sobriety, no goals to set. If you’re ready to go, you go. And once you go, there are people you can call, people you do call when the going gets tough. There are the twelve steps—suggested points on the map of recovery. But you only need to meet the first step to be a part of AA: admitting you are powerless over alcohol and that your life has become unmanageable.
There are many … questionable aspects of AA too. There can be prayers. There is lots of God. Officially there’s no religion and no leader, but there’s “one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself.” And He does tend to be shoved down your throat.
This He is referred to as a “he.” That can be a problem for some. Some may also find this god a little too Christian. After all, Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve steps have their roots in the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship that believed in confession being a prerequisite to change, the idea that a sinner could completely redeem herself.
AA is an institution set up and organized by people, so yes, it is imperfect. For that reason it is also full of people you have to put up with. People who have taken AA too far, people who decided that they have a monopoly on salvation. People who advise you on your health, your relationships, your diet. People without medical degrees who will eagerly tell you to get off your medication and pray instead. Who will suggest you read absurd self-help books, do yoga, go to sweat lodges. All of those things can help you live better, of course, but none of them have anything to do with AA. However, sometimes AA can feel like the emporium of all recovery for everything.
It is not.
But it is an emporium of sorts. AA refuses to call itself an organization, but it does have a type of constitution called “The Twelve Traditions.” I am breaking one of its traditions right now: I’m telling you about AA.
Luckily, the most beautiful thing about AA is that even though I am breaking this tradition, I know that I can always, no matter what, go back to “the rooms”—what members call meetings—and that my fellow alcoholics will take me back with open arms and help me get sober.
Where this harm reduction group is just an evening class on addiction, AA is a full-time university program from which you never graduate.
Still, right now in this room, Rob seems like the smuggest of them all. Right now, Rob is symbolizing to me why I would never return to AA.
Back in the Mickey Mouse club, after the introductions we talk about our drinking habits and the strategies we can use to drink less or not drink at all. We look at a chart where a cartoon man is climbing a mountain, falling down, climbing back up, falling down. This is supposed to illustrate how one gets sober. The path isn’t easy: you stumble many times before you get to the top.
Stumbling or slipping is part of recovery!!!
, the cutline under the cartoon announces.
Which tells me that I could have a drink tomorrow. It’s part of recovery.
In my pamphlet I change my goal from abstinence to max four drinks per week. Then I go over it with my pen to change the
4
to a somewhat square-looking 8. Better. Better-looking, too.
Later, we do an exercise where we write down Trigger Situations and Solutions for how to deal with them.
My triggers: morning, evening, happy, sad, nothing, something.
You know, Lisa the liar blurts out, when I feel my cravings coming on I can just reach for a book. Not that I have cravings anymore but when I had them, I’d just read a short story by Alice Munro or something like that and poof, the craving is gone. But now with the baby I don’t have as much time but I may still, you know, read a couple of lines here and there if I’m feeling a little anxious or something.
There isn’t a writer in this world amazing enough to kill my cravings.
Another of the Robs tells us that he’s about to become a father. His wife sent him here, he says, because she doesn’t want a
There are many … questionable aspects of AA too. There can be prayers. There is lots of God. Officially there’s no religion and no leader, but there’s “one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself.” And He does tend to be shoved down your throat.
This He is referred to as a “he.” That can be a problem for some. Some may also find this god a little too Christian. After all, Alcoholics Anonymous’s twelve steps have their roots in the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship that believed in confession being a prerequisite to change, the idea that a sinner could completely redeem herself.
AA is an institution set up and organized by people, so yes, it is imperfect. For that reason it is also full of people you have to put up with. People who have taken AA too far, people who decided that they have a monopoly on salvation. People who advise you on your health, your relationships, your diet. People without medical degrees who will eagerly tell you to get off your medication and pray instead. Who will suggest you read absurd self-help books, do yoga, go to sweat lodges. All of those things can help you live better, of course, but none of them have anything to do with AA. However, sometimes AA can feel like the emporium of all recovery for everything.
It is not.
But it is an emporium of sorts. AA refuses to call itself an organization, but it does have a type of constitution called “The Twelve Traditions.” I am breaking one of its traditions right now: I’m telling you about AA.
Luckily, the most beautiful thing about AA is that even though I am breaking this tradition, I know that I can always, no matter what, go back to “the rooms”—what members call meetings—and that my fellow alcoholics will take me back with open arms and help me get sober.
Where this harm reduction group is just an evening class on addiction, AA is a full-time university program from which you never graduate.
Still, right now in this room, Rob seems like the smuggest of them all. Right now, Rob is symbolizing to me why I would never return to AA.
Back in the Mickey Mouse club, after the introductions we talk about our drinking habits and the strategies we can use to drink less or not drink at all. We look at a chart where a cartoon man is climbing a mountain, falling down, climbing back up, falling down. This is supposed to illustrate how one gets sober. The path isn’t easy: you stumble many times before you get to the top.
Stumbling or slipping is part of recovery!!!
, the cutline under the cartoon announces.
Which tells me that I could have a drink tomorrow. It’s part of recovery.
In my pamphlet I change my goal from abstinence to max four drinks per week. Then I go over it with my pen to change the
4
to a somewhat square-looking 8. Better. Better-looking, too.
Later, we do an exercise where we write down Trigger Situations and Solutions for how to deal with them.
My triggers: morning, evening, happy, sad, nothing, something.
You know, Lisa the liar blurts out, when I feel my cravings coming on I can just reach for a book. Not that I have cravings anymore but when I had them, I’d just read a short story by Alice Munro or something like that and poof, the craving is gone. But now with the baby I don’t have as much time but I may still, you know, read a couple of lines here and there if I’m feeling a little anxious or something.
There isn’t a writer in this world amazing enough to kill my cravings.
Another of the Robs tells us that he’s about to become a father. His wife sent him here, he says, because she doesn’t want a
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