AA. What a Smashing Fellowship!

Which comes first on recovery road -- Wanting to stop drinking forever or admitting to our innermost selves what we are alcoholic?

According to the Big Book we are told what the first step to recovery is:

“We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed." (30:1)

The only way I know to lean how to do this is by taking Step One - the first forty three pages of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

Once emerging out the other side of Step One - ready for Step Two - page forty four - we will have learned what AA’s “Description of the alcoholic” is and will be in a position to make such an admission. Or else we will be in a position to admit we ARE NOT alcoholic - whichever the case my be.

The important things is that we LEARN it - so we can DO IT - and not just take some fool with a thirty year medallions word for it - that we must be “in the right place” because “There are no coincidences”.

It is not possible that every single person who happens to attend an AA meetings is an alcoholic - and belongs. If you think that - then you aren't out here in the trenches watching drug addicts who are trying to get sober in a fellowship that was never intended for them - when they need to get clean in a fellowship has been created JUST FOR THEM. They die in AA.

Or maybe you know a heavy, hard drinker - someone with a problem, but not a real alcoholic, keep coming to meetings like it's some sort of prison sentence. These are not HAPPY, JOYOUS and FREE individuals that attract others. They are miserable pricks who "Keep coming back" because they will feel guilty if the don't. They take bubble baths and call themselves still recovering. They have "meetings in the bank" - are still insane but MAN is their skin soft and supple skin l- ike you would not believe.

Maybe there are no coincidences. Maybe some of us are SUPPOSED to come to AA and take Step One to learn that we DO NOT BELONG in AA.

If we never take it we’ll never know will we? Since when is God’s will ALWAYS that EVERYONE who comes to AA must stay?

That alcoholics are like non-alcoholics is an idea to SMASH! Not merely tuck away on the back burner. SMASHED! CRUSHED! DESTROYED! BREAK IRREPARABLY!
GRRRRR. . . . . . ARRRRGH!

Not everyone who wants to stop drinking is going to be able to honestly admit that they are alcoholic - not because they are in denial but because they aren’t alcoholic. Failing to recognize this defeats the whole purpose of Step One.’ That’s why it is so dangerous insist on upon the blurred vision offered by the loopholic short-form version of Tradition Three without considering the Long Form which explains very clearly the intent of the Tradition.

The intent is not to encourage non-alcoholics to call themselves members just because they “have a desire to stop drinking”.

Just WHAT IS AN ALCOHOLIC? For AA purposes the description of the alcoholic is very is specific. In order to make such a pronouncement upon oneself the first thing to do is LEARN what AA’s description of the alcoholic is. A good way to do that is to find someone who has previously qualified himself to that specific description and followed the prescription to recover and then recovered.

Do what HE did, and you’ll get what he got: A spiritual awakening as the result of the steps and consequential removal of the desire to drink, thereby breaking the obsession/craving cycle. Not understanding that cycle has been the hurdle that kills. Not ever experiencing that cycle and therefore being able to explain it kills. Not giving a crumb about that cycle but caring about mere fellowship, camaraderie and just not drinking kills.

Once a prospect is able to I am sure that there are plenty of people that need to constant reinforcement of meeting, meetings, meetings, and yappin', yappin', yappin' - to keep from going out and drinking again. But we know from experience - our own - by being active in this deal AND from the experiences of the original guys and gals who did this seventy years ago - that for alcoholics of our type this sort of Distractive Reconditioning will not work for long, if at all.

Then - for the solution - we DO have for OUR type of alkies - there is a prerequisite. It is wanting to stop drinking. Forever. Not "Just for today" (That's a slogan from another fellowship.) - just till we get over the hump, wife back, court is happy - but for good and all.

There are people who never bother to learn if they are alcoholic or not - who just come to get court papers signed, make fast friends - and then STAY. And that is regarded by many as good thing - you, know, "It doesn't matter how ya got here, as long as yer here." Well, you better have gotten here by being alcoholic. I've got a Big Book that tells me that you better be here to learn whether or not you are an alcoholic of our type and if you are then we suggest you follow our Program and recover. I've also got a 12 & 12 that tells me that you aren't even a member - even if you SAY so - unless you ARE alcoholic. The "member when you say you are" is a privilege open to alcoholics only.

But we need to explain the "description of the alcoholic" in our Big Book to someone - the description that so perfectly illustrates the abject HOPELESSNESS of the condition and THEN see that THEY GOT IT TOO! (hopeless alcoholism) --

BTW Some people are supposed to see that they ain't got it. Not everyone who falls into an AA meeting is an alcoholic.

They thought that, "Well, I'll just drink now (on my own will) and then stop again (on my own will) and get back with my old AA buddies, like I have been this past year" - is something they can do. They come in and out of the rooms, stopping for a while then starting up again - because they CAN. Real alcoholics haven't got that ability. We drink no matter what - in the rooms, out of the rooms, in between the rooms.

Peace,

Danny S