I’m grateful for a gorgeous morning and the deep pastel sky. I’m grateful for the way honesty creates freedom. I’m grateful for looking forward. I’m grateful for Law & Order in the middle of the night and the very necessary coffee on the desk. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Last night’s edition of the Anyone Anywhere Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was really great, as always. I am falling in love with the format and I’m not sure of another meeting that does this; We pick a story from the back of the book every week, read it together and then discuss. It’s like having a really great speaker qualify at the meeting every week and I find myself saying the same, exact thing every week:
Wow, this was a really great story.
Actually, I say exactly that. Every week. That’s me. But the thing is, it has the benefit of also being true, as I like to say. What’s interesting is the variety and how fresh so many of the stories are. The language and the ideas are very modern and it’s really surprising to see how long ago some of these stories were written. Last night, we read, “He Lived Only to Drink,” and then found the obituary for the author, Phil Parker, in the New York Times.
Here’s the thing that has me excited, aside from the deepening and widening of the spiritual experience thing, the possibility of a game-show type wheel to select the story we’ll be reading. I’m going to first say, this was not even my idea. Someone else at the meeting suggested it, but I will be definitely be running with this.
Spin the wheel and pick a story, any story
Someone, somewhere may be thinking that I’m cheapening AA or making too much light of something that has a pretty serious dimension. Hopefully, my love and devotion for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has been amply demonstrated in lo these many essays (you don’t want to know how many). The idea of combining my love for AA and my love of game shows, well, I think this pretty much sums that up for me:
We are a small but enthusiastic meeting. I’ve said this before, it feels kind of like an Alcoholic Book Club, but where it’s cool to have not read the story before the meeting, and also, there’s no wine. Interested? You don’t even have to be an alcoholic to attend! Also, I often use the word “alcoholic” as an umbrella term for all alcoholics and addicts. I don’t mean to short-change my addict friends, it’s just that always writing “alcoholics and addicts,” well, it doesn’t always trip off the tongue, does it? A long way of saying, we have both alcoholics and addicts at this meeting. Anyway, we convene on Tuesdays at 7pm on Zoom and you are most heartily invited!1
Call for Volunteers and Submissions
If you’re raising an eyebrow at that heading, then you have completely the wrong idea. As you know, we produce an internationally-recognized2 podcast called Breakfast with an Alcoholic, if you’ve never listened to one of these, well, here’s a recent episode:
In this one, we talk a lot about the First Step. Both Daniel and Sean are in their second years of sobriety and have significant relapses in their history, so hearing how they finally got over the Step One hump is really interesting. But again, the game show thing rears its ugly head (or maybe it wasn’t Gene Rayburn): This episode features the very first head-to-head Alcoholic Lightning Round, meaning there is a winner and a loser. I feel like this adds a much needed competitive angle to the podcast, and hopefully, to recovery more generally.
For upcoming episodes of Breakfast with an Alcoholic, I would be very interested in finding people who:
Would like to appear as contestants in future Alcoholic Lightning Rounds
Would like to participate in our Three Recovery Discoveries thing
Would like to write something about Step One (there were some writing prompts last week) and would like to share it
Would like to write their story like Bill’s story
Would like to share a playlist or thoughts on a particular song for an upcoming episode on music and recovery.
If you have any interest in any of these things, you can email me at TFLMS Suggestion Box.3
Field Sobriety Guide No. 01 Am I Lost?
You may not know this, but Field Sobriety Guide No. 01 is currently among the top one million books on Amazon. This is designed for anyone who is wondering if they might need help, or someone who knows the answer to that question, and is trying to figure out how to take the next step. It’s an introduction to some of the concepts of recovery, has prompts for some writing and some thinking and has a bunch of background information on what AA is, how it works and how to find a meeting (if you’re interested).
Since you’re a subscriber, you can download the pdf for free:
You should feel very free to share this with your friends, and on that topic, you can earn paid subscriber status, just by tricking persuading your friends to subscribe to our little newsletter:
Again, this has a game show aspect to it, there is actually a “Leader Board” for this, a Substack feature, not my idea.4 How it works: If your friends subscribe, you get paid (subscriber status). It is that simple. To paraphrase the late Biggie Smalls:5
I don’t know if the other subscribers are broke, but you would be “so paid.”
And, last, I am very willing to entertain suggestions, nominations, whatever, for the TFLMS song of the week. Don’t sleep on this, Friday is here before you know it.
I’m going to try and make the wheel thing happen this week.
Not joking, we have listeners in like 34 countries. I think that’s really cool.
Hopefully, that’s: thanksflms@gmail.com.
Of course, I wish it was my idea.
Cool about Tupac. #justiceforbiggie