I’m grateful to see how stepping away from outcomes is the right answer. I’m grateful when I see that true power comes only from expressing myself genuinely. I’m grateful for the swirling that gets me answers eventually. I’m grateful for what I learn every day. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I’ve written quite a bit about AI and ChatGPT, and, having seen the Terminator movies have a very clear sense about what’s in store.
I understand that AI is probably the end of humanity, but I think it’s currently still at the, '“oh, look at the cute puppy” phase of the whole unfortunate Cujo-style story that seems to be unfolding.1 I think the AI tools that are available these days actually enhance creativity, they are great at generating different perspectives, different ways of looking at things, ways that things can be reframed.
I think that last one is a really key concept for sobriety, the idea of “reframing” things. Reframing is the au courant way of referring to the olden days, “doughnut or the hole” question. While there are many AA meetings where actual doughnuts are served, I would say the prevailing philosophical bent of most alcoholics is of the “hole” variety. Of course, this leads directly to that AA-phrase about drinking be an effort to fill that “God-sized hole.”2
But this is not about doughnuts.3 This is about what happened when I finally realized I could see things differently. I’ll start with gratitude. I was speaking at a meeting recently and talking about how the gratitude list has a really sneaky power. It started out for me as a daily reminder to find a few things that seemed right or okay with my world that morning. That helped me start seeing that there might be a force out there at work, somehow generating these very okay situations.4
But expressing gratitude on a daily basis didn’t just start changing my mood in the morning, it started changing the way I looked at everything around me. I’m not grateful for the occasional insects I have to dispatch, I’m not grateful for the nights I don’t really sleep, I’m not grateful for how loud the ads are on YouTube. Gratitude started changing the way I looked at the hard things in life. Am I grateful when I have to say goodbye to people who really mattered to me? No. Am I grateful when things don’t work out the way I had hoped, no matter how much hard work or effort I put in? No.
But now I let those things bounce around in my head for a little bit, and most importantly, I stop looking at things from the perspective of “what do I want” perspective and replace that with, “what was I supposed to learn from that?” Boom. The things I really didn’t want to happen, the things that I feared the most, the things that really hurt, turned into talismans (hopefully of the glow-in-the-dark variety) showing me the path I was meant to take.
I think AI has some really fascinating applications in recovery. The Sponsees and I have discussed using it to come up with adjectives to describe ourselves as part of the 4th Step process, to re-write some of the stories we tell ourselves. It’s a really fascinating and remorseless editor and will even tell you hurtful, but true things about your writing, if you ask it. I asked ChatGPT to come up with some funny “5 Things” about alcoholism and here was the output:
Five Classic Excuses for Not Getting Sober (And Why They're All Terrible)
"I can quit anytime I want to."
"I'm not really an addict, I just like to party."
"I'm too old/young to get sober."
"My life is too stressful right now."
"I'll quit after this one last time."
Five Benefits of Addiction You Didn't Know You Were Missing Out On
Increased tolerance for unpleasant situations
Expertise in navigating the legal system
A unique perspective on life
A knack for keeping secrets
Lots of wild stories to tell
Those are pretty funny and pretty accurate. I told myself that I drank because it was necessary and some other associated lies. When I look at the ChatGPT attempt at humor, I can see pretty clearly how the thing that was at the bottom of my drinking was self-dishonesty. I think self-dishonesty is less a character defect and more an alcoholic brain malfunction.
When I wrote the other day about “Flipping Bits,” what I was trying to say is that my brain produces weird results and is capable of completely misperceiving situations. Look at the first list, those are the actual reasons I and many other alcoholics have given for not being able to stop drinking. When I was drinking, after about the 3rd or 4th glass, I’d look around the bar, take in the magnificence of my surroundings, and my brain would see this person who lived on a barstool, whose closest personal connections were bartenders, who had driven away the people he loved, and think,
“this is pretty good.”
Doing the daily gratitude list is what lets me see what actually is pretty good. Gratitude doesn’t put rose-colored glasses on me, it helps me see what actually is. Hard or easy, happy or sad, it turns out there are always reasons to be grateful. There’s always something I was meant to see or learn. Or sometimes, it was for someone else to see or learn something that they needed. That’s all above my pay grade.
At the software level, the “Gratitude SDK” seems to be slowly pervading all of the synapses so they no longer overlay the instinctual fear of personal loss onto every single situation in my life. When the update is finished, the machine that sits atop my shoulders will be better equipped to see the beauty and purpose of the moments that “are” in my life and less inclined to keep producing the same mistakes, buttressed by years of faulty repetition and teaching.
Machine learning is at the core of Artificial Intelligence. The thing that’s keeping me sober is that my machine is learning, too. Also, if you have a chance to blow-up the headquarters of CyberDyne Systems, make sure you get the job done.
Of course, I’m a dog-lover, but they can have a dark side, too. Also, I’m very much against talking dogs, that actually does have the potential to end humanity.
My Higher Power clearly loves doughnuts.
Have I mentioned that I was doughnut professional? Yes, perhaps you saw me at the DonutLand in Iowa City in 1980?
It turns out that “okay” is actually really, really good.
"When the update is finished, the machine that sits atop my shoulders will be better equipped to see the beauty and purpose of the moments that “are” in my life and less inclined to keep producing the same mistakes, buttressed by years of faulty repetition and teaching." So, so good.