The Homework that Set Me Free

I’m grateful for a gloriously gloomy morning. I’m grateful for Mozart on the turntable. I’m grateful for chances to resolve things. I’m grateful for very sweet olive branches. I’m grateful for hanging on to what matters. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

Again, this is a song that I have listened to about 1,000,000 times. I’m not quite sure I can explain my attraction to this song either. I have been asked, pretty directly, why I listen to this song so much.¹ It’s a super catchy song and, even though I know no one is going to listen, there is a keyboard solo about (well, exactly) 5:24 into the song. I’m mortifyingly sure that when that part plays in my airpods while I’m on one of my “a tired dog is a good dog” walks, I at least move my head and probably make a somewhat ridiculous facial expression. That’s why I like it, I guess.

You frequently hear me speak about the Anyone Anywhere Meeting that we run on Tuesday nights.

We began as a Big Book-meeting, but then we made it all the way through the Big Book. For sure, we’ll launch another pass, but as we discussed it, there was a desire to keep focused on the reading, but to expand beyond the basic 164.² We’ll eventually do the “12 and 12” and “Living Sober,” too. Then it kind of occurred to me that while this is a real AA meeting, with an actual alcoholic reading the AA preamble and everything, it kind of turns into more of an alcoholic (and addict!) book club. We read the book together and then discuss it. We don’t really do formal shares or have speakers, we just read and talk together.

When we do the Tour de AA, one of the things that strikes me as an under-discussed but terribly important part of AA: The diversity of meetings and approaches. The Program often gets the rap that it is too strict and doctrinaire, that it is a rigid cult. Nothing could be further from the truth. Right off the bat, you are told to go conceive of your own higher power. Something that makes sense to you, and importantly, something that can help you get sober, to restore sanity to life. It’s finding your own path back, there’s nothing rote about it.³

Anyway, these days, we are picking our way through the back of the book and it has been really great. I’m going to admit, I haven’t read all of the stories and even the ones I have read aren’t marked up the same way the rest of my Big Book is.

For people who can’t identify with Bill’s story, or who find the language of the 1930’s to be too stilted or too male or all of the things that are kind of true about it, there are the stories in the back of the book. We read Marty Mann’s great story, “Women Suffer Too," and I think we all thought “The Keys to the Kingdom,” was great. We rotate the honor of selecting next week’s story, and I ‘d be willing to put together a wheel of fortune kind of thing for random story selection (it would be digital). Thing number one, you should join us, it’s fun and I think we all agree it’s feels a little fresher, to be honest. You don’t need an invitation or a membership card, you can even just watch and listen in complete anonymity (I’m really ok with that).

This takes me to the second thing, and that is the power of the story in recovery and sobriety. The fundamental symptom of alcoholism and addiction is self-dishonesty. When one is in active addiction, self-honesty is simply not possible. That is not a “choice,” that is a consequence of the way alcoholic brains malfunction and are hijacked in some cases by substances that change the mix of electro-chemical signals sloshing around in there. I never knew how it worked, I just kept adding the Sauvignon Blanc to the tank to keep the thing running.

I couldn’t maintain more than a few months of sobriety until I finally saw my own story accurately. During the period of time when I was still drinking, my story was about grievance and disrespect and under-appreciation and other resentment-generating insecurities. My inability to see things as they are (another symptom, not a choice), was only fixed when I accurately saw my own story for what it was.

For me, it was finally seeing the narrative structure of Bill’s story that let me identify with it. I didn’t trade stocks in the 1920’s or have a motorcycle with a side-car (man, I wish I did) or live Bill’s life. But I saw his struggle with drinking as exactly like my struggle with drinking. Driven by the same attitudes and feelings that I had—just 50 years apart. But not everyone will get that feeling reading Bill’s story, and that’s why there are like 90 others in the back of the book. My guess is that if you look hard enough, you’ll find someone who drank for the same reasons, in the same way, and with the same results. That’s the end of the treasure hunt—match with the correct alcoholic and then just do what they did to get sober.⁴

I wrote about this the other day, but the most important piece of homework I did, hands down, bar none, better than anything suggested at any rehab or by any therapist or coach, was when my Sponsor told me to write my story like Bill wrote his. It was hard and challenging to strip my story down to the essentials like Bill did, and still convey the thinking patterns and struggles that come along with the diseases of addiction and alcoholism. It’s what finally let me see the problem was my way of approaching the world, not the other way around. The even better news:

That was something I could actually fix.

So here it is. We are going to officially encourage you, the lovely readers of this newsletter, to write your story in the style of Bill’s story (or if you want to choose one from the back of the Book as your exemplar, that’s cool, too). We’ll publish them, if you’d like, and we can do it completely anonymously, if you’d like. There is an incredible power in writing your story and then sharing it. It’s a very different experience than telling one’s story to friends or at a meeting. I highly, highly, highly recommend this.

I’m excited to announce that we even have a guest writer to help us get this rolling. Matt Andersen writes The Spittoon here on Substack (you should be reading this, if you aren’t).

You can look forward to Matt’s Story very soon and I’ll be doing mine, too.

Miss Sober Jane

are you in? Dear readers, we’d love, love, love to have you share yours.

Did I mention that it’s what set me free? Happy Friday.

1. This was back before I knew that Spotify playlists are kind of public.

2. Maybe that’s a new phrase.

3. Except for the sayings and the quotes and the Serenity Prayer and some other things.

4. Wait, this is starting to sound like a game show.