Rapacious Seaweed

Rapacious:  Given to taking by force or plundering; excessively greedy; subsisting off live prey.

"Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands.  . . .  Then, and only then do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be.  We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us."  12 & 12

First of all, Bill W, who wrote most of this book, is such a ham-bone.   What a flair for the floridly dramatic that guy had when he was writing this stuff down.  Thank god we also had humble Dr Bob to offset his rapacious attention-seeking.  Truthfully, they made a good team - without Bill's relentless salesmanship the word would have struggled to travel far and wide, and without Bob's quiet reflection Bill would have pissed everyone off.

"Alcohol - the source of and solution to all of my problems."  Homer S

And let's not pretend that alcohol was our friend.  Alcohol was trying to kill us.  Alcohol was trying to eat us.  Alive.  That is no friend.  Maybe a friend will kill you and then eat you, but eat you alive.  I guess that's why florid Bill adds the expression ". . . as willing to listen as the dying can be."

I did not enter The Program to quit drinking.  I liked to drink.  I came around because I was tired of feeling like shit and I hoped to be shown some kind of loophole that would allow me to drink while escaping the consequences that were becoming increasingly dire.  It was the consequences that sucked, not the drinking.  Or the drug use.  I maintain to this day that if I could have the quality of life that I have now and drink alcohol and smoke drugs that I'd be typing this while driving to the liquor store.

Loophole:  A method of escape, especially an ambiguity or exception in a rule that can be exploited to avoid its effect.

Yes!  I wanted to exploit an ambiguity to escape the effect of the alcoholic bludgeoning.  

I always laugh when I hear the phrase "half-measures."  As in: "Half-Measures Seaweed."  I came into The Program and I did a bare minimum of work until I drank.  Then I did a teeny, tiny bit more work, and drank again.  I kept adding little, minuscule bits of work onto my scrawny agenda, but never adding enough, always drinking, eventually drinking again.  Finally, I came in and said: "Whatever I gotta do."  I just did everything I was told - I bitched privately but I did what I was told to do.  I was finished.  I was cooked.