I’m grateful for a gorgeous orange sky. I’m grateful to spend time with a sponsee. I’m grateful it’s Friday and for the newspaper at my door. I’m grateful for bouncing back. I’m grateful the coffee experiment is ending. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I’m a little concerned with the amount of time I’ve been spending thinking about the Infinite Monkey Theorem lately. You know, the idea that if you had an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters, one of them would eventually write Hamlet or King Lear or whatever. Yes, there would be quite a mess. Anyway, I’ve always dreamed of being in a band—really the only thing that’s been holding me back is the lack of talent. I’m realistic, I understand that this hypothetical band (which by the way is now tentatively called Infinite Monkey Theorem) has limited horizons, the most we could hope for is a wedding gig. The problem with that is my set list. If I had a band, I would 100% want to play this song:
You can have your “Love on Top,” this is a real wedding song. Having paid for a pretty lovely wedding, I know there is no universe in which Infinite Monkey Theorem plays my daughter’s wedding, or any other, for that matter. That’s a glitch in the time/space continuum we should all be glad about. But this is illustrative, we alcoholics do this quite a bit—come up with ideas that aren’t very good and be completely unable to see how bad they are. It’s that self-delusion that is at the core of alcoholism/addiction, I think, because one of the “good ideas” we all had was that we could balance our drinking with the rest of our lives. Or that we could get sober on our own—we just needed the right time and place to start.
Lindsay V. and I had a conversation on the podcast about how we alcoholics so often insist on doing things our own way, even knowing that our great ideas are completely doomed. We both sat in AA meetings and thought this was meant for other people. We knew a better way. Oh wait, you didn’t know there was a new episode of:
Breakfast with an Alcoholic?
Anyway, our better way roughly never works. This is why they wrote a book for us, so we self-willed alcoholics could follow the directions for something that actually works. Something that produces happiness and calm and peace and manageability and sobriety. One of the points of AA meetings, actually THE point, is to showcase this Program and that Book. So as to avoid confusion, they wrote this down:
Each group has but one primary purpose— to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
I postponed my sobriety quite a bit, and did a lot of damage to people who loved me, by relying on my self-directed, always hare-brained efforts to get sober.1 I literally tried everything for ten years to stop drinking while very studiously ignoring the solution that was actually written down in a book. That I owned. That I read. That was discussed at meetings I went to NEARLY.EVERY.DAY
Why didn’t I get sober? Why couldn’t I stop drinking? I hadn’t realized the Big Book had an actual recipe to get sober. Here’s a tip from my kitchen to yours:
reading a cookbook will not produce dinner
That requires some cooking. Likewise, simply reading the Big Book will not produce sobriety. Also in the category of things that will not produce sobriety is sitting around talking about how extensive our history of drug and alcohol use was, or just how crazy we were in the bad old days, or all of the crazy shit we did at alcoholic band camp. A few times a month, we (me and the Sponsees) head out to find new, exciting and unexplored AA meetings around NYC. I have dubbed this the “Tour de’ AA” and we made a stop last night at a meeting on the upper east side that none of us had been to before.
The preamble for this meeting, read from the chair’s phone, suggested this was intended to be more of a conversation about sobriety and that it was. People discussed various aspects of their lives and relationships, other people chimed in and commented on what they had said. It was more a group of guys sitting in the dark talking about being drunk and lonely in sobriety than an AA meeting, at least to my way of thinking. AA is a fellowship and that is a critically important part of the Program, but the Primary Purpose is laid out there pretty plainly, and that’s what I kept thinking about last night, what if this was someone’s very first AA meeting?
What if this was the thing that they had been thinking about doing for a while? What if they had been trying to dragoon the courage to actually walk into a AA meeting for awhile? They maybe know they have a problem or maybe the problem is already pretty out of hand. They wonder if they’re an alcoholic. they wonder what other alcoholics are like. They actually manage to find the intergroup website and the meeting finder and see there’s a meeting not too far away. They actually manage to find the church and walk in alone and get asked out loud by the receptionist if you’re there for the AA meeting (!!!) and directed to the smaller chapel and they still went to the dark room filled with strangers (also a guy sleeping on some chairs who eventually asked to sing opera at the end and when refused permission said, “this is why I drink, I was born with this voice” and then started singing). They sat in the dark and listened to this “running conversation” between 3 or 4 of those present and each “share” was punctuated with a “but I really, really loved drugs.”
I don’t think this is how it is supposed to work. I think the 5th Tradition compels all of us alcoholics and addicts to pause on the super-fascinating explications of our non-sober exploits or the current difficulties we’re having dating, and share about things that someone else could actually grab on to, something that might actually help them get or stay sober. This is different than convincing the newcomer that you were really a badass or really soulful alcoholic. I think the default filter for sharing at meetings ought to be about how we got sober and how we stay sober.
I’ve been to plenty of meetings in really dingy places with alcoholics and addicts, who, contrary to the Big Book, were quite a glum lot. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is fun. Recovery is hard and lonely and terrifying and shame-inducing and fear-magnifying. It feels like you’re coming unmoored from everything you’ve known. You are. The fellowship and the sense of belonging, the acceptance, found at AA meetings are priceless and essential. They keep us going, they make us feel less alone, they help us recover.
But there’s a catch: We have an obligation to make sure what we are saying and doing at meetings isn’t just venting, or trying to get attention or telling our really cool band camp stories or whatever self-aggrandizing thing we think is a good idea to talk about that night (we’re alcoholics after all, we always think we have a better idea). The Big Book and the AA hierarchy make it pretty clear that AA groups have “but one primary purpose.” That one primary purpose is “carrying the message to the alcoholics who still suffer.” That message is written down in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Those newcomers who have such a strong desire to stop drinking that they tamped down the fear enough to make their way to the AA for the first time that particular night, I think they deserve that from us.
I guess we really should be saying “coyote-brained” here.
“reading a cookbook will not produce dinner”
Love that and perfect illustration, thanks!