SUNDAY GRATITUDE EXTRAVAGANZA
| Five Things… [to use that catastrophic thinking for| "Making it My Own" |"Anyone Anywhere" AA Meeting | "The Ten Steps of Marius" | "A Burt Bacharach Christmas Story" | Much, Much More |
I’m grateful for a nearly perfect day. I’m grateful for a trip on the ferry, the farmers market and a movie with subtitles all on a rainy day accompanied by a very swanky umbrella. I’m grateful for a sunny day, a light heart and a bunch of work. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Welcome to the seemingly weekly edition of the Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza! What happens here, stays here. Wait, wait, that’s probably not the right slogan. We do need some kind of cheesy slogan for this and I’ve been hard at work on this task for a while, but even I am embarrassed about the quality of the output. If you have an idea, well, it might be your ticket to seeing your idea beamed into tens of homes. Actually, to be self-aggrandizing a bit, I think this is kind of amazing:
Now, I know the first question is which 6 states? Don’t let that interfere with what should be a pretty single-minded effort to help brand this properly. I know you have ideas…
Now, we all know one of the many superpowers possessed by alcoholics and addicts is the ability to conjure catastrophe out of thin air. Here are some actual catastrophes that you can start worrying about as soon as today, if you’d like:
**The coming Betelgeuse Supernova.
If you’re familiar with the “Mole People” of the Battle for the Planet of the Apes…there was a method to their madness.
**That One Time the Entire World Rusted
You know that song, “Rust Never Sleeps?” Literally true. Also, who doesn’t love a phrase like “toxic oxygen.”
**No One Gets Out of This.
I’m very sorry. For both things.
**The Hapgood Theory and the Polar Shift
Also popularized in the 1976 novel The Hab Theory, let’s just say that shit goes south fast. 1
**If the Comet Doesn’t Kill You…
The Universe appears to be a believer in redundancy. As Butch famously said to the Sundance Kid amid gales of laughter:
Making it My Own
I’ve written a lot of times how the pivotal event in my sobriety journey was finally seeing that the words and lessons of the Big Book were aimed squarely at me.2 I believe very much in the actual words of the Big Book and would definitely count myself as a Big Book thumper, but one of the things that also helped me tremendously was translating the words and concepts of the Big Book into my own language. This is not meant to form my own substitute version of the Big Book or the Twelve Steps. I’ve written the story of The Ten Steps of Marius, someone I knew in rehab who actually did that. For the record, I’m not urging the adoption of his methods.
I do think that the program of recovery laid out in the Big Book and the Twelve Steps is not a rote, march in unison, do exactly what I did, type of exercise. I think of the Steps as prompts, and the work is applying those prompts to my own life, generating insights that will help guide me in my continued effort to live a happy, satisfying life. For example, it helped me to replace the concept of “unmanageability” with the idea of “unsustainability.” We’re all terminal snowflakes, I know, but I always had the sense that even at it’s worst, my life was slightly manageable, what it wasn’t was sustainable. Re-framing that as having the sense that life just couldn’t continue this way, resonated more with me.
Another concept that really helped me was the idea, not necessarily expressed in the Big Book, that recovery is only partly about recovering from this disease. It’s really,
Reframing “recovery” that way turned this from a daily disease abeyance routine into a creative endeavor that is reshaping my entire life. It has also helped me see the events and the history in a way that starts to make sense. Yes, I very much believe this involves a lot of detective work, and while it is about solving a mystery, it’s not so much about prosecuting a crime. I’m trying to find that person who went missing a long time ago. It’s that detective work that is the core of Steps Four through Nine.
It’s possible to cast those steps in a prosecutorial way, identifying the wrongdoer, the actual crimes committed, maybe even culminating in orders of restitution. The alcoholic is chastened, sees the cost of the whole endeavor, understands it can never happen again, and the fear of recidivism is the engine that keeps the bus rolling.
Yeah, I’m not signing up for that either. I’m not trying to evade responsibility or sidestep difficult realizations. Bill W. didn’t live the rest of his life in sackcloth and ashes, fervently hoping to be eventually redeemed. He proclaimed, “we are not a glum lot,” and went out and got busy carrying the message to the still sick and suffering.3 The point of saying “I am an alcoholic,” is not about some leveling of the ego. For that to be true, one has to buy into the idea that the words “alcoholic” and “alcoholism” are badges of shame. Like I always say,
For me, the point of saying, “I’m an alcoholic” is because it’s true. For a wide variety of reasons, some of which are pretty murky, I have all of these thinking patterns that are self-destructive, self-fulfilling, self-generated and self-obsessed—not necessarily in that order. To some extent, that is something all alcoholics and addicts have in common. For me, saying that “I am an alcoholic” identifies me not with the problems generated by the combination of alcohol and my thinking patterns, but with the solution. But that’s how it works for me. How it works for other people is how it works for other people. The Big Book asks us to “share” our experience, strength and hope, our individual story of loss and redemption, not instruct folks to follow this recipe to every 1/2 tsp. The idea is to help other people find their way out, not try to convince them that they have to walk the way I do.
If the point of all this is recovering myself, well, it’s probably going to be a little different than your mission to recover yourself. It’s important to apply the words and concepts of the Big Book rigorously, but it’s more important to apply them so they reverberate most strongly in my own heart. “Making it my own” is not an expression of alcoholic ego, it’s the humble recognition that what worked for Bill W. and a zillion other alcoholics can work for me, too.
“Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous!
Tuesday nights at 7pm
The “Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous takes place on Tuesday evenings at 7pm (edt). It is an “Open” meeting, meaning all are welcome and that definitely includes you! If you’re curious about what happens at AA meetings or have been looking to check new meetings out, it’s all good with us. We’d love to have you join us.
Zoom: 873 5565 4347 secret code: 1234
From the TFLMS Archives:
A Burt Bacharach Christmas Story
See you on Tuesday!
Again, sorry.
Maybe, you, too. We’re definitely not exclusive.
Note: Very, very different than seeking to win the adulation of the recovered.
Recovery happens here; share here.