-thinking and pent up resentment rather than the ideas of a clear thinking, thoughtful person who has recently thought through the existence or non-existence of a Higher Power. Alkies mostly think about themselves –as God – when bound up with spiritual sickness.

My own situation didn’t touch such atheism. I already knew that God existed. I’d had a drastic spiritual episode during meditation in my early twenties that changed my life and perceptions in a big way. The problem was that this experience was flip-flopped by my own egotistical nature and I slowly became convinced that I was “special” - even “chosen” and finally “superior” to other “earthly” humans for having gained the unbelievable gift – and the personal fireworks display accompanying it – I had been given.

It sounds funny now. Almost comical – like a real life version of young Anakin Skywalker who turns into Darth Vader. It also sounds sick too. And believe me, I did become sick. I firmly believe that the inner conflict I had brought on caused me to drink and do drugs in order to blot out the conscience so that I did not have to see what I had become.

The continual abuse of ETOH over time eventually damaged my body and kicked it over “the line” – bringing the physical component (allergy) to meet up with the insanity or obsession to drink.

Getting shitfaced was fine medicine – but not being able to stop once mentally satisfied can really ruin THAT solution.

When it came time to “Come back” to sanity – there was still no question in my mind that God was. Hell running from Him for all those years I was convince He was out there somewhere – chasing me – apparently all the way to Hell if He had to! I had been with Him before and THAT memory and experience was still there. BUT I was ashamed. I was guilt ridden – like a child afraid to face Daddy after misbehaving, doing something terribly wrong.

Even though I was “In AA” and now abstinent through fellowshipping, I also had new come to live in my previously numbed conscience.

The conflicted and pained conscience was becoming more and more intolerable. It as if I were living in Hell. No, I take that back — I WAS living in Hell – on earth. I was hitting a real alcoholic’s bottom – right under the eyes of the AA fellowship. I was falling apart and all the meetings and all the fellowships men couldn’t put Danny back together again – despite their lofty collective claims to have that power. I relapsed.

My spiritual experience BEFORE taking the steps – on the very night that I came out of a blackout in a hotel room – included the voice of God telling me directly that He still loved me despite my playing god and that He would help me come back, IF I would do certain things.

Just what those things were to be, I did not know – except that it would somehow be through the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. He made that very clear. I can still to this day recall the words and knowing clarity that accompanied those words. We are talking “words” – words from God – and I don’t give a crumb how crazy that sounds.

What I was to do – the actions I was to take – did not remain a mystery for long, because within hours I was standing outside of one of the worst, most middle-of-the-road, toxically infections discussion meetings one can imagine and was approached by a man I had known for several years and who was qualified to start me back on a path to God and human usefulness. Out of the blue, he offered to take me through the Twelve Steps – and I accepted. I had no idea he was capable of doing that. But he was. And he did.

The result was yet another spiritual awakening that entirely removed the insanity, the obsession, to ever drink again. In less than 45 days from the date of my last drink on October 5th 1999, I was a free man. I use that day, November 18, 1999 as my sobriety date rather than the date of the last drink I remember taking. Those forty-four day in the life of this 18,250 day old man are the most important ones I’ve ever had on this planet.

I don’t know why I decided to tell you all this. I guess I am just feeling grateful tonight for having had a third step experience as powerful as the one I did. I am grateful that there is nothing that any MOTR asshole could EVER say to me or to anyone of you, my fellow Trudgers, that can dissuade (us) from knowing that what happened to us is anything less than a God given miracle. A miracle freely given out of His love and which we can pass on to others who suffer.

Peace,

Danny S

Lifeblood Of The Fellowship

What do you do when you get a hold of a prospect for the Fellowship – and the two of you go to your first meeting together? Do you make sure that he or she goes the best meeting a prospect can EVER go to?

That is the ONE meeting especially designed JUST FOR HIM – the one that will turn him from “Prospect” to “Newcomer”

THE OPEN SPEAKER MEETING.(Originally for non-alcoholic spouses of AA members.)

Or do you tell him something untrue like, “They’re ALL good!”

Open Speaker Meetings are the lifeblood gatherings of Alcoholic Anonymous. Especially the LARGE ones where 100 or more people gather and they don’t drink.

Of course you can get some real doggy talks coming off that podium. It depends on whose “incoming”. But at least there’s a a chance that the “this” message will be carried by someone. The atmosphere of such meetings can be absolutely electric at times – especially during anniversary celebrations. And we are loosing them, as AAs success rate continues to decline and we continue to lose membership.

Thanks to the treatment center mentality of “SHARING” in group therapy environments, more and more un-recovered AAs are flocking instead to discussion meetings.

Somehow the LIE that we can SHARE our way clear of our drinking problem — that if we “Get things off our chest” — then WE WON’T DRINK TODAY, is heard and used as a means to treat alcoholism – and it’s NOT a treatment for alcoholism.

Perhaps it is true for the non-alcoholic. But for the real alcoholic, this is a deadly concept. If you are a real alcoholic . . . . . . . YOU AIN’T “SHARING” YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE BUDDYBOY!

I hope I’ve had my last experience of walking into an AA meetings with a newcomer who must find God or he will die, and instead being deluged with dramas about drug use, babysitters, road rage, or someones opinion about how to stay away from a drink for “Just one more day” 0r whatever dribble they think will meet with some “Amens” from the “Middle-of-the-road solutions” brigades — anything BUT the Program of recovery detailed int he Big Book.

If more people saved all of that crap for their sponsors or the parking lot or even the diners, perhaps we wouldn’t see so many real alcoholics leaving and not coming back because their problem is not being able to stay away from a drink; and he is hearing that OUR problem is our stooooopid relationships, job losses, runs in pantyhose or whatever else someone thinks is important to bore us to death with.

I know, I know…”Oh but I feel so good when I can share my problems”. Just listen to that. Is there anything more self-centered that such a statement? That’s what SPONSORS are for.

Have you ever wondered what would happen to the fellowship happen if “Open discussion meetings” were eliminated? I think half of the AA “members” would go away because there would no longer be anything in it for them. For THEM – forget about the newcomer – for THEM!

Anyone contemplating starting a new meeting PLEEEEZE make it an open speaker meeting or a Big Book Study. Those are THE meetings that save the lives of newcomers. The discussion meetings have become $1 an hour amateur psychoanalysis sessions — and if your ego can’t resist then PLEEEEZE at least make it literature based – preferably the Big Book.

Let’s save some lives and not our precious little self-centered egos.

Peace,

Danny S

Is Your Story Boring?

Have you ever gone to a meeting and heard the speaker say something like, “I am nervous but I guess God gives me what I need”?

MAN! I want to puke when I hear self-centered crap like that!

What THEY need? They are speaking to benefit THEMSELVES? That’s why they are there? How self-centered is that?

No wonder most speakers we experience in meetings sound like shit! . . .

. . . and are boring as all hell.

We are not speaking in meetings for OUR NEEDS; we are speaking in meetings for NEWCOMERS needs. But I guess if someone is still recovering, they have nothing to transmit anyway. All they have is their story and it is useless to real alcoholics. Non-alcoholics like them though – heavy drinkers who CAN stay away from a drink by “Keeping It Green” and being reminded about how bad it was. But a real alcoholic?

We know that for the real McCoy,

“We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.” (24:1)

There are no stories that will keep us “Scared straight.” Only heavy drinkers have such experiences in AA meetings. It works for them!

How about speaking at a meeting and dying right in front of the group – like a comic who tells a joke that goes over his audiences head? The silence is deafening, right? In AA that may not always be a bad thing.

One thing I do with sponsees is I show them how to speak in meetings without putting real alcoholics to sleep and ignoring the newcomer. I know there aren’t any instructions on that in the Big Book, so I use the ol‘ tried and true formula.

Speaking in meetings is not 12 stepping, of course, (That’s one alcoholic talking to another – not one alcoholic talking to 20) but hell, its such a good formula the ol’

* “What I was like” (allergic and obsessive)

* “What happened” (The spiritual awakening, physic change)

* “What I am like now” (New attitude, new behaviors, the desire to drink removed and character defects in check through a Program).

If we are speaking to a roomful of heavy drinkers, they should NOT be able to identify. They SHOULD be pissed off or confused. They will be hearing a real alcoholic experience with obsession COMBINED with allergy. They don’t have these in their histories.

They won’t be hearing “What they need” to stay sober. They will hear what an alcoholic needs to stay sober – and they will not identify! What THEY need to stay sober is NOT the same thing that a real alcoholic needs to stay sober.

When speaking in a roomful of middle-of-the-roaders, we shouldn’t be “killing” like a stand up comic – we should be reaching the minority – the real alcoholic. Maybe that’s the ONE guy bobbing his head and comes up afterwards and says, “WOW…I drank like that. Thank you. Will you be my sponsor?”

It’s good advertising, if we have the onions to broadcast within our Primary Purpose.

Just think about how cool it would be to go a meeting right now, and hear a recovered alcoholic carrying the message of AAs Program to a room of say, a hundred people, and KNOWING that in that room, somewhere one, two or more newcomers where sitting and hearing THIS for the first time in their lives!!

How COOL would it be to be apart of that? Just to be in the room to witnessing a miracle in progress, a legacy being carried forward.

Maybe if we who have recovered through the steps can continue to talk out of the Big Book Program we can BORE THE middle-of-the-roaders away! — the same way they are boring us right now in the Fellowship.

Whaddya think? Are you with me?

Peace,

Danny S

Carry THIS Messge

I don’t use the “share in a meeting” approach to twelve stepping, frankly because there is nothing in my Big Book which tells me to do it that way – and it has been utterly ineffective. My Big Book is very specific about how to prospect and I tend find men to work with and what to do with them after I do – and it ain’t “Go to a meeting”.

Like many recovered alkies, I’ve tried sharing in meetings with THIS message. I tried speaking from podiums with this message. It’s good stuff. But mostly USELESS - people aren’t going to be swayed. No one as far as I know ever left a meeting where I have spoken and said,

“DAMM!! That guy’s right! I’m going to give up my meeting reliance and seek a spiritual solution!”

Yeah right – keep dreaming.

People who already have what we’ve got are grateful to hear it for change – but they’re already doing the deal. The meeting isn’t FOR them. (Or you and me) It IS for the newcomer.

Primary Purpose DOES happen though, when sitting at a table at Burger King trying not to get ketchup on my beat up old Big Book – while people laugh at us “Jehovah Witnesses” getting loud with each other and laughing and crying over Whoppers (with cheese) & coffee. All the time! Now THAT’S fulfilling Primary Purpose! Not being pithy or sharing about steps from a folding chair! The Book doesn’t prescribe that at all!

Which do you think is more beneficial to a newcomer – sitting in Burger King with a sponsor and a Big Book – or going to a meeting with others to share? I don’t really attend discussion meetings anymore – haven’t in years. They have devolved into piss and moan group therapy sessions which are too toxic to stomach at times. (I’ll end up calling my sponsor in my Tenth Step) I will go if I am hunting for fresh meat though.

When the majority of folks in the fellowship don’t rely upon God to show them how to create the Fellowship they crave – they just create a fellowship they crave without God, and more often than not simply satisfies a self-centered craving for just a place to go instead of a bar and to feel apart of – alcoholic or not. I don’t suppose anyone has ever been to a self-centered, sick and suffering AA group. (And monkeys might fly out of my butt.)

As an individual – as a recovered and knowledgeable sponsor I have to bear the responsibility to work one-on-one with those I find to be real McCoys so that they can do the same. I can make a difference. It’s geometric. Before long we can take the fellowship back as God shows us how to create the Fellowship we crave.

If I am not sponsoring and qualifying alcoholics, as my Primary Purpose, (Not just an AA sideline, from the folding chairs – as something to do to keep me busy in-between meetings, work and family) then I believe I remain a part of the problem. Somewhere along the line “Carrying this message” by looking for AA prospects and taking them through the twelve steps has been relegated to “go to meetings” and launch a pithy share about God and Steps – and there’s nothing in my Big Book to even suggest such a thing.

Peace,

Danny S

"Sharing is NOT carrying the message"

I go to meetings now for different reasons than I did early on. I used to go to meetings because someone told me that if I didn’t I would drink. I was afraid NOT to go. That’s not very much freedom is it?

I go to different TYPES of meetings for different reasons. But all of the types that I go to are because I LOVE them. That’s quite a switch from spending years watching the clock and making “Deposits in the bank”.

Going to meetings and sharing is NOT carrying the message as delineated by the AA co-founders.

First, I have to realize that going to meetings and sharing is NOT carrying the message as delineated by the AA co-founders. According to them, carrying the message is done on 12 step calls. There’s not even the slightest reference in my Big Book, which says anything about carrying the message at AA meetings.

It would certainly be easier if it were, but the fact is, it is not.

I go to meetings because:

1. It feels good to be a part of something.
2. To meet newcomers and pick up new protégées
3. Meetings are fun.
4. Meetings help fill the ample time I am left with because I am not wasting
5. my time drinking or recovering from a hangover.
6. It’s one of my hobbies. (My job is being of maximum helpfulness)
7. Its good PR for me to promote my services; that I have recovered and I am
8. experienced in showing anyone interested in exactly how that happened.
9. To connect on a personal level with my “host” of friends who also go to
10. meetings.
11. To get the speaking commitment schedule so I can show up to speak
12. To speak from podiums to the newcomer and tell him in a general way what I
13. used to be like, what happened, and what I am like now. Sort of a “public”.
14. 12 step call, if you will. Not as effective carrying the message on on one,
15. but I still try.

Here’s NOT why I go to meetings:

1. To share my troubles because a problem shared is a problem halved. (I go to
2. my sponsor with that)
3. To say something so profound that someone’s life is bound to be saved. (I
4. blow all my profundity here and talking with protégées. LOL
5. To convey something in my past which is so heartbreaking and scary that
6. someone may be compelled to join AA (Only works with heavy drinkers)
7. I will go to jail if I don’t.
8. My wife will leave me if I don’t.
9. Because meeting makers make it (Too much evidence that this is false)
10. To read the Big Book
11. To read the 12 X 12
12. To discuss any AA books. (I go to very few discussion meetings. Just one a
13. week)
14. To learn how to not drink (I already don’t drink)
15. To find “chicks” (I am married)
16. To recover (I have already recovered and it happened in my study at home, not
17. at a meeting)
18. To stay away from a drink (too late. I’ve already been separated from
19. alcohol)
20. To piss others off by thumping my Big Book (Easy Does It, and I do enough of
21. that in non AA venues.)

If you get a chance please read this:

Open Speaker Meetings

Peace,

Danny S