Mikey’s Spiritual Awakening
By Mikey J. Published June 12, 2016 I had come to a very dark place at about nine years into my recovery. I was on a terrible dry-drunk that didn’t seem like it would ever go away and I decided that my only way out was to kill myself. Drinking was not an option for me because I knew from going to meetings most of my adult life that relapse always made my situation worse, never better. Death would at least end the suffering. I purchased the items necessary to complete the job but in a moment of complete desperation and insanity, I decided to go to a meeting. That was the lowest point in my recovery so far.
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In that meeting I decided that I should give the program one last chance. I had been working the program according to Mikey and had stayed sober, but I never really could say that I had been rocketed to the fourth dimension that the book describes. I realized for the second time in my recovery (the first time was right before I picked up my last white chip) that if I continued to do what I always had done then I would continue to get the same exact results I always got. This time I would work the Steps as if my life depended on it, which of course it did. My next stop was suicide so I decided to be completely self-honest this time. I really looked at myself without filters. It was in that moment of truth that I admitted out loud something I had never shared with anyone in the fellowship before: “I simply do not believe in God.” That was what had held me back for so long. It was the part of the program that I always ignored. When I admitted to myself the actual truth, that no matter how much I tried or pretended to believe in God, I just didn’t, it opened a whole new world for me. I started looking at what was actually happening when AAs talked about God as their “Higher” power. I never understood when people would say “Thy will be done, not mine”. How do you know what God’s will is? I knew that nobody actually got an email from the Almighty telling them that they should be nicer to their neighbor or that they should treat the jerk on the subway with more compassion. What they probably did was imagine what a supreme and all loving being would do, then they tried to do that. In AA you’ll hear us talking about “doing the next right thing”, and I believe this is what AAs that believe in God are really doing when they “do God’s will.” They simply figure out what the right thing is and they try to do it. This new insight drew me back to the Big Book. It seemed that I had been reading it as a Shakespearian play rather than a textbook. I needed to focus on what was really going on and translate it so I could understand it. Without really knowing what I had done, the Steps finally started to make sense! The Second Step is all about finding a power that I could draw strength from. Using a doorknob as that power, (why it’s always a doorknob I’ll never know), wasn’t practical. A doorknob can’t help me with resentments and fear, but what could? AAs sometimes say that God “and the people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous” keep them sober and more importantly, sober and sane. The collective experience of the recovering drunks that seemed to have it all together became a part of my “greater power”.
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I started to think about things that were greater (or more powerful) than me that could help me be free of the emotional suffering that caused me to believe that ending it all was a brilliant plan. I turned to Google to find that answer and then it hit me. Google was a power greater than myself. If I needed to fix my leaking sink or find a cure for foot fungus, getting on my knees and talking to my bedspread was not going to help, but a good Google search could lead me to something that could! The floodgates opened wide. What else? The law. If I follow the law I probably won’t spend any more time in jail or get fined for running people off the road that cut me off. My doctor. If I follow her advice and actually eat right and get plenty of exercise, I’d probably feel a whole lot better. This was getting pretty awesome! This was going to actually work! Step Three is just deciding to work my new program and reminding myself on a daily basis that I’ve made that decision. Just thinking about that milestone in my recovery still gives me goose bumps. It was only the beginning though. The more I searched for my greater power and the more I relied on that power, the more I started to actually change. I finally understood pertinent idea C in “How It Works” – that God could and would if he were sought. The more I searched for and plugged into this power the more my problems disappeared. I turned back to the Steps. Step Six is all about becoming ready to remove the things in myself that cause unmanageability in my life. I paid close attention to what was actually happening in me when I would feel restless, irritable, or discontented. I’ll give you a great example. Have you ever been sitting in a meeting and someone goes on and on and on about something you don’t think is appropriate or helpful? You get fidgety and uncomfortable in your chair? You start looking at other people and saying to yourself “Will someone please shut this guy up” or you start looking at the chairperson as if to say “DO SOMETHING!” That right there is judgment, ego, and a serious lack of compassion. So what do we do about it? For me, Step Seven is all about doing something about it. Whenever I start to judge people, I talk to my sponsor about it. He ever so gently reminds me that I have no right to judge anyone and that maybe there’s a good reason that person I’m judging is the way he is. So I work on compassion. I try to incorporate compassion into my daily life and all of a sudden I realize I’m comfortable being in a
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meeting when someone pulls out a poem to read or talks about the boil on their butt. The judgment is gone. I suddenly realize that my program of action is doing for me what I could not seem to do for myself. Simply trying not to get angry in a situation like that provided me with some relief. Why settle for relief when what I really want is freedom? Working the Seventh Step – being as compassionate as I can be – gives me that freedom. I could write an entire book on the Eleventh Step and how silent meditation has been the most life-changing tool I’ve ever known but for the sake of brevity I’ll move on to my spiritual awakening. I always had a problem with the word “spiritual” because of the word “spirit”, which to me means the nonphysical part of a person manifested as an apparition after their death, or a supernatural being. It was a newcomer in the meeting I would eventually start that cleared that up for me. He said to me, “Have you ever heard of ‘team spirit?’ When the team wins there’s camaraderie and support but when the team loses there is encouragement, compassion, and hope. My definition of ‘spirit’ is the part of me that is the seat of emotion and character, my true self.” He could have slapped me with a tuna fish at that moment and I would have been less shocked than I was when he said those words. That completely made sense! I started to focus on what my true self was (Step Six) and what I needed to do to become the man I wanted to be (Step Seven). That is what I mean when I said I’ve had a spiritual awakening. I look at the events in my life with less of a filter now. I am no longer the same person I was at nine years sober wanting to die. I’m going on fifteen years now and I’ve been given a completely new life. The promises not only have come true for me, they continue to come true in completely different and exiting ways. I’ve found a new freedom and a new happiness and that was only possible by working the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous – without God. The fourth dimension is pretty cool.
About the Author, Mikey J Mikey J is currently living in the fourth dimension of existence which surprisingly is in Orlando, Florida. He’s been sober since 2-22-2002 and is grateful AA gave him a second personality, one he uses to clear away the wreckage of the first. He is the founder of Our Mostly Agnostic Group Of Drunks, is frequently wrong, but rarely in doubt.
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Pam W. and the Story of WAAFT IAAC
By John S. Published June 19, 2016 In a development without precedent in the world of 12-step organizations, hundreds of recovering alcoholics and addicts from around the world who describe themselves as atheists or agnostics will gather in Santa Monica this November for the first ever We Agnostics and Freethinkers International Alcoholics Anonymous Convention (WAFT IAAC)". — The Santa Monica Mirror, August 2, 2014
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In November of 2014, we agnostics, atheists and freethinkers followed AA's broad highway to Santa Monica, California, and Alcoholics Anonymous has not been the same since. It was there where our imaginations were stirred, and an energy and passion was created that ultimately resulted in the formation of some 125 new AA meetings. We are staying sober by widening the gateway to recovery for others, and doing our part to ensure "that the hand of AA will always be there, when anyone, anywhere reaches out for help". Almost two years later, the energy and excitement remain with us, and AA seems new again. We feel that we're truly part of a movement with real traction. We're writing books, posting on blogs, building websites, and sharing information and resources with each other. We have a vibrant online community that is growing by the day, and we're making a real difference in AA. The We Agnostics and Freethinkers International AA Convention played a significant role in all of this. It's not an exaggeration to say that history was made in Santa Monica, and Pam W., who with Dorothy H. and Jonathan G., co-founded the convention, was instrumental with helping to make it happen. What follows is a preview of Pam's story that she will share in Austin this November, and a brief history of what today we know as the We Agnostics, Atheists and Freethinkers International AA Convention. Pam's childhood was a happy one, though she seemed to carry with her a certain unease, a sense of not quite fitting in. In due course, she discovered that alcohol helped her cope with this, and by the time she was in college, her drinking was out of control. She came into AA in 2008, though she actually stopped drinking some eleven months prior to her first meeting. This delay was due to some misgivings she had about attending AA. Imagining the meeting taking place in a smokey room full of old men, hidden somewhere within the dank confines of a church basement—Pam stayed away. This changed after a friend from out of town came to visit. Pam wasn't comfortable telling her friend that she no longer drank, so she ended up joining her for a few drinks.
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Though this incident, this time, didn't result in a drunken debauch, Pam was thoroughly deflated by the experience. She failed to keep an important commitment that she made to herself—she let herself down. This ultimately brought her to her first AA meeting in 2008. Pam soon found herself at a church, in a room full of men—the We Agnostics Group. It was the Tuesday night book study, and the men couldn't have been more welcoming. They made her feel comfortable and safe, and she kept coming back. She still attends that meeting to this day, though it's no longer a book study. They now have a round robin style of meeting where everyone gets to speak. It's quite a popular meeting and has experienced a lot of growth. Pam wasn't looking for an agnostic meeting, this is just the meeting where she happened to land, though she says agnostic AA is a perfect fit for her. She grew up in a home where religion was around, but it wasn't a big deal. Her father didn't go to church, though her mother did, and her brother is a born-again Christian. Her family learned to respect each other's individual, personal beliefs, so today it's normal for Pam to be respectful of other people's beliefs. As far as she's concerned, what she believes or doesn't believe isn't anyone else's business, and it's not open for discussion. It's often said that the agnostic meetings are where we talk about God all the time, and those of us who are familiar with agnostic AA will confirm that this is sometimes the truth. However, the core group at the Tuesday and Friday We Agnostics meetings in LA are beyond that. This is one of the oldest agnostic AA meetings in the United States. The group does get a regular flow of newcomers who from time to time need to vent, and having found a safe place to do so, they let it out. I think it was Dorothy H. who may have coined the term, "God detox", and that's an accurate description of what happens at this meeting, and all of our meetings from time to time—especially during those early days when the meeting is first getting off the ground. The We Agnostics Meetings in LA are great meetings. Pam says, they often get visitors from out of town who weren't necessarily looking for an agnostic meeting, but having found one, really liked it. Agnostic AA meetings have been in existence since at least 1975 when Quad A started up in Chicago. Later, in the 1980's secular AA meetings took hold in Los Angeles and New York. These meetings aren't anything new, they've been around for a long time. It's just
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that the groups existed in isolation from one another, and to a large extent they didn't know about each other. This began to change after September 2001 when the New York groups started publishing a worldwide directory of agnostic AA meetings. However, we still weren't as connected like we are today, and it was this missing connection that was the genesis for the idea of an international convention for secular AA groups. It was Dorothy H. who first thought of the idea for a convention. Dorothy started coming to the Friday night meetings in Hollywood that Pam was also attending, and from time to time, she would crash at Pam's apartment. They would often talk about all the people who were finding their meeting, and expressing relief at finally feeling at home in AA. Dorothy thought for sure that their meeting in LA, couldn't possibly be the only meeting like this. Surely, there are other agnostic AA groups out there! Searching the Internet, they found that yes there were indeed other agnostic AA meetings. Dorothy suggested that there should be a convention to bring all these groups together, and Pam says that with Dorothy's contagious enthusiasm, "you are on the ride before you even know it", and Pam was on the train! Not having experience with planning a convention didn't concern them too much, they just got busy. Jane J. addressed hundreds of envelopes to agnostic AA meetings, and they sent out an announcement to let these groups know about a possible international convention for agnostic AA. It was at this time, that Jonathan joined the group, and the three of them jumped in there with great eagerness to make this happen. In no time, they were receiving responses from agnostic AA's the world over. Joe C. came down from Toronto, and some people even flew in from Hawaii to attend one of the first planning meetings. Rich H. kept notes at the first planning meeting, and has a complete list of all those who attended. After this initial meeting, Dorothy traveled to other cities in North America to get the word out, and boy did the word get out! When the New York Times ran the article "Alcoholics Anonymous, Without the Religion" the pace really picked up.
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Pam is quick to say that it was the fellowship that made the convention possible. People were passionate about this. Flyers went up and if someone took a flyer down, then someone else would put it right back up again. When an emergency meeting was requested to ask for help, the members from the LA groups were quick to respond. The convention would never have happened, and would not have been the amazing experience it turned out to be, if not for the incredible work and dedication put forth by many, many people. Pam's experience with the convention was similar to mine and that of many others. Our AA world become much, much bigger and our experience much richer. Pam was the first speaker selected for the convention to take place in Austin this November, and I think there could be no better choice for a speaker than Pam W. She personifies the very best of AA, and the very best of agnostic AA. What a joy it was to speak with this lovely woman! I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as I enjoyed making it. See you in Austin!
The second biennial We Agnostics, Atheists and Freethinkers International AA Convention will take place from November 11 - 13, ,2016 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit the convention website waaftiaac.org
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The Lost Weekend
By Jerry F. Published June 26, 2016 The Lost Weekend (1944) may be the most famous movie ever made about alcoholism. It's certainly one of the most important movies to deal with the subject because it was the first movie to show alcoholism as a serious, ugly, debilitating condition. Before The Lost Weekend, movie drunks--often portrayed by Wallace Beery and W.C. Fields--were humorous characters. They were harmless to themselves or others. Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, portrayed by William Powell, was suave, sophisticated, and always a little looped. The protagonist in The Lost Weekend is intelligent, charming, and tragic.
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We have three stories to tell. The book, the movie, and the author. The director, Billy Wilder, read the bestselling book by Charles Jackson when it came out in 1944. He knew before he completed reading that it would be his next movie. Wilder had been working with Raymond Chandler on the script for Double Indemnity and he hoped that seeing this movie might prove cathartic for Chandler so that he would, at least, reduce his legendary drinking bouts. The novel, highly autobiographical, depicts a struggling, alcoholic writer named Don Birnam, trying to complete a novel. His fiancĂŠe and brother tried to keep him sober and to understand what drove him to drink when it was clearly destroying him. The book, as stark and shocking as it was for its time, became a Book-of-the-Month selection. Book sales made Jackson wealthy for the rest of his life. Billy Wilder wanted Jose Ferrer in the lead but Ferrer thought the script was too depressing and that portraying the character could damage his career. Cary Grant was considered unsuitable. But Wilder was convinced that he needed a matinee idol in the leading role. Ray Milland was a leading man, a bit of a lightweight but maybe he could pull it off. Milland was Welsh, a predecessor to Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins who all, it was rumored, had a problem with ... well, that's another story. Milland feared the damage that might be inflicted on his career by such a bleak movie about such a tormented character. Reputations were made in romantic or heroic leads, not by playing a lush. His wife, though, convinced him that it could be a career-defining part. In the end, Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor, Billy Wilder won for Best Director, and Charles Bracket (whose wife and daughter were hopeless drunks) and Billy Wilder won for best Screenplay Adaptation, and the film won for Best Picture of the Year. It also won for Best Picture at the Cannes Film Festival. Only one other film had ever done so. The movie tagline was "How daring can the screen dare to be? No adult man or woman can risk missing the startling frankness of The Lost Weekend!" The question was rhetorical but it can be answered. The movie was as daring as it could be for the times in which it was made. The Hays censorship code imposed severe restrictions on the script. The alcohol industry spent millions of dollars lobbying Paramount to not release the film. Ironically, temperance groups, believing the movie would actually promote excessive drinking, lobbied against it. And yet the movie evaded an important plot
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element because it was too daring for the times. In the novel, Don Birnam drank so heavily because of the shame caused by a homosexual incident in college. In the movie the cause appeared to be “writer's block.” This is a relevant point to those of us in AA because the incident couldn't be eradicated but “writer's block” could be. Remove the cause and that will cure the problem. We know that alcoholism doesn't work that way but many who watched The Lost Weekend didn't and don't know that. There is much symbolism in the movie. When Don Birnam is at the opera he gets a craving for alcohol as he watches the drinking song in La Traviata. In the book Jackson referred often to the helplessness of Birnam’s alcoholism. He was sober for days and then drunk for days in an unending cycle. The movie opens with Birnam looking at the circle left on the bar by a shot glass. He called it the vicious circle and said it was "the perfect geometrical shape, no beginning or end." In another scene Don Birnam watches the circles made on the bar as he downs shot glass after glass of rye whiskey. In another scene Don's face is seen through the circle of the pull on a window shade with the implication that he is enclosed by this circle. The ending of the book is tragic. Birnam was unable to stop drinking and would continue bingeing until he was incarcerated in a mental hospital or, mercifully, died of alcohol poisoning. The ending of the movie is ambiguous. Most people seem to think that Birnam is done drinking. He puts out his cigarette in a glass of booze. But there is a problem with this happy ending. Nothing has changed in his life from the beginning of the movie and his four-day binge until the end. If his writer's block has ended, we are given no clue as to how this happened. He has had his girl (Jane Wyman) all through this binge and through many others that preceded it but, at the end, she seems to turn away from him. He seemingly goes from a hopeless souse to a sober, hopeful writer on his way to writing the great American novel with no apparent intervention. But there is another interpretation of the ending. At the very end we see the same image as we saw at the start: a circle on a bar left by a wet shot glass. Is Don still in his circle? Is he coming out of a drunk or headed to his next one or both? Charles Jackson sobered up on his own just like Don Birnam. He had his first drink at age 26. In the next seven years he had been to psychiatric hospitals including Bellevue as depicted in the movie. He spent seven nights in a psychiatric ward and then three days in a straightjacket on the violent ward. A doctor at one of his hospital visits
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suggested that Jackson try AA but he replied that he couldn't bring himself to say the Lord's Prayer and he didn't have any spirituality in his makeup. He married, had children, and wrote The Lost Weekend as well as other stories. He joined AA in spite of the religiosity and became an AA circuit speaker. He once spoke for six nights in one week in different states. But there were problems with his AA membership. He was in great demand because of his fame as the writer of The Lost Weekend but he was criticized for breaking his anonymity by appearing at the AA meetings. So Jackson was in a difficult position. AAers came to see him because of his fame and then blamed him for appearing publicly. And Jackson was one of the first people in AA to speak openly of his drug use. He was in and out of AA and sobriety, on a psychiatric ward 18 times. He could usually get Seconal on the wards and sometimes Nembutal and paraldehyde. He was treated at emergency rooms four times for having overdosed on barbiturates. He openly shared his drug use and was heavily criticized for that. Unlike most AA circuit speakers, Jackson wouldn't take a fee and paid all associated expenses himself. He would sign copies of The Lost Weekend after every AA meeting. His wife left him and his drinking episodes increased. In AA he spoke of having acquired a "faith" but he never stated or implied that it was in a deity. It seemed to be a faith that he could get outside himself if only for a while. It may have been a faith in the Fellowship. Whatever is was, it was insufficient to keep him clean and sober for more than a few years at a time. Regarding a higher power, he was probably a nonbeliever all of his adult life. He was gay or perhaps bisexual. He wrote of homoeroticism in a later novel and seemed to still be suffering from shame. His sobriety was an on and off matter even while he was giving AA speeches. Eventually he seems to have come to terms with his sexuality but not with his apparent inability to maintain long-term sobriety. Jackson spent the last three years of his life living in a New York City hotel room with his male lover. It was there, at age 66, in 1968, that he took a large quantity of barbiturates and then hung himself. The coroner ruled his death a suicide caused by acute barbiturate poisoning.
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Not Alone Anymore
By Glenn G. Published July 3, 2016 June of 1989 was my original sobriety date. I was what is described in our literature as a classic “two-stepper.” You could have never convinced me I would ever forget that horrible bottom . . . but I did! In 2006, my primary doctor of fifteen years prescribed me some cough syrup for walking pneumonia. I filled the prescription, took a dose and went back to work without realizing it was a narcotic. Fifteen minutes later, that golden glow descended over me. I thought I had “changed” and it would turn out differently. It didn’t! A little over two years later, I checked into a homeless shelter minus the million-dollar company, minus the new wife and kids, minus the two homes, etc. We all know the story. I returned to
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AA in June 2009 and fervently did “the deal.” I got a sponsor, worked the steps (all of them), and rebuilt my life one piece at a time. In the rooms around here I often hear, “When you pick up a five-year chip, if you hear a loud pop, that’s just your head popping out of your ass!” I remember always laughing to myself after hearing it thinking, “yea right.” Then it happened to me! There I was five years sober, going to meetings, helping others, "fellowshipping" all the time, and I was miserable. I didn’t believe in a God, I didn’t identify with most of what I heard in meetings, and I only saw what I didn’t like about the people in the rooms. Of course, that popping sound represented the continuing process of my recovery. At five years sober in AA, I realized I wasn’t being authentic with myself or anybody else. My relapse taught me participation in a recovery program was paramount and I had to stay connected. I was in trouble! AA helped me rebuild my life but it just wasn’t working for me anymore. The summer progressed and I isolated more, grew disgruntled, and was lonely. In August 2014 I was ready to try other programs and started reaching out to those I trusted and get some suggestions. It turned out one of them had started an agnostics meeting right here in Jacksonville; I started attending but the unhappiness didn’t go away. I still felt alone and a little lost. I found out about the 2014 WAAFT Convention at this meeting and decided to go. I had planned to go surfing in El Salvador that week but canceled and made reservations for Santa Monica instead. Best damn decision I ever made! I arrived the first day not knowing anyone or what to expect and was greeted cheerfully, got my packet, and started to check things out. The first day is still a blur but by the end of it I was overwhelmed with a feeling of relief and joy. Here were hundreds of people in AA from all over the world with similar thoughts and beliefs. I WAS NOT ALONE!
On day two of the conference, I attended a workshop on “How to Start a Meeting” and decided to start a meeting when I returned home to Atlantic Beach. I talked with several different groups and individuals at the convention about their groups, how they got
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started, and how they ran their meetings. They gave me good suggestions and some even emailed their meeting formats. I was ready! Armed with the information and inspiration, I headed home and got to work! During the following weeks I found some help, a room to meet in, and on Saturday, December 13, 2014, Beaches Agnostics & Freethinkers of Atlantic Beach convened our first meeting. There were only four of us at that first meeting but we didn’t care, the hour passed quickly. We’ve been meeting ever since on Saturday mornings at 8:30 in a really cool art gallery. The convention workshop leaders stressed the importance of registering your group with GSO and getting a group number. They said it may help at the local level if intergroup or others tried to say you were not an “official” AA group. That was great advice. We had no problems registering with intergroup but did run into some resistance at the local clubhouse when we posted our flyers. We changed the flyer and added our group number and that was that. Starting this group taught me the difference between an AA group and an AA meeting. Registering with GSO, district, local intergroup, and North Florida Area 14 turned out to be a great learning experience for me. As was suggested at the convention, I registered with GSO first and got a quick response from them informing me they didn’t assign group numbers until the group had been meeting for a month. After hearing some of the negative experiences of other WAAFT groups, I was a little apprehensive but our new group packet arrived right on time with a surprising amount of materials enclosed. The next step was registering with intergroup. Now remember, we live in the heart of the “Bible Belt” so with some apprehension I attended our monthly intergroup meeting, filled out the paperwork, and introduced myself. My fears disappeared when I received a big welcome and a “Glad you’re here!” Unlike some of the experiences shared at the convention, our group has met with very little
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pushback from anybody in the AA service structure. Intergroup listed our meeting in the local “Where and When” and on the website. It took some time but we now have a GSR that represents us at district and area meetings, an intergroup representative, and we disperse money every month to them all. Starting next month along with the other area WAAFT group, we are going to start carrying a meeting into the local hospital once a week using our format. Right now our meeting is made up of twelve to fifteen regulars who are mostly men, though our intergroup rep is a female who has been with us from the start. We have a good mix from mature double-digit sobriety to newcomers. The other WAAFT meeting in town supports us and has always been a big help for which we owe them many thanks. Our group’s personality has changed over time. Our first meetings were filled with lots of God bashing, angry atheist talk, and frustrated venting about what was wrong with AA and the people in it, me included. After about nine months our discussions became more intimate, personal, and positive. Having gone through a similar process after “coming out” as an atheist in AA, I believe this is part of the growing process. The other WAAFT group in town said they went through the same thing. So now when an angry newcomer comes in and vents, it brings a smile to our face as we can relate. Last month we had another big first in our group. One of our regulars sheepishly shared that he had found God and experienced a medical miracle. He shared his fear he wouldn’t be welcome anymore and would have to find another meeting. This turned the discussion on a dime! We assured him he was wanted and welcome no matter what his belief or non-belief was. Hell, that’s part of what we read to open our meetings every week. It’s been a positive experience for our group and group conscience as we want to remain inclusive, not exclusive. To best describe our group today would be to say we are atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and a believer in AA and want to be there for the alcoholic who needs us. I had an epiphany at the 2014 WAAFT Convention that has been with me ever since. I am not alone in AA and I can be authentic with myself and others about my beliefs. I am so grateful to everyone who helped orchestrate and/or attended the 1st WAAFT convention. The convention did change my life. Members from both our local groups will be in Austin this November and we are so excited! I only hope we can be as much help to someone else struggling as others were to me.
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About the Author, Glenn G Glenn G. is a founding member of Beaches Agnostics and Freethinkers in Atlantic Beach, Florida and serves as their DCM. He will be serving on two panels at the WAAFT-IAAC in November. After a five-year struggle of “going along to get along� in traditional AA, now he is comfortable being authentic about his atheism and shares his message every chance he gets. Glenn owns a small landscaping business, which allows him plenty of time for surfing and adventure vacationing.
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A Long and Winding Road
By Gil T. Published July 10, 2016
By Gil T. I am an alcoholic. Not a fifth-a-day, drink alone, hide it in a drawer or under the car seat maintenance drinker sometimes not even obviously drunk but always a little, but instead, a once in a while, what the hell happened, went to the bar/nightclub/lounge/restaurant/wedding/holiday dinner intending to enjoy the
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company and loosen up with a drink or two, had one more than I intended and now it's Tuesday and I have no idea how I got wherever I am or what I did between having that third and gulping down the fourth drink last night or the night before or the night before and now. Some drunks get happy, sad, sloppy, stupid, stumbling, and falling down drunk before passing out. I just faded to black, all the while (this is the frightening part) walking, talking, dancing, driving, picking up women and otherwise (if third party reports are to be believed), appearing only sort of tipsy or even unimpaired until, later in my 35 years of "social" drinking, I started doing stupid, self-destructive and even suicidal things in my blackouts. Hundreds and hundreds of blackouts. The only reason I can see that I was never arrested or otherwise entangled with the law is because there are so many of us that the odds just never caught up with me. Or, absolutely deluded and speaking from pure hubris, perhaps I really did drive as well in my blackouts as the rest of the sober folk out there. I can't say because I don't remember. My early childhood was spent on a farm in middle Georgia, and I was a boy who read and had imagination. Woods and streams and a couple of ponds. I could be Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, General Patton, Robert E. Lee, Francis Marion, Davy Crockett, Natty Bumppo, Gray Beaver, Mowgli, Christopher Robin, and on and on. Fantastic place to be a boy! Not perfect, however. My dad had Type 1 Diabetes, insulin-dependent, diagnosed as a child when insulin was still a brand new thing extracted from pigs. He wasn't expected to live into his teens, much less to adulthood, marriage, and family. My mother got a lot of strokes for her brave “unselfish� marriage for love to a dying man (who didn't die, by the way). So, I grew up with the specter of chronic disease. A diabetic going into insulin shock looks so much like a drunk passing out that many have been mistakenly arrested for being drunk. A diabetic going into an insulin reaction may fly into a frustrated rage as he feels control of his body slipping away – sweats, nervousness, and a red haze of fear-fueled adrenalin. Paradoxically, the adrenalin may keep him going long enough for something like sugar-laced orange juice or, more recently, glucose shots to bring him out of it. So, ambulances came to the farm from time to time, or my mother would hustle me and my younger siblings out of the way while dad cursed and broke furniture and punched doors or walls or farm equipment. And we never, ever talked about it.
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When the farm went under at the end of the 1950s my mother took me, my little sister, and baby brother to Connecticut where we lived with her mother for a time while my dad looked for work. The relationship with my father's parents felt a bit strained – I learned later because my mother was angry with them. They had held the mortgage on the farm and they were the ones that pulled the plug. It was during that time that my father's mother felt it necessary to confide in me that my dad might die at any time and I would have to be “the man of the family.� I was ten.
I was a bright kid and for a while I tried to be perfect. By the time I got to college, however, I was in rebellion. I blamed it on the messed-up world that had me huddling under my desk in grammar school during atomic bomb drills, that killed my heroes, Kennedy and King and then Bobby Kennedy, that was sending my classmates to a stupid war that killed some of them and changed all of them. So I got wasted, stoned, and drunk. A lot. It was a really good school, the kind you have to work hard to flunk out of because they'd have never let you in if you weren't exceptional. I did just enough to get by and found reasons to not go home for holidays or summers. I had to study, or work, or whatever. On weekends I partied, and discovered that blackouts weren't a bad thing. They were more like adventures because I never knew where I'd come to or what I'd be doing.
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Of course, none of this had anything to do with running from the potential responsibility my grandmother laid on me at age ten. My mantra was, “This world is so f---ed up you have to get f---ed up just to live in it!� I also had my first disappointment with my church. I was one of several that asked the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church for a statement acknowledging conscientious objection as a legitimate position concerning the war. They refused. I dropped out. Couldn't wrap my head around predestination anyway. My hair got long, my grades were lousy, my attitude sucked, I sounded like a hippie commie peacenik, and my relationship with my parents suffered. And no one seemed to expect me to come home to be the man of the family if my dad died. I actually graduated and, somehow, got a good Washington, DC job that had me flying around the country and acting important. In my self-absorbed view, I was important. I only blacked out on weekends. When I drank during the week it was usually in a bar with a contractor or colleague doing a deal of some sort and since I could drink more than most without losing my faculties when I paced myself, I did pretty good deals. And I was so busy and so important I didn't have time to go back to Georgia. Then there came a point where the drinking, toking, snorting part began to overwhelm the professional competence part. So I quit. Spent a while living with a teenaged girl who couldn't stand her parents, getting smashed together and dealing a little dope. Then that business got scary and dangerous and the relationship, never healthy in the first place, blew up and I just got alone and miserable. So miserable I started trying out churches and other spiritual paths. Also mental health professionals. I learned a lot. A year or two later I had a blacked-out weekend I called my psychotic break. Really, really self-destructive. Evidence after the fact showed that I tried to hurt myself and others. I had bruises, cuts, and abrasions. I bit my girlfriend's daughter. I so thoroughly trashed my apartment it looked like there'd been a no-knock DEA raid. That sent me to an AA meeting where I decided I wasn't alcoholic but instead one of those hard drinkers that can stop or moderate if circumstances require it. I swore off hard liquor and didn't go back. I tried to get back to god, but every road I took ended with some required dogma or tenet I couldn't swallow, the big one being that there is something intelligent behind all of this. I
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finally came to amazement at the sheer power of random selection, coupled with evolution and survival, in an infinite universe of possibilities. The mental health folks pointed me to ACOA and CODA and, still staying away from hard liquor, I began to get better. Yes, those fellowships do talk about god but not often and they didn't push it. They seemed to be about the process and working together to get better. I even fell in love. Even had a Scotch once in a while. Rarely because hard booze still scared me, but it seemed that life was finally working. Besides, the woman I loved needed me to help her get better, too. There should be klaxon horns going off here. We got married, stopped going to meetings because we were each all the other needed, and moved to another state. And we drank. Three states and a couple of jobs later. Her father died. My father finally died. Parental ties for both of us were so frayed that we weren't around for either of them. Our relationship, co-dependent such as it became, began to come apart. I had blackouts again, never intentionally. It seemed that one drink just led to another and I'd forget to stop and then it went down like water for a thirsty man. We couldn't live with each other, so that ended. I was miserable, more miserable than I'd ever been. I managed to not drink, but the misery didn't go away. I couldn't change, and believe me, I tried. Being dead seemed like a good idea. I needed help and I knew no one in the place we had ended up. In desperation I found an AA meeting. I dropped the idea that I was different because it was finally obvious that when life got really bad I was not the sort who could stop or moderate successfully. I was welcomed, even though I could not and still cannot wrap my head around any concept of a creator/director god. I participated and I found no requirement that I force myself to act like I believe anything but what I know. I know I cannot safely drink. I know I'm not responsible for anyone but me. I know I have hurt people and that I can change and not do that anymore. I know that my fellows in the
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community of addicts understand misery and despair in ways the rest of the world may only glimpse. I have, while sober and a member of AA, seen my divorce become final; been at my brother's side through surgery and remission and then five years later his death from cancer; had financial reversals and gone bankrupt; watched my mother slide into dementia; had walls of resentment and mistrust between my sister, her family, and myself dissolve and be replaced with bonds of trust, love, and communication; and at every turn, found fellows in AA, often strangers until I attended a meeting in their city or town, who understand my fears, share my tragedies, celebrate my victories, and, generally, are just there when I need them. I have a process that works for change. It involves letting go of the idea that I have to do everything myself. And letting go of the idea I can force anyone else to change or that I am some kind of martyr if someone resents and rejects my “help.� It involves rigorous inventory and admission of my mistakes along with a commitment not to repeat them. It involves tapping into the strength that comes of sharing my own weakness, fear, and strength by participating in a fellowship that is greater than myself, a fellowship where the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. End note: I'm speaking of the fellowship. My tribe. It is not a hotbed of mental health. Nor is it a convocation of saints. There are racists, bigots, sexists, criminals and assholes of every stripe. Liars, thieves, bullies, weaklings, predators, and more. Just like the rest of humanity. Most, however, are actually trying to get better.
About the Author, Gil T. Gil T. hasn't had a drink since 2003, the year he started coming to AA meetings and got a sponsor. With his background including theological studies, Atheism came easily and long before sobriety. He's held service positions from coffee maker to DCM and has even had God believing book thumping old timers refer newcomers struggling with the "God thing" to him for help with steps like two and three.
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Changes to the Big Book
By Jerry F. Published July 17, 2016 The first issue I would like to address is the title. This paper is the second of a twopart report on changes made to the text of the Big Book. The first part is the various changes made to the Big Book prior to the first printing. That explains "Postpublication." Next is the usage of the word "text." The usual meaning of "front matter" is the half-title page, the title page, the copyright page, the table of contents, the preface, the forwards to each edition, the Doctor's Opinion, and the front and rear fly. Another way of saying this is that it includes everything in the Big Book except the stories and the appendices. However, I have restricted the scope of this article to mean only that which we usually mean by "the first 164 pages." There
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were post-publication changes made to these other sections but, in the interest of simplicity, they are mentioned only once in this article. When I sobered up and was advised to read the Big Book, I came to page 114 in the third edition and read "Since this book was first published, AA has released thousands of alcoholics from asylums and hospitals of every kind. The majority have never returned. The power of God goes deep!" This confused me because I was already hearing in our meeting rooms that "the first 164 pages have never been changed." But clearly they had; at least in this one instance. Through the years I heard of and read of a number of other changes. I also read statements by AAWS, most of which, while not explicitly stating that changes had not been made, nonetheless seemed to indicate that the first 164 pages were intact as they were first written. An exception is page 357 in " 'Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World." Regarding the second edition of the Big Book it states "Unchanged in the new edition was the original text of the first 11chapters, dealing with the principles followed by early members to achieve sobriety." This is a false statement. Does not "unchanged" mean that changes weren't made? I decided that, when I retired and had the time, I would try to determine what changes had been made, when, and how many there were. When that day arrived I sat down with a Tenth Printing of the First Edition and a Fifteenth Printing of the Second Edition. I held them side by side and began to record the changes. My first mistake was that I was making value judgments. If the change was in punctuation or grammar I decided they didn't matter. And then I came to a punctuation change that altered the meaning of the sentence. In Chapter I there is a sentence: "I had always believed in a power greater than myself." But power is capitalized in one edition and the 'p' is in lower case in the other. I threw out my work and started over. Working almost every day it took me five weeks. That was because, recording every minute change, I realized that I would probably miss some in my first read so I did a second read and I did find several more that way. The count for the first 164 pages? 401 changes. The Preface to the third edition includes these two sentences: "Because this book has become the basic text for our Society and has helped such large numbers of alcoholic men and women to recovery, there exists a sentiment against any radical changes being made to it. Therefore, the first portion of this volume has been left untouched in the course of revisions made for both the second and third editions." This is a false statement. The revisions made in the second edition were extensive. And there are even a few changes made in the third edition. Now, I think that we all have somewhat different opinions on changes to what has been called "our sacred text." I might think that half, 200, of these changes are not material. The program of recovery is not affected although that still leaves 201 changes that do present us with a somewhat different text. If you read through every change you might conclude that 250 are meaningless and only 151 are
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meaningful. Your neighbor might disagree with you and with me. Often a word is deleted or added and, in my judgment, the alteration was beneficial. The sentence made better sense. But you might not agree. Sometimes entire paragraphs have been deleted. In one case the word "not" was inserted into a sentence so it negates the meaning of the original text. In my opinion, everyone who reads the list of changes would have at least a dozen changes they would find objectionable. As for those other, very minor changes, the question arises: If they're so inconsequential, why were they changed? This is our basic text and I think that we can all agree that it should not be changed for whimsical reasons. One final comment on punctuation. Many of us recall when the Fourth Edition was released in October 2001. Punctuation changes had been made to "Doctor Bob's Nightmare" and the membership was so outraged that the story was rapidly restored to its original punctuation. I was shocked at the 401 changes and especially disturbed by some of the rewrites that created meaningful changes in the program of recovery. The third pertinent idea was changed- twice. The twelfth step was changed- twice. Every usage of "exalcoholic" was changed to "ex-problem drinker." Some sentences had two or three changes made to them. I wrote to the Literature Committee of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services pointing out some of the more remarkable changes and asking why AAWS seemed to deny the existence of changes to the Big Book when there were so many that were relevant to our program of recovery. Six weeks later, without a reply, I wrote again. Six weeks later still, I called and was assured that my letters would have been forwarded to the Literature Committee and they would surely respond. They did not. I picked four members, all with more time than me, knowledgeable in AA after serving in various positions, and all intelligent. I gave them a copy of the report and of my letters to AAWS and asked their opinion of what I should do next. One said do nothing. Three said I needed to pursue it in any way I could. All were surprised and disturbed by the changes. Continuing my search, I was amazed to find that there were six changes made in the second edition to The Doctor's Opinion. Made me wonder what Dr. Silkworth actually wrote. And, as every AA member knows, every edition has the Foreword to the previous editions. Except that they don't. One Foreword was edited when it appeared in the later edition. I won't go into detail on these because they are not part of the 401 changes. Late in 2001 the fourth edition appeared. The Preface in that book reads: "Therefore, the first portion of this volume, describing the A.A. recovery program, has been left untouched in the course of revisions made for the second, third, and fourth editions." Untouched means untouched. Or it should. In 2003, "Experience, Strength and Hope" was published. The Introduction stated "Since the first edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, came off the press in 1939, there have been three revised editions - a second published in 1955, a third in 1976, and a
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fourth in 2001. In all four editions, the first 164 pages have remained unchanged, preserving A.A.'s message just as it was originally recorded by the founding members." This is a lie. "Experience, Strength and Hope" and the fourth edition of the Big Book were published as a boxed set that included a pamphlet entitled "A Brief History of the Big Book," copyrighted 2003. On page three is "Originally published in 1939 when Alcoholics Anonymous had about 100 members, the Big Book has come out in three later editions. But the first 164 pages, which have been the foundation of recovery for so many alcoholics, remain unchanged." This same statement is incorporated into the artwork of the slipcase of the boxed set. This is a lie. At this time, I was no longer active in General Service as a GSR or DCM but I knew the ropes. I spoke to an ex-delegate who was extremely upset when he read the changes to the text. In 2005 I made a Topic Submission to Arizona Area. I didn't expect to meet with success but it felt good to make the attempt. The motion carried. At the next General Service Conference in New York it was presented by the Arizona Delegate from the floor. I'm told that the GSO reps fought hard but as the details of the changes began to emerge from the floor, and the deliberate deception of AAWS became apparent, more and more delegates grew angry. The delegates across the country instructed AAWS to repeal the lies in the Preface of the Fourth Edition of the Big Book, the false statement in "Experience, Strength and Hope," in the artwork of the slipcover, and in the pamphlet in the boxed set. The lesson here is that, working with the A.A. Service Manual and the Twelve Concepts for World Service, one little old man in Gilbert, Arizona, along with many caring members of our unique Fellowship, can change the Big Book. That is the enduring strength and wisdom of our extraordinary organization, Alcoholics Anonymous. But it will take care and diligence to keep it.
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Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater
By Jo-Anne K. Published July 24, 2016
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There is an old saying that suggests we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. In other words: there may be some nuggets of gold (or a kid) in that dirty water. That is how I feel about the Big Book (BB). There is a great deal in the book that I find objectionable, especially as an atheist. However, I have also found pieces of brilliance contained within it. I am not suggesting that everyone embrace the BB and all of its doctrine. I am only suggesting that there may be some ideas that recovering folks may find helpful. As for what isn’t useful, I will not go into all of the negative things that disturb me about the BB: The Christian slant, the sexism, the misogyny. I recognize these but have found they may be overlooked. Suffice it to say that I have a whole chapter that long ago I literally put a paper clip around. The information was just not relevant to me. The whole concept behind being a freethinker is that everyone has a right to decide for themselves what is relevant to them and what is not. What I will discuss in this essay are a few of the things that I have found to be helpful to me. First though, my reason for writing this essay. Some individuals in the agnostic, atheist, and freethinkers’ meetings of AA would have you believe that the Big Book is useless and that it is not essential to read. Unfortunately, a newcomer, having found a group of people that they think may help them maintain sobriety, may hear this and take it to heart. As a result, they may not even consider reading the BB. In my opinion, this would be a shame. The newcomer may actually find, as I have, some ideas and concepts that are vital to their recovery. I offer this review as an option. Having been out as an atheist for a number of years I have re-read the BB and I will present to you some of the things that I have found to ring true for me. • Withdrawing from alcohol can be very difficult; it can in fact be deadly. One very practical idea that is proposed in the BB is that hospitalization may be necessary to deal with withdrawal. Treatment for alcohol withdrawal is mentioned
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twice in the BB. Its merits are suggested in the foreword on pages XXIV and XXVI: “for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged”. As well, Bill Wilson’s own experience with treatment is mentioned on page seven and then again on page 13. • In the chapter “Into Action,” the Fifth Step is described and this caution is offered: “We have no right to save our own skins at another person’s expense” (74). In doing a Fifth Step and making amends a recovering alcoholic may feel that they want to “come clean” about a behavior to the person harmed. I take this portion of the book to suggest that, yes, we should tell someone about our behavior--but not necessarily the person that was impacted. For example, we need to consider whether we need to tell our aging parents about every time that we were in fact not at work but were out drinking when we cancelled plans with them. • I always thought that I was a very selfless person. I believed that I was kind and helpful to others. There is a section in the BB that challenged these beliefs. It begins on page 60 with: “Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, and the rest of the actors […] in trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing.” Of course this doesn’t always work and the results may be disastrous with arguments and ruined relationships. Here is what rang true for me: “Is he not really a selfseeker even when trying to be kind?” The reality is I don’t know how everyone should run their lives. I only think I do. If I try to make people act as I want them to act chaos usually ensues. • I found something in the Big Book that was very helpful to me in understanding how much I should or could do for another suffering alcoholic/addict. “If he is not interested in your solution, if he expects you to act only as a banker for his financial difficulties or a nurse for his sprees, you may have to drop him until he changes his mind. This he may do after he gets hurt enough” (95). This sounds rather cold and uncaring. However, it helped me to see that if I loaned money or continually doled out sympathy to a person that was continuously relapsing (in today’s psychology field this is known as enabling) then I was just keeping them from feeling what they needed to feel in order to hit bottom and subsequently seek recovery. • On page 122 of the BB there is a request for compassion for the family of a practicing alcoholic. “Years of living with an alcoholic is almost sure to make a wife [partner] or child neurotic. The entire family is to some extent ill.” We don’t get to be completely selfish in our recovery. Compassion is required for those around us who may have been affected by our drinking/using. I usually suggest to the partner of someone that I am working with that they might find some compassion and understanding in Al-Anon. This section of the BB also helped
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me to recognize my own Adult Child of an Alcoholic issues. I wasn’t just an alcoholic, I have also been affected by my family’s drinking and I need to continue to be healed from that or I will not stay sober. • Unfortunately, I sometimes hear in the rooms that God is the only thing we need and if we pray right we will be relieved of our addictions, cancer, kleptomania, or whatever else troubles us. There is a section of the Big Book which contradicts this: “… this world [is abundantly supplied] with fine doctors, psychiatrists, and practitioners of various kind. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to them” (133). Sound advice if you ask me. I did not relate to all of the stories in the Big Book. My life is quite different from the lives of the (mostly) men that are described in the book. However, there were a number of things in the stories that I could relate to and that I found very helpful, despite being a woman of the 21st century. • Early in my sobriety it was suggested to me to read the chapter titled: “Freedom from Bondage.” I found the first few paragraphs in that story to be very helpful in understanding what my alcoholic drinking was all about. It seemed I had to drink or I would go insane. Reading it again I still find it to be true. “I am one of those whose history proves conclusively that my drinking was ‘a symptom of a deeper trouble.’” “Through my efforts to get down to ‘causes and conditions’ I stand convinced that my emotional illness was present from my earliest recollection.” (544). I never did react normally to emotionally charged situations. I have always considered myself to be an emotional coward. I needed a crutch. Something to help ease the blow. These quotes are still very comforting to me. I realized I was not the only one that had these issues and that my alcoholism was not just about how much I drank. These are a few of the nuggets of gold that I have found in the Big Book. There are many others. Since I do not believe the BB to be sacred writing I have had no qualms in taking parts of it and re-writing them so they fit better with my world view. I have written another version of the 12 Steps, for example, and taken out the God stuff. Also, I have written a secular version of the “acceptance statement” on page 449 but the meaning is the same: I have to accept reality for what it is and deal with my response to it.
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I believe the BB should neither be formally re-written, ignored, or cast out of AA. I believe it should be accepted as a text that was written in 1939 when the fellowship was very young. Much more has been learned about alcoholism and about the development of human beings since then, which makes some of the writings irrelevant. However, I believe the BB should be left intact and considered a historical document, one that may be beneficial to anyone seeking recovery. I think we should be adding to the literature of AA by writing from the perspective of atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers. How do we as secularists stay sober? How are we different from the believers in AA and more importantly: how are we the same?
About the Author, Jo-Anne K. Jo-Anne K. is a member of The Beyond Belief Group in Toronto. She believes that working the principles of the steps into her life has resulted in her 29 years of recovery. She and others from her group have recently added a secular step meeting to the group.
Photography The photography for this article was created by Jan A. from The Broad Highway Group in Bandon, Oregon.
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Share Magazine
By Laurie A. Published July 31, 2016 According to the 2015 membership survey there are 3,650 AA groups in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) with between 33,000 and 40,000 AA members and over three million individual attendances at meetings each year. Share is the fellowship's magazine for England and Wales; Scotland has its own magazine, the Roundabout. The first AA meeting in Britain was held in London in March 1947 and Share's predecessor, the Newsletter, appeared in January 1949, 25 typewritten, stenciled copies. The name changed to Share in 1972 and its current monthly circulation is about 3,500. Share has a similar format to the Grapevine though it has no paid staff, it is produced by AA members who rotate off the team after their term ends. It is known as our 'meeting between meetings' or our 'meeting in print'. Each issue includes personal stories, articles on the Steps, Traditions and Concepts, letters, cartoons, news of groups opening and closing and dates of conventions'. The following two articles were published in Share in the last few years, and were both written by Laurie A.
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We Are People Who Normally Would Not Mix By Laurie A. ‘We are people who normally would not mix’ (Big Book, chapter two). I used to share at meetings that I worked in a heavy drinking job, I was a journalist. I stopped saying it when I heard a man say, ‘I work in a heavy drinking trade, I’m an undertaker’! I realised then that alcoholics tend to work in heavy drinking jobs. I didn’t have half a pint of bitter or gin and tonic to relax after a hard day, and then catch the train home to wife and family. Once in the pub I was there till closing time. ‘We are people who normally would not mix’. My first AA sponsor was a self-employed building plasterer who left school at 15. My second sponsor was a milkman. My current sponsor is a retired surgeon. One of my dearest AA friends is a Catholic priest, I’m a Quaker and an agnostic; I have a precious memory of saying the Serenity prayer with him while crossing the Sea of Galilee on a boat full of pilgrims to the Holy Land, though my understanding of the word God was nothing like his.
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‘We are people who normally would not mix.’ Oh, I’d have mixed with you all right in some sordid bar where I hoped to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily I did, but it was the camaraderie of the condemned. In AA we learn that we have to hang together – or hang separately; that we live under a suspended death sentence, with only a daily reprieve from a fatal condition. That is the incentive and discipline which bind us together. ‘We are people who normally would not mix.’ In Al-Anon they say, ‘You might not like us all, but you will come to love us each in a very special way.’ There’s a story about an AA member washed up alone on a tiny desert island. Years later he is spotted from a passing liner and a lifeboat is sent to rescue him. One of the sailors greets him and says, ‘Why have you built those two huts on either end of your island?’ The AA member, pointing, said, ‘That one is my home group – and the other one is the meeting I don’t go to’! In a letter now in the AA archives cofounder Bill W. wrote, ‘AA will always have its traditionalists, fundamentalists and its relativists ...’ people who normally would not mix. In a GRAPEVINE article he said, ‘So long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety the most unmoral, the most anti-social, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce that a new AA group has been formed. Anti-God, anti-medicine, anti-our recovery program, even anti-each other – these rampant individuals are still an AA group if they think so.’ ‘We are people who normally would not mix.’ The long form of our Third Tradition states, ‘Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.’ (My emphasis) WHERE TO FIND, our directory of AA groups in England, Scotland, Wales and continental Europe, lists women’s groups, lesbian and gay groups, Big Book Study groups, Step and Tradition groups, topic discussion groups, agnostic and atheist groups, meditation groups and others. But there is a vital proviso on the contents page which notes, ‘All groups in this directory are listed on the understanding that they are non-restrictive.’ No group can turn away anyone with a drink problem - or insist on any conditions for attending, such as telling a newcomer they must find God, get a sponsor or practise the Steps. AA’s many resources are
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freely available for anyone to use – but there are no instructions, no ‘you musts’. There’s room for us all in AA; the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. ‘We are people who normally would not mix.’ The book SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE, which the SHARE team produced to mark the British Fellowship’s 60th anniversary in 2007, and which is available from GSO at York, includes contributions from men and women, young and old, a blind man, gay members, religious believers – including a Muslim, and an atheist. It’s called the fellowship of the Spirit. Of course I have my share of problems, heartaches and disappointments. I’m not excused life’s ‘slings and arrows’ just because I’m sober. Happy, joyous and free 24/7/365? What an infantile delusion! As an active alcoholic I knew loneliness such as few do. In AA I found release from care, boredom and worry; my imagination was fired and life did mean something at last. I’ve enjoyed the most satisfactory years of my existence and made lifelong friends, in a fellowship who have escaped disaster together. Copyright © Share Magazine. Reprinted with permission.
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Do ‘Chips' Help or Hinder Our Primary Purpose? By Laurie A. Published July 31, 2016
Tradition Six: An AA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. I don’t collect ‘chips’, the medallions given by some AA groups to mark members’ sobriety dates, but I made an exception on my 30th anniversary. I went to meetings of three groups that offer chips and collected one each for my wife, son and daughter; if anyone deserves a medal
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they do for not giving up on me in the dark drinking days and for encouraging me in recovery. They never stopped loving me. I know some members feel giving and receiving chips is a positive way to celebrate sobriety but to me expecting recognition for staying sober would be like a drowning man calling for a round of applause after grabbing hold of a life-belt. As a US General Service Board committee set up in 1992 to consider the awarding of chips noted, ‘Any attempt to make medallions more than a symbol may lead perilously towards ego-inflation and self-glorification, rather than egodeflation’ (see Tradition 12). There are other aspects of the practice that concern me. AA does not authorise or produce chips (or jewellery, bumper stickers etc) and outside bodies that sell them to groups and at conventions are using the AA name and logo without AA’s permission. Do groups who issue them pay for them with money from the ‘pot’, money that should be used to carry the message to the still suffering alcoholic? Of course each group is autonomous, but should AA members be endorsing these products? As far as I know AA in Great Britain has not had to defend its copyright to the circle and triangle logo in the courts but it was happening in America where the symbol was being exploited by all sorts of commercial enterprises including treatment centres. That abuse prompted the 1992 US Conference to ask the trustees to consider the problem and make recommendations. The 1993 US Conference decided the use of medallions was a matter for local autonomy, but that it was not appropriate for AA World Services (AAWS) to produce or license the production of sobriety chips. The committee had commented that ‘a public lawsuit is a public controversy, something in which our Tradition (10) says we may not engage.’ And, ‘The Seventh Tradition reminds us, “Experience has often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money or authority”.’ Of the circle and triangle logo it commented, ‘... we suspect that the belief that we (or anyone) can “possess” the symbol is a fallacy. It actually works against the foundation of the Steps that lead us to sobriety. Ownership necessarily involves control and to argue over that control through litigation takes the focus away from the fact that we are ultimately powerless...’
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Immediately after the Conference the US General Service Board accepted AAWS’s recommendation to discontinue protecting the circle and triangle symbol as one of AA’s registered marks. The trustees also reached substantial unanimity in support of AAWS’s statement that, to avoid the suggestion of affiliation with outside goods and services, AAWS would phase out the ‘official’ or ‘legal’ use of the circle and triangle. As literature was due for reprinting, the symbol would be deleted. The guidelines on copyright and logos in the Great Britain AA Service Handbook notes, ‘The General Service Board recognises only two logos. One incorporates the words Recovery, Unity and Service on the sides of the triangle; the other carries the words General Service Conference inside the circle.’ The guideline gives examples when the first logo may be used for AA purposes, and adds, ‘NB permission for any other use can only be granted, in writing, by the Board.’
In 1990 enroute to the international reunion in Seattle I visited Bill W.’s grave in Vermont. It was covered in chips from grateful members who had also made the pilgrimage to pay respects to our co-founder. Ironically, although Bill accepted awards on behalf of AA he always declined personal honours, calling himself just another drunk. Copyright © Share Magazine. Reprinted with permission. Photograph of Bill W.'s grave taken by Roger "Hurricane" Wilson
About Laurie A. Laurie A. is a retired national newspaper and BBC journalist in the UK. His sobriety date is 8/10/84. He served on the Great Britain AA literature committee and edited Share, the British fellowship’s national magazine, and Share and Share Alike, a book celebrating 60 years of AA in Britain in 2007.
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Emotional Sobriety
By Rich H. Published August 7, 2016 The last page of the last story in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition contains these words: …we members of AA may never again have to deal with drinking, but we do have to deal with sobriety every day. How do we do it? By learning – through practicing the Twelve Steps and through sharing at meetings – how to cope with problems that we looked to booze to solve back in our drinking days. — Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 559
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Alcoholics Anonymous has been contributing to the emotional sobriety of drunks and people close to them since the first member finished his inventory and amends. Following an initial period of physical sobriety, many of us former drinkers are confronted, in an unmedicated condition, with long-held emotions, fears, resentments, and past memories. Then, when we worked the Twelve Steps of AA, many of us felt the beginning of emotional sobriety. At the same time many did not; and none of us are ever perfectly healed. We are, to varying degrees, still troubled with resentments, fears, and the trials of daily living. What is emotional sobriety? Certainly it involves managing emotions in some way other than drinking over them. It is more about coping with events and feelings in rational, mature ways than it is about not having those feelings at all. It is a matter of balance, not complete freedom from calamity, illness, fear, and other emotions. In 1957, Bill W. wrote about emotional sobriety in a message to a friend regarding his battles with depression. Bill wrote that his “basic flaw had always been dependency – almost complete dependence – on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.” His solution was to “exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.” He concluded, “If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand.” His strength and hope was rooted in his experience. He wrote: “In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober. It wasn’t a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive. Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety.” So, for Bill W., emotional sobriety meant not depending on circumstances, things, or the opinions of others to bring him happiness. This is similar to Dr. Paul’s lesson in the Big Book regarding expectations being inversely proportional to serenity. On page 417 are the words , “When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation – some fact of my life, unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation …” He adds the solution: “I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” For the
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record, Bill’s essay on Emotional Sobriety was written long before Dr. Paul’s story appeared in the Third Edition of the Big Book in 1975. These ideas are similar to Buddhist teachings that our happiness and serenity depends on how we respond to desires, cravings, or circumstances in life. Emotional sobriety comes from our reaction, not from the circumstances, desires, or cravings. Learning to be emotionally sober requires us to first be aware of our emotions, to be mindful. Many of us learned to bury our emotions in a sea of alcohol during our drinking years. Now, we can learn to be aware of them with mindful practice and then, with more practice, we can develop new habits of being able to express those emotions appropriately rather than burying them. With practice, we learn to respond with equanimity and compassion and kindness for ourselves and others. All of the Steps are valuable in achieving such responses and, together, lead to emotional sobriety. Of course the Steps are meant to be suggestive only so we can adjust them to meet our individual needs in every circumstance. When we recognize, admit, and accept our faults and imperfections, our peace of mind doesn’t depend on being accepted or approved of by others. And, as Bill said, “we may then be able to Twelfth Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety.” --Bill W., The Language of the Heart, p. 238.
Twelfth Step ourselves? How do we Twelfth Step ourselves? Can we do it the same way we work with others? Can we do it by sharing our experience, strength, and hope with ourselves? The Big Book chapter on “Working with Others” tells us that, because of our own drinking experience, we can be uniquely helpful to others. We can because drunks can relate to drunks. Since we are alcoholics, we can work the Steps of AA and help ourselves. We learned much about ourselves from writing an inventory of our life experiences in the First, Fourth, and Fifth Steps, with the help of our
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sponsors. We can also, in our morning meditation, or at any other time, contemplate our lives and what we have done with them, good and bad. What we have learned from the Steps is very useful to us; it helps us avoid mistakes and painful episodes today. Looking back helps us to remember that we are alcoholics and, as the Big Book advises, remember that we have a disease. We can Twelfth Step ourselves whenever we do a Tenth Step, with an on-the-spot examination of any situation or person disturbing us. We ask ourselves if we have a part in causing the disturbance. Do we owe amends? If so, we try to make them quickly to maintain our emotional sobriety. If not, do we need to forgive someone and move on? If the disturbance came from an unhealthy dependency or its consequent unhealthy demand, we can stop expecting that other people satisfy our needs or stop seeking the approval of others for our happiness. If, for example, we are angry with our spouse for not waking us early enough to get to work on time, we need to find our part in the disturbance. We need to accept responsibility for setting an alarm to wake ourselves on time and stop depending on others to do it for us. If we are depressed, is it because we expected someone to give us the approval we sought by trying to please them? There are many healthy ways we depend on others to enhance our happiness but we have to watch out for unhealthy dependencies and recognize them when they pop up. Some of us have to seek outside help from groups like Alanon or Co-Dependents Anonymous as part of Twelfth Stepping ourselves in this regard. Besides learning from every disturbance, we can examine it further to see if we can find its cause. We can go back to Steps Six and Seven and try to determine whether our part was caused by some unhealthy dependency or character defect. Our emotional sobriety depends not on what happens in our lives, but more on our attitude toward what happens. We can be grateful for every disturbance, good and “bad,” because we can learn from every experience. When presented with life challenges, we can be grateful for those challenges because they are opportunities to learn and will strengthen us to face further challenges. We can use gratitude as a tool. When something “bad” happens, we can try to conjure up reasons to be grateful for that “bad.” For example: if we are diagnosed with cancer, we can make up a list of five reasons to be grateful we have cancer: 1. It will make us cherish and appreciate life more
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2. It might wake us up to make efforts to being closer to our family and friends 3. It can make us want to eat healthier and get more exercise 4. It points out that we need to pay more attention to our medical condition 5. People will be nicer to us. :-) So, by using the tool of gratitude, we can Twelfth Step ourselves into emotional sobriety. If this tool works for us, we can pass it on to others. Doing Twelfth Step work with others is Twelfth Stepping ourselves as well because it is directly helpful for our own sobriety. We learn more about the Steps each time we take another person through them. Working with others gets us out of ourselves and, as we share our experience with others, we learn to be vulnerable. Vulnerability leads to emotional honesty, another asset in our quest to live authentic lives. Working with people who can’t quit drinking even though they want to requires courage. As we perform courageous acts, we become courageous. Working with newly sober people requires a degree of emotional intimacy and, again, we learn to be emotionally intimate by doing so. We feel good; we feel happy when we can help another person or bring something useful to any situation that needs help. As Bill W. wrote in his essay, “happiness is a by-product—the extra dividend of giving without any demand for a return.” Emotional sobriety has many more aspects and, as we live the life AA has given us, more will be revealed. Emotional sobriety is not something we either have or don’t have; we all have some and none of us will ever have it all. When we begin to live life on life’s terms with right thinking and equanimity, we act with emotional sobriety. Many people have said it in many similar ways but this is how one of Bill W.’s friends put it: “Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.” -Aldous Huxley
About the Author, Rich H. Rich H. lives on the island of Maui where he got sober 12 years ago. He announced that he was an atheist at his first meeting and has been open about it ever since. He sees no reason to hide or be ashamed of it. He is not militant about it, but he never fails to mention it when there is a newcomer present so they don't have to feel alone or afraid.
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He and his friend Joan C. started the We Agnostics meeting on Maui and the group is celebrating its 10th anniversary today, on August 7, 2016. They now have 3 meetings per week and have a 4th meeting called Emotional Sobriety, at which no prayers are said. They both attended the WAAFT Convention in Santa Monica where Joan was one of the speakers. Rich looks forward to seeing you all in Austin!
Photography by Kathryn F
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When I Decided to Stay Sober
By Thomas B. Published August 14, 2016 It was the overcast evening of November 3, 1972. I ran screaming out onto 11th Street at the corner of Waverley Place in Greenwich Village from the basement office of Dr. Wolf, my wife’s therapist. I was wild-eyed. Most distraught. Raging. Heartbroken. In a panic. When hoarse, I stopped screaming. I vaguely remember looking around quite frazzled, thinking, “Stifle it, Tom, you don’t want to get arrested.” I started walking rapidly, practically running, towards 7th Avenue. My mind was a blur, racing up, down, sideways, all around. I was in full-blown frenzy mode. Operating on gut instinct, I needed to get the fuck as far away as possibly I could from that horrible place — Dr. Wolf’s therapy office.
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What a most pretentious space it was — low lighting, walls lined with bookcases stuffed with books and papers, stylishly decorated with obscure Beasley prints, knick-knacks, and tchotchkes, plush sofas with matching pillows scattered about, etc. Forever more, it would be a most verboten place. This is where Debbie had just told me that despite my not having had a drink for almost a month, she had nonetheless moved out of our Upper West Side apartment. She had accomplished this feat that very afternoon, as a matter of fact, while I was applying for admission to an outpatient alcoholism treatment program downtown across from Cooper Union. Further, she adamantly refused to tell me where she had moved, what her new address was! The simpering, but stern-faced Dr. Wolf nodded his pointy chin in approval.
Backstory Time Debbie was my second wife to whom I was married the previous July in New Rochelle, NY, where she grew up. We both drank heavily at the reception. The best man, a dear friend from college, drove us to the City, where we checked into the honeymoon suite at the Plaza Hotel. We took a horse-drawn carriage ride around Central Park at dusk. For a young man who grew up in Jackson, MS, this was an ultimate fantasy come true about being most grown up and super cool in New York Freakin’ City !!! Following the carriage ride, we went up to our suite and quickly drank the complimentary bottle of champagne. After making sloppy love, we both passed out — for the entire night! We missed out on all of the perks given us as a honeymoon couple: free drinks at Trader Vic’s, 15% off dinner in the Oak Room, complimentary desserts in the Palm Court. We also overslept the next morning, nearly missing the flight to New Orleans for our honeymoon. I had met Debbie in late February of 1971. At the time, I was a graduate student, seeking an MFA in Directing from the theatre department of Catholic University. Debbie was a BIC — Bronx Irish Catholic. She was also an ex-nun, whose family had moved to New Rochelle, NY, where she had gone to high school, and where her father became the town drunk. She joined the nunnery to escape the ravages of alcoholism in her home. At the end of her first year in the nunnery, there was a ceremony where she would take her first vows. Her father very much wanted to attend. However, the nuns sternly told him, being the notorious town drunk, that he would have to be stone-cold sober in order to attend. So he went cold-turkey, and in the middle of the celebratory mass traumatically died of delirium tremens.
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Debbie left the nunnery and went to Catholic University to pursue a social work degree instead of becoming a nun. She was dating a friend of mine, Jack, from the theatre department. All three of us got drunk one night in the Rathskeller, a.k.a. “the Rat,” the basement student bar on Catholic University’s campus. Debbie and I flirted — it was lust at first sight. My first wife, Kathy, whom I had married four years earlier two days before I flew to Vietnam, since she was pregnant with our first daughter, was pregnant again with our second daughter. Since she was away visiting her family in Connecticut, I took Debbie home that night and deflowered her in Kathy’s and my bed. Hey, the booze made us do it, you know? Debbie and I began a torrid affair, the third I had while married to Kathy, with whom I had little in common. I only married her to avoid dealing with a paternity suit in Vietnam, where, largely due to my alcoholism, I had volunteered to go mostly as a suicide mission in 1967. I convinced Debbie to move into an apartment with me in Washington, DC and also to be named co-respondent in the divorce suit I initiated shortly thereafter on the grounds of my infidelity. This was the quickest way to end the marriage with Kathy. Yes, my life was most unmanageable! Debbie finished her social work degree, and I flunked out of my second graduate school program as a result of alcoholism. Soon, however, I got hired as the Editor of English Publications for the now defunct Institute of Modern Languages, then a subsidiary of American Express. IML had government contracts teaching TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) as well as other languages, around the world, including several programs in the New York City metropolitan area to immigrants. Debbie got a job working for one of these programs in Spanish Harlem. I moved to New York City in May of 1972, before we were married in July, to be the director of another program in New Jersey. However, in the late summer of 1972, President Nixon impounded the US Department of Labor funds for such programs, and I found myself unemployed. Debbie immediately got a job with the Federal Reserve Bank, but I stayed on unemployment for over a year during the oil embargo crisis. I was able to supplement the unemployment checks by working off the books for the Gene Frankel Theatre and, as well, I had several free-lance jobs as an editor/writer.
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In an earlier article, First Meetings, I described my last days of drinking, and why I initially starting going to AA meetings in an attempt to convince Debbie to remain in the marriage about three weeks before the incident in Dr. Wolf’s office that I describe at the beginning of this essay.
Back To This Story Time
The famed Perry Street Workshop in Greenwich Village, where Thomas first went to an AA meeting when he wanted to get sober for himself, not just to get his wife back.
So, there I was striding up 7th Avenue, most discombobulated and rather in quite a dither: really, why shouldn’t I just go and get hammered, pissant, royally drunk again? I mean, why the fuck not? After all, the whole reason I had stopped drinking and started going to AA meetings in the first place was to get Debbie back, but she had left anyway — apparently for good. Nevertheless, a modicum of sanity reasoned that getting drunk surely would do nothing to get Debbie back. Besides, through the fog of the three Thursday night Renewal West AA meetings I’d attended, I’d received a glimmer of an understanding that maybe, if I stayed sober a day at a time, maybe my life would change for the better. Besides, I also had heard Stanley S. Stancage speak at the Beginner’s Meeting the evening before. A chronic relapser, he was the first person with whom I could identify. His qualification actually gave me a tiny sliver of hope in the darkness of my dry-alcoholic despair about missing Debbie.
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Plus, during the break before the open speaker meeting, I had been given a copy of the large meeting list for New York City, listing hundreds of AA meetings in Manhattan and surrounding areas. I was astounded — I honestly believed the Renewal West meeting was the only AA meeting in all of New York City. So, with a wee bit of hope and the meeting list in my back pocket, I continued walking uptown. When I got to Times Square, I continued uptown on Broadway. Along the way, I made a firm decision — I did not want to drink that night, and I would start attending other AA meetings. On practically every block there was a bar, a nightclub, a liquor store, or a bodega, selling beer and wine, including a favorite, Boone Farm’s Apple Wine. A wine connoisseur definitely I was not! Whenever I passed one of these booze-dispensing establishments, I would look at it and firmly say, “Fuck you!!!” This was all well and good, until uptown along Broadway, somewhere a bit north of Lincoln Center, as I recall, I delivered a “Fuck You” at a liquor store, not noticing a little old lady standing nearby. “I beg your pardon, young man?” she indignantly accosted me. “No, oh no ma’am, I wasn’t speaking to you, I — ah, well, oh, never mind.” I mean, how do you explain to someone that you’re telling a liquor establishment to go fuck itself? When I got back to our empty apartment, I thought about maybe checking out another meeting in my neighborhood. For a while I looked through the meeting list and found several nearby. I saw there were even midnight meetings downtown on East 23rd Street. I also found an interesting sounding meeting down in the Village, the Perry Street Workshop, that next Saturday afternoon. Tired, however, and emotionally drained from the harrowing scene in Dr. Wolf’s office, as well as physically from walking all the way uptown from Greenwich Village, I instead decided just to stay home. Nevertheless, I didn’t drink that night, just like I had done a day at a time since October 14th, when I had my last drink, a Ballantine Ale. I had successfully stayed sober one more day. This was rather momentous, because for the first time this is what I wanted to do for myself. Whether Debbie came back or not, I decided I wanted to get and stay sober by going to other AA meetings anyway.
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The next day was a lovely Indian Summer day. I took the subway down to Greenwich Village, where I had an omelet at a small, inexpensive storefront French cafe on Greenwich Avenue and walked around the Washington Square Park area, reveling in the hippy-influenced street scene of my baby-booming generation throughout Greenwich Village. I experienced the natural high of being a young man, sober, in New York City, the cultural and entertainment capital of the world. At 2:00 pm, I walked over to the nearby Perry Street Workshop for the 2:30 meeting. I sat along the wall near the entrance. There was a speaker’s desk and chair up on a small dais in the middle of the long narrow room. Several rows of chairs were on either side with a dingy bathroom and coffee bar in the rear of the room. Soon all the chairs filled up, and there was a blue haze of cigarette smoke, through which sliced beams of sunlight, shining through the curtained front windows. The meeting started, and a well-dressed man a few years older than me qualified. He told a harrowing story of living on the streets drunk and shooting heroin. Clean and sober now, he worked professionally in the burgeoning new field of addiction treatment. I was riveted by his story. Within me was implanted the idea that maybe I too might like to work in the field of addiction treatment. The seed of this idea manifested itself in 1976, when I was hired as an alcoholism counselor at the treatment program across from Cooper Union, where I had been a client from late 1972 to 1975, the same program I applied to on the afternoon that Debbie moved out of our apartment. It was my first job in what turned out to be a 30-year, most rewarding, career in addiction treatment. Patricia Elliot as Countess Charlotte Malcolm in A Little Night Music, for which she won the 1973 Tony Reward for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, several months after I encountered her at the Perry Street Workshop meeting.
There was a woman on the far-side of the podium, who looked somewhat familiar. However, initially I couldn’t place how I knew her. As soon as she spoke, however, I instantly recognized her as Patricia, an actress I had worked with during the summer of 1970 at Olney Theatre in Maryland, which then was operated by Catholic
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University, where I was a graduate student in theatre. After the meeting, we hugged and spoke for a while. I asked her what she was doing there. She smiled and said the same thing that I was doing, trying to stay sober a day at a time. We laughed, talked for a while, then said goodbye. I didn’t think to get her phone number. I didn’t even know this was something that we do. It was a fortuitous, good omen, seeing Patricia at the very first meeting I went to, after having made the decision the night before to start a new life sober a day at a time. I’ve stayed sober ever since, and that was over 43 years ago. Debbie and I reunited in her new apartment in Gramercy Park several months later, but we separated in 1974. I came home an hour early from my service commitment as Chairperson of the Thursday night meeting of the Midnight Meeting, my first home group, which met upstairs at 156 E. 23rd Street. I found her in bed naked with a lover and our dog, Dylan. I’m unsure, even to this day, about what upset me more, that she was in our bed with a lover, or that they both were in bed with our dog, Dylan! A couple of weeks earlier, she had accompanied me when I celebrated my first anniversary and got my one-year medallion. She never really accepted that I was an alcoholic, since I was nothing like her father. She just wanted me to be able to drink like a gentleman, to be a goodtime-Tommy party boy. Instead, I would get all maudlin and morose, sitting in a dark corner by myself, muttering about dead babies in Vietnam and shit like that. We later amicably divorced in early 1975. The last time I saw Debbie was on Christmas Eve of 1977 or 1978, when we were crossing 50th Street at 5th Avenue, she on the way uptown to mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, me going downtown on 5th Avenue to a meditation class. We chatted briefly, and she gave me her Phillips Morris business card, saying to call her, that we must get together for old time’s sake. I did several months later, but was told that she no longer was employed by Phillip Morris. I have no idea whatever became of her. Several months ago, I read with sadness, but deep, deep gratitude, the New York Times obituary of Patricia Elliot, who died at age 77 of a rare cancer. I presume, since she had such a long and successful career working as an actress, she must have died sober. This pleases me immensely!
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About the Author, Thomas B. Sober from his primary drug of addiction, Colt .45 — preferably by the case lot — since October 14, 1972, Thomas is grateful for the full life he has experienced in recovery for over 43 years. He’s been active at the group level throughout his recovery and in 1978 was the cochair of the first New York City Young Peoples Conference. He is a co-founder with his wife, Jill, and past GSR of Portland, Oregon’s Beyond Belief group. They also started a flourishing secular AA meeting in their former hometown of Seaside, OR. Retired from a 30-year career in addiction treatment, he and a fellow Vietnam Veteran colleague, Vince Treanor, were instrumental in establishing the correlation between addiction and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder during the 1980s. He's written the following articles for AA Beyond Belief: • • • •
Resentment, Rage and Recovery (October 25, 2015) My Experience As A GSR (March 1, 2016) WACYPAA XIX (March 6, 2016) PRAASA, 2016 (April 24, 2016)
He’s been an active participant on AA Agnostica since early in 2012, where he published 15 articles. For several months he was on the WAAFT IAAC Board of Directors, but he resigned for personal reasons. Thomas and Jill live in gainful retirement on disability in her childhood home, which they recently inherited in Wenona, IL, with their dog Kiera, and two cats, Savannah and Elsa. Though they miss being near the Pacific Ocean and the thriving secular AA communities in Oregon, they look forward to participating in Chicago's extensive Quad-A secular AA community. As well, within the year, they hope to establish a secular meeting in Bloomington, IL, home of Illinois State University.
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My Story: Progression and Surrender
By Mark C. Published August 28, 2016
My sobriety date is 12/10/2009. Perhaps two words that describe my three decades with alcohol are “progression,” and “surrender.” Having once been an ardent, Evangelical, Reformed Christian
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believer, by the time I staggered into AA, I had been an atheist for almost fifteen years. I was “without” Theistic belief when I came into AA, and still self-identify as an atheist—on purpose. A “conscious contact with “God,” and a growing understanding of “God” was what my life had been about for a couple of decades. I became a drunk while in full-orbed, meaningful, Christian theistic belief and practice. I had my first drink of alcohol at around eight or nine years old. I remember it very clearly. My cousin and I were at our extended family’s annual Fourth of July get-together. It was a large group and most of the adults in our extended family drank heavily. We had a lot of heavy drinkers, and by all appearances, several “alcoholics.” Some of the adults had an “old school” approach to life, and decided it was time for these boys to find out. Perhaps the theory was a “curiosity killed the cat” notion. We were told to drink until we couldn’t drink any more. We did that. I got very drunk and very ill, threw up all over the place, and almost immediately decided I absolutely hated those feelings, those effects, and the taste. I seemed to develop an immediate aversion to alcohol. My cousin got very sick as well, yet did not feel my aversion, and instead said he “liked it.” It was years later before I drank alcohol for the second time. My cousin died of cirrhosis of the liver at 32 years old. He was a full blown “alkie” and drug addict by his early 20’s, and was in and out of hospitals, and jails. He died drunk, in agonizing pain. At about twelve years old I smoked marijuana for the first time, and liked “that stuff” very much. By the time I was 17 years old, I was using amphetamines and marijuana daily, and managing my schedule with both those substances. I more or less walked away from all drugs at eighteen when I joined the military. In a real sense the United States military service saved my life. In my early 20s that aversion was given a major boost with a “transformative religious experience” while driving along a Houston, Texas freeway that marked my entrance into Christian belief. It was a type of “Damascus Road” experience not all that unlike what Bill Wilson describes as his “white light” experience. I was filled with a profound peace, and love, and surrender to this love, this Being, who I felt loved me intensely. These intense sensations came like waves in my mind. That “experience,” or rather a cluster of experiences, went on for some days, was life changing, and in many ways was life-saving. It altered something inside me, and I became fascinated and devoted
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the next couple of years to hermit-like study of the Bible and the history of Christianity. I became obsessed with the “Will of God.” I did not know any others like me at the time. Eventually I stepped out from my isolated, solo study of the Bible and started attending a little Southern Baptist church and found “Christian Fellowship” and “Discipleship,” and those things were to become very meaningful to me over the next twenty years. For a couple of decades my life became one of growing, disciplined prayer, intense and systematic Bible study, Scripture Memory, “Life Style” Evangelism, Discipleship, Disciple-making, and Christian Apologetics. I started out with a quite literal interpretation of the Bible, and gradually moved away from Bible literalism toward recognition of the fact there were very real contradictions in the Bible, and outright historical falsehoods as well. My progression into alcoholism began very slowly, and very moderately. It started with a bit of Bailey’s Irish Crème in a hot cup of coffee one Christmas Eve among my Christian mentor and friends. Nobody got drunk. Drunkenness was a sin, you see, but imbibing was not. After all, hadn’t even the Apostle Paul recommended a little wine for a bad stomach? If one could say one thing, generally speaking, about the people I was close to then, it would be they were characterized by disciplined moderation in all things. I had become disciplined, and moderate. I was responsible. Self-control, and “Knowing God” were at the bottom of all those things we were doing in the Christian life. Within a couple of years, I was drinking a couple of cans of beer every day after work. I maintained that sort of intake for some years. Everything seemed disciplined, ordered, and absolutely controlled. But early on I noticed I had come to a place where alcohol agreed with me, and I liked the softening effects of alcohol on my mind. It slowed my mind down just enough. I felt more comfortable in my own skin with a little booze in me. Alcohol had become an innocent pleasure. And it was that pleasurable state of mind and body, seeking and enjoying that mental and physical “sweet spot,” that eventually paved the way for my progression into full-blown alcoholism. By about the ten year point I would have the occasional passing thought that sometimes I seemed to drink more, and faster, than those around me. By then I was well into my professional career, and many of my peers drank heavily, and often. The first time I went to a “happy hour” on a temporary work assignment, I got insanely drunk. Drunk enough for others to mention it later. Drunk enough to have some regrets about my behavior. Drunk enough to have a doubt placed in my mind about me and booze. Yet, the pleasurable state of mind and body was more convincing, certainly more alluring, and I found booze helped me in many other ways.
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By about the twenty year point I sort of knew, and started admitting to myself that I probably had a problem with alcohol, and it was about then that I starting making a conscious effort in moderating, controlling, and disciplining how much I drank, and how often I drank. By then I had been drinking daily for twenty years. At first I had some success in moderation, frequency, and control, but I also noted there were times, many times, when my drinking seemed take-on a life of its own and left my desires, and choices out of the picture. During this time I quit for good a few times, and one time for almost three months. But I starting drinking again, and instead of the problem getting any better it just became progressively worse. Toward the end of that five year stretch of attempting to control or solve, or quit and stay quit, I was in utter defeat. So, twenty-five years into my “relationship-with-boozed-turnedaddiction,” I was still five years away from reaching out to sober drunks in AA as a last resort. I had retreated into drinking in total isolation from my fellow human beings. I was nearing, or at the threshold, of that state of “incomprehensible demoralization” Bill Wilson described in the Big Book. The last couple of years of my active alcoholism I drank as soon as my eyes were open, before coffee, and I drank all day and into the night, or until I blacked out, or passed out. I would wake up and start all over again. I had thrown in the towel, and was convinced that booze had won, I couldn’t beat it, and that I would wind up like my cousin. It was all just a matter of time. Nature would take its course. I did not care if I lived or died. I was done trying. I was fifty-four years old, had become an alcoholic, and that appeared to be the end of my story. One night in this state of mind, I decided that I wanted to live after all. I had three grown children from a failed twenty-year marriage, and I had three grandchildren. I decided that I would have to take a completely different set of actions in one last attempt to fix the problem, if that were possible. I knew one thing for sure, and that was for some reason I could not fix this deal by myself, alone. One of those actions was to reach out to others for help. AA was the place where drunks got
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sober, and drunk as a skunk about 10:30 one night I looked up AA in the phone book, dialed a number, spoke with a nice person on the other end, and was informed of the meeting schedule. I attended my first “AA” meeting the next day. I didn’t know much about AA, but at one point during my Christian days I had examined the 12Steps from a Protestant, Reformed theological perspective. I perceived AA’s 12 Steps to be intrinsically religious, based from within, and also based upon the presuppositions of Theistic Supernaturalism. But I was also under the general and largely false impression that AA was about drunks getting sober. That impression was smashed at the first meeting I attended. Very quickly, based on what I was hearing at that first meeting, the problem was not booze, but a lack of religious belief, a lack of an acknowledgment of “miracles,” and the lack of “belief” in a Supernatural Intervention. I live in Texas and to hear folks yammer about such things is part of the air we breathe. However, what I was not prepared for was the level of cultish certainty and dogmatism that I heard during that first meeting. I had never seen that kind of dogmatism and vehemence even among Christian fundamentalists I had known. No, this was something very different. I simply listened, and observed. I read the things on the walls. I could see there were individuals in the room who appeared to have been very “low bottom” drunks. There seemed to be people who escaped living in a dumpster. There were even some who were quite young. There were a couple of very vocal, apparently dominant, apparently very knowledgeable “AA experts” that I listened to and observed those first few meetings. These guys were very “spiritual.” On my third or fourth meeting I asked the main guy, “How does an atheist go about working the Steps?” I was not prepared for the response. The man flew into an instantaneous, near violent, rage, got in my face and screamed, “You better get God, motherfucker, or you are going to die!” The man’s friend jumped right in and started screaming at me as well. I backed up a couple of steps, held my hands up, and said, “Whoa there, fellas! Thanks for the help.” That was all the response I could muster. I was shocked, to put it mildly. Wow. Never before had I seen that kind of vehemence toward a nonbeliever. Not face to face. Not in a place “devoted to helping people.” Not even among ardent Christian fundamentalists. Little did I know that would be the start of a two and a half year long, daily campaign to drive the atheist either to conversion, to quiet subservience, or to leaving AA. My sincere and honest question had stirred a hornets’ nest.
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It was a couple of days after the expert and his friend’s initial verbal violence that the man’s friend saw me again, screamed at me for being an atheist, and stabbed his fingers hard into my chest. Little did I realize this would only be the first of three physical assaults (performed by believers) that would become part of my story as an atheist in AA. It was fairly minor as physical assaults go, but it was one nonetheless. I basically sloughed it off. Another member saw what had happened and approached me. She said, “Hey, don’t pay attention to those guys, they don’t own this place. Take what you can use and leave the rest; that’s what most of us have to do.” Those few words of encouragement and compassion struck a chord in me. A couple of days later I saw the expert guy again and told him I wasn’t trying to offend him but was being honest about me. He moderated his tone some, yet was still basically hostile, and suggested I try to do ninety meetings in ninety days, and just to not drink no matter what. I told him I was committed to staying sober, and that I would set a goal to make ninety meetings in ninety days. As it turned out I attended far more meetings than “90 in 90.” As of this writing I have six years, eight months, and seven days sober, and have been completely relieved of the “seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.” The first few years of my sobriety I was fortunate enough to attend many different AA meetings in seven states. What I found in most of those were echoes of theistic religious bigotry so prominent in the first group I attended. What I also found in all of these meetings, however, were sober drunks, and people still learning to live sober. We have that one thing in common, apart from being human beings. I focus on what we do have in common: realizing that what others think about “atheists, and other types of nontheists,” or say about me, or what actions they perform are outside of my control and power. The only thing I have power and control over are my reactions (if any) to what occurs external to me. There really are babies in the nasty bathwater. I still take what I can use and leave the rest.
About the Author, Mark C. Mark C. has had a lifelong, and growing fascination with what humans think and believe, and why they believe the things they do. That basic impulse included a B.A. in History, and decades of incessant reading nonfiction, intellectual history, philosophy, religion and literature. His professional career has been spent in insurance claims and investigations. He has three grown children, and nine grandchildren, two of whom are Monoamniotic-Monochorionic ("MoMo") twins.
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