I’m grateful for a fabulously gloomy morning. I’m grateful for seeing what really was. I’m grateful yet again for a swanky umbrella. I’m grateful for the way it looks when it’s just my desk light on in the dark. I’m grateful when I see I’m a part of things. I’m grateful to be sober today.
My personal view is that New York is at its best on dark, gloomy, gotham-y days like this. I love the way the tops of buildings disappear into the fog, particularly that stretch of buildings on 6th Avenue, including the News Corp. building. Now that I’m thinking about it, it may be that I think most places look better in the fog and mist. This could explain the whole umbrella thing, too.1
When I started posting my Daily Gratitude Lists on Twitter two years ago, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I kind of assumed that I’d find a community of alcoholics and I did, but as all of this expanded, what became interesting was the number of people who weren’t alcoholics who started following the daily list. I think it’s really interesting and instructive to explain the Program and the Big Book to civilians.2
They are surprised when I describe the basic tenets of the Big Book: Humility, self-honesty, service, a willingness to believe in a power greater than oneself. Their surprise? They think that AA is a rigid, it’s-this-way-or-the-highway thing, with grizzled alcoholics muttering “Keep Coming Back,” from their folding chairs. They think that AA is a semi-mysterious, somewhat strange and cult-like black box—into which alcoholics disappear for an hour at a time with varying degrees of success.
I’ve talked to a number of non-alcoholics who’ve been to a meeting (typically an “Open” Zoom meeting)3 and they are often amazed at what takes place. They’re struck by the openness and honesty, the hope and positivity and sometimes the very candid fear. Even though you’re in a room with a bunch of alcoholics and addicts who are talking about not drinking or using, you come away with the strong sense that it’s about way more than just not drinking or using for another day.
The more revelatory thing is reading the Big Book. This is especially true for the alcoholic who has been getting sober and going to meetings, but hasn’t yet cracked open that big, thick, blue book. Meetings are an opportunity to hear the stories of other alcoholics, to experience the healing power of that very loving community, to find a way to help someone who has maybe walked into that room for the first time. Those are critically important functions and so much of the beauty of AA is found among those folding chairs. But the chance to re-write your life; the opportunity for redemption and freedom is found in the book. As I always point out, Bill W. likes to get straight to the point about why he is writing and how this works. The first two sentences of the Foreword to the First Edition of the Big Book are pretty clear:
We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics PRECISELY HOW WE HAVE RECOVERED is the main purpose of this book. (caps supplied).
The book is not a series of discussion prompts for meetings, nor is it a collection of snappy, zappy sayings designed to inflict humility on newcomers and day counters. As I wrote not too long ago, while watching this fabulous Julia Child series, the Big Book might be seen as a kind of cookbook and the steps and the instructions are recipes. Everyone is going to make their own version of the recipe and I think experimentation is cool. Bill W certainly didn’t espouse a culture of rigidity, he recognized that while we all had the same disease, it affected us and our families and loved ones in unique ways. It makes sense that recovery is individual; you’re recovering an individual who got lost along the way.
And as for the notion that AA is a too-religious, kind-of-patriarchal cult? I mean they let you make up your own conception of a higher power. This is like the too permissive, self-paced, open-classrooms of the 1970s where I didn’t learn the fundamentals of math or grammar, but it’s cool, just make up your own. Seriously, how cult-like is that really? Believe in what you want to believe, you just have to believe in something other than yourself. I don’t really have much experience in cult-building or cult-operation, but that doesn’t seem very cult-y to me. They don’t even insist that you drink the coffee.
You can go to all of the meetings you want, it is reading the Big Book and working the Steps that finally allows you to see yourself clearly and honestly; it’s what lets you see what can change and how that can actually happen. It’s reading the Big Book that lets you see how open and non-judgmental and welcoming AA really is. I know the language of the Big Book can be off-putting; it was written by a white guy in the 1930’s who was very much a man of his times. But, it established an extraordinarily open and diverse society, open to all who shared a desire to stop drinking.
Why do I say this over and over? Well, it took me hearing it over and over for a long time until I was willing to let it work in my life. I went to thousands of meetings, multiple rehabs and IOPs, tried every flavor of therapy and I learned a lot. It was studying the Big Book that showed me how I could change my life; exactly what Steps I needed to take. It was in studying the Big Book that I discovered the path to redemption; and more importantly, found it was a recipe I could make at home. I could make it every single day if I wanted to, and I do.
I haunt the used bookstores here and find alcoholic-related treasures pretty regularly. A recent prized acquisition is this gem:
Who was Marty Mann? She was the first woman member of AA, Bill W’s Sponsee and a patriarchy-loving, out-lesbian living in New York in the 1940's.4 The Big Book may have been written by a bunch of privileged white guys in the 1930's, but the recipe works for roughly anyone, and Marty Mann is proof of that. She's also not given nearly enough credit for her role in publicly promoting and helping to establish AA. And you anonymity-hawks, please note that Bill W's own Sponsee used her entire name in the press and media. The way I read the Traditions, this is more about saving alcoholics than keeping secrets.
My grandfather might have described Bill W. as a “different breed of cat.”5 Bill W. was a Ouija-Board loving, LSD-experimenting, pretty flawed human being who recovered from a previously hopeless disease in the 1930’s, implementing ideas he devised mostly while drunk. But magically, he conjured up a framework for living that can and does work for just about any variety of human being. My view is that the more people who know about all of this, the better—and that especially applies to non-alcoholic civilians. I love Alcoholics Anonymous, but I’m not sure that the name requires us to keep all of this on the down low the way we often do. What was the song we used to sing in Sunday School?
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
I think that’s more the idea.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
I agree that maybe it’s a bit much.
First question I always like to ask, “Who knows why it’s called the “Big Book?” I’ve given this answer before…
It is super easy to find meetings. You can just go here: Find a Meeting
She hung out with Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in Paris.
I don’t know if he made up this saying, but it’s one of my favorites.
Not the Ouija-Board....
I'm not sure it's Conference-approved, but Bill thought the Ouija Board way a way of broadening his spiritual experience. Did you know that I have a Ouija Board?