Driven by a Beating

In one of those wonderful twists of fate a guy asked me to give him a hand working through The Steps at the same time I was working through The Steps to deal with some of my own stuff.   I'm an insufferable ass who loves to tell people what to do irregardless of whether or not I have any facts backing up my instructions so you can imagine how much more insufferable I become when I'm actually currently reading the literature that is helping me justify the stuff I'm making up.

I've had to moderate my technique here a bit in jolly, happy, social Vacation City where "working The Steps" with someone means getting together - in person - and reading through The Steps.  This has required a weird transformation for me, being a child of the sullen, private, solitary Old City environment, where the attitude was more along the lines of "There are two books; the instructions are very clear; do some reading and then get writing and don't call me unless you get stuck."

I have found in my careful reading of our two books that there is a lot of repetition.  Apparently the founders weren't too confident that we were going to pay attention to what we were reading or in our ability to retain any knowledge of what we had just read.

Here's an example of a trend, one where it is being suggested that we don't give ourselves too much credit for finally staggering into our first meeting  . . .

"So it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to The Fellowship . . . "

Driven:  To have moved (something) by hitting it with great force.

A bit later . . . 

"Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon become as open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions.  In this respect alcohol was a great persuader.  It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness."

Beat: To strike or pound repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock  vigorously or loudly.

So we're beaten and driven into The Rooms by alcohol.  Sounds familiar.  I don't remember being too happy as I walked into my first meeting.

"To to doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face."

You have GOT to love alcoholic thinking.  The elder statesman says to the newcomer: "Here are your choices: you can keep drinking, trying to blot out the miserable facts of your hopeless situation, until you go insane, are locked up, or die alone, on the streets, in abject misery.  Or you can accept spiritual help."

The newcomer thinks for a minute: "Can I get back to you tomorrow on that?"