Some AA Pre-History

We were reading The Tenth Tradition this week which mentions The Washingtonian Society and The Oxford Group, two organizations that were around before Alcoholics Anonymous and had some influence on its formation.  The following is taken directly from Wikipedia.

In Akron, Ohio, Jim Newton, an Oxford Group member knew that one of Harvey S. Firestone's sons, Russell, was a serious alcoholic.  He took him first to a drying-out clinic and then on to an Oxford Group conference in Denver.  The young man "gave his life to God", and thereafter enjoyed extended periods of sobriety.  The family doctor called it a "medical miracle."  Harvey Firestone Senior was so grateful that, in January 1933, he invited Buchman and a team of sixty to conduct a ten-day campaign in Akron.  They left behind them a strong functioning group which met each week in the house of T. Henry Williams, amongst whom were an Akron surgeon, Bob Smith, and his wife Anne. Bob was a secret drinker.

Rowland Hazard, claimed that it was Carl Jung who caused him to seek a "spiritual solution" to his alcoholism, which led to Rowland joining the Oxford group.  He was introduced by Shep Cornell to Cornell's friend Ebby Thacher.  Ebby had a serious drinking problem.  Hazard introduced Ebby to Jung's theory and then to the Oxford Group. For a time Ebby took up residence at Sam Shoemaker's Calvary Rescue Mission that catered mainly to saving down-and-outs and drunks.  Shoemaker taught inductees the concept of God being that of one's understanding.

Ebby Thacher, in keeping with the Oxford Teachings, needed to keep his own conversion experience real by carrying the Oxford message of salvation to others.  Ebby had heard that his old drinking buddy Bill Wilson was again drinking heavily.  Thacher and Cornell visited Wilson at his home and introduced him to the Oxford Group's religious conversion cure.  Wilson, who was then an agnostic, was "aghast" when Thacher told him he had "got religion."

A few days later, in a drunken state, Wilson went to the Calvary Rescue Mission in search of Ebby Thacher.  It was there that he attended his first Oxford Group meeting and would later describe the experience: "Penitents started marching forward to the rail. Unaccountably impelled, I started too...  Soon, I knelt among the sweating, stinking penitents ...  Afterward, Ebby ... told me with relief that I had done all right and had given my life to God."  The Call to the Altar did little to curb Wilson's drinking. A couple of days later, he re-admitted himself to Charles B. Towns Hospital.  Wilson had been admitted to Towns hospital three times earlier between 1933 and 1934.  This would be his fourth and last stay.

Bill Wilson did not obtain his "spiritual awakening" by his attendance at the Oxford Group. He had his "hot flash" conversion at Towns Hospital. The hospital was set up and run by Charles B. Towns and his associate Alexander Lambert, who together had concocted up a drug cocktail for the treatment of alcoholism that bordered on quackery, known as "the belladonna cure". The formula consisted of the two deliriants, Atropa belladonna and Hyoscyamus niger, which were known to cause hallucinations. Wilson claimed to have seen a "white light", and when he told his attending physician, William Silkworth about his experience, he was advised not to discount it.  After Wilson left the hospital, he never drank again.

After his release from the hospital, Wilson attended Oxford Group meetings and went on a mission to save other alcoholics.  His prospects came through Towns Hospital and the Calvary Mission.  Though he was not able to keep one alcoholic sober, he found that by engaging in the activity of trying to convert others he was able to keep himself sober. It was this realization, that he needed another alcoholic to work with, that brought him into contact with Bob Smith while on a business trip in Akron, Ohio.

Earlier Bill Wilson had been advised by Dr Silkworth to change his approach and tell the alcoholics they suffered from an illness, one that could kill them, and afterward apply the Oxford Practices.  The idea that alcoholism was an illness, not a moral failing, was different from the Oxford concept that drinking was a sin.  This is what he brought to Bob Smith on their first meeting.  Smith was the first alcoholic Wilson helped to sobriety.  Dr. Bob and Bill W., as they were later called, went on to found Alcoholics Anonymous.

Wilson later acknowledged in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: "The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and from nowhere else."

In 1934 James Houck joined the Oxford Group and became sober on December 12, one day after Wilson did.   AA was founded on June 10, 1935. In September 2004, Houck was the last surviving person to have attended Oxford Group meetings with Wilson, who died in 1971.  At the age of 98, Houck was still active in the group, now renamed Moral Re-armament, and it was his mission to restore the Oxford Group's spiritual methods through the "Back to Basics program", a twelve step program similar to AA. Houck believed the old Oxford Group spiritual methods were stronger and more effective than the ones currently practiced in A.A.  Houck was trying to introduce the program into the prison systems.

Houck's assessment of Wilson's time in the Oxford Group: "He was never interested in the things we were interested in; he only wanted to talk about alcoholism; he was not interested in giving up smoking; he was a ladies man and would brag of his sexual exploits with other members, " and in Houck's opinion he remained an agnostic.

Rational Lies

 Here's what's what this morning . . . 

I'm always working on being grateful.  Being more grateful because I am grateful, just not as grateful as I should be, or could be.  Gratitude is a work in progress for me.  I'm not a dude who naturally sees the good stuff.  I'm a Defect Specialist.  One of the reasons I like old-timers who are active in Alcoholics Anonymous is that I enjoy experiencing the Gratitude wafting and oozing out of their essence and, really, anybody who is active in their spiritual recovery is covered with ooze, just not as much as old-timers who have been working on producing and storing ooze for a longer period of time

I'm always working on being productive.  This is a blessing and a curse.  Being productive means I get a lot of productive things done but it also means I can be hard on myself.  I have to laugh at America where we use terms like "killing time" or "wasting time" or "filling time," like time is something to be mastered and wrestled to the ground and vanquished.

I'm always working on giving myself a fucking break with every fucking little thing.  It's okay to just be.  It's okay to sit in the sun with a thousand yard stare, like some slack-jawed yokel.  You're not going to hell because you watched a dumb sitcom instead of translating Tolstoy's "The Cossacks" from the original Russian.  It's enough with the Russian translating, already.

From the morning Big Book meeting . . . 

Drinking alone: what a purely alcoholic construct.  I learned this early on.  It's efficient.  I thought: "I really don't like people and I'm really cheap and I don't have any money anyhow and I can't get any girls to listen to Black Sabbath with me for nine straight hours so why don't I get drunk in front of the TV and watch old re-runs of Gilligan's Island?"

Drinking for pleasure or relaxation: not what we alcoholics do.  We drink to survive.  Our days revolve around our drinking.  We're tolerating everything that gets in the way of our drinking.

I heard this phrase today: Rational Lies.  Rationalize.

Rationalize: To attempt to explain or justify with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate.  

Inventory

Rampage: To move about wildly or violently.

Instincts on rampage balk at investigation.

Collision: (An instance of) impacting directly, especially if violent.

Instincts in collision.

Exceed: To go too far; to be excessive. (Ed. Note: Don't you just hate the word "too." As if I can overdo something.)

How instincts can exceed their proper function.

Bill and Bob and the Founders could be a little dramatic with their verbiage sometimes but then again unchecked alcoholism can be a little dramatic with the human mind, body, and soul. "Violent" seems to be a common descriptor. Colliding violently isn't an image that comes to mind when I'm thinking about my instincts.

Instinct: A natural or inherent impulse or behavior; an intuitive reaction not based on conscious rational thought.

I like the idea that our instincts are unconscious and unchained from rational thought. They are just happening. The Big Three as detailed in The Big Book are sex, power, and cash. Or Sex, Society, and Security. These are not going to be things that we can get rid of easily if at all. These are programmed onto our hard drives. We naturally want to procreate, live in a warm, dry house that has at least a minimally stocked kitchen, and be recognized by other people around us as someone who is worth something. All that seems fair enough to me.

Here's what the book has to say about those troublesome instincts . . .

Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist on ruling our lives.

When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures that are possible or due us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth.

So as I see it that, once again, it isn't the instincts (or anything else, frankly) that's the problem - it's the alcoholic. We are most definitely over-the-toppers and over-doings and going-overboarders. The problem isn't the sex, power, and money, it's the grabbing and snatching and grasping - THAT'S the problem.

Again.

God Stuff

 "But for the grace of god . . . "

I hate that phrase.  It sounds like god is picking and choosing who goes to where the angels fly and who goes to the lake of fire . . .  to fry.  I don't think god is a prick.  "OK, you - heaven.  You - burn in a lake of fire for all eternity."  This doesn't jibe with all those pictures I've seen of a beatific Jeebus gazing prayerfully into the distance.  It's too cruel to think of an illiterate child in rural Pakistan banished to the lake of fire because he had the wrong religious belief.

Also, now that I think about it . . . god doesn't do things for me.  God doesn't do anything.  God just is.  If I'm drinking and I want to get sober then I'm expected . . . by god . . . to use the tools that god has given me.  God isn't a candy machine.  God isn't a taxi service.  God is inspiration.

I was going to a meeting at a jail in Cincinnati that was full of young guys who lived in really crappy neighborhoods that had really crappy schools.  I felt bad for them.  If I wanted to get drugs I had to make a few phone calls and then take a drive.  I couldn't just walk down to the corner.  To my eye god had dealt them a shitty hand.

An old friend said this to me: "Don't let those guys snow you, man.  They can get sober just like anyone else."

You Ain't God

This is the how and why of it.  First of all, we had to quit playing God.  It didn’t work.

We had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing.  God either is, or He isn't.

Look. We get it. The Higher Power thing is hard for many of us, maybe most of us, and the founders liberally sprinkle around "God" with a capital G a lot more than they sprinkle around "Higher Power." But the concept of Something Greater Than Ourselves is a foundation block of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous and I truly believe that the founders were sincerely open-minded about how we can come to an understanding of that power, or at least they were trying to be open-minded about it. I'm assuming in our early meetings there weren't too many women in full Muslim burkas or Sikhs with their distinctive head coverings drinking bad coffee and going on 12 Step calls. I assume there were a lot of pinched-looking white people who attended Christian churches regularly. And then there's the famous story about these guys exhibiting a certain amount of pious glee when the first avowed atheist in The Fellowship went back out and drank again. He was the guy who got the "as we understand him" qualifier into our 3rd Step.

I've always said that you can use A.A. or not. You can get sober by yourself, using willpower and self-knowledge, easily or with clenched teeth, and you can go to church or you can join a commune or rely on a psychotherapist or whatever the fuck you want to do. We're really open to anything that allows you to be relatively happy and completely sober. That's the simple goal here, after all. But if you're going to use Alcoholics Anonymous, a non-denominational spiritual 12 Step Program, you'd be doing yourself a favor by keeping an open mind to the whole Higher Power thing. It's awfully hard to avoid. And this is a non-official Seaweed survey but I'd bet in today's increasingly secular world there a lot more non-religious people in A.A. than the other way around. I think you hear more groans if someone says "Jeebus" than if they say "atheist" or "Buddhist." I think we've gotten a hell of a lot more tolerant. I really don't feel any pressure to believe in any particular way anymore.

The minute I stopped fighting or arguing, I could begin to see and feel.  We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves.  We are in the world to play the role God assigns.  Just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us, and humbly rely on him, does he enable to match calamity with serenity.

Fight: To try to overpower; to fiercely counteract.

Argue: To have a verbal dispute; to quarrel.

Don't tell me what to do. I have a better solution which I am going to point out to you here, incontrovertibly. I'm going to play my own role and I'm not humbly-ing a goddamn thing.

Now what's that about calamity or serenity?

Calamity: An event resulting in great loss.

Serenity: Calmness; peacefulness; a lack of agitation or disturbance.

Hmmmm. Give me a minute to think about this. I'm not sure which one sounds better.

Lack of power, that was our dilemma.  Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became 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.

Destruction: Damaged beyond use or repair. (Ed. Note: I really like this definition - "beyond repair." We become open-minded when the destruction is so great that it renders us useless and beyond repair. That's quite a thing to face. We're pretty far down the road before we become open-minded.)

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

Get it? You are the one being beaten. Alcohol is the one doing the beating. You are losing. You are being pounded and struck over and over. Does this sound at all like you are winning?

It does not.

Controlling The World

 Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way.  If arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great.  Everybody, including himself, would be pleased.  Life would be wonderful.  In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous.  He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing.  On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest.  But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.  What usually happens?  The show doesn't come off very well.

This sentence blew me away the first time I read it. Blew me the hell away. There was a blinding flash of light when I realized that my actions were what counted, not my motivations, and that other people did not want me to tell them what to do. Even when someone asks me what they should do they still don't want me to tell them what to do. I thought everyone

More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life.  He is very much the actor.  To the outer world he presents his stage character.  This is the one he likes his fellows to see.

This sentence also blew me away. It made me aware that I was not me - I was who I thought you wanted me to be. I was an ass-kisser, a people-pleaser, a false friend. I was living a sordid life behind the scenes and trying to dress it up in polite company.

It was as if we were actors on a stage, suddenly realizing that we did not know a single line of our parts.

This did not blow me away although I seem to be drawn to acting references. I was a clueless dude.

The Bludgeoning

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

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.

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

Under the lash of alcoholism . . .  The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.  The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.  Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

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

It would appear here that Bill and Bob are suggesting that most of us don't suddenly wake up one bright, shining morning and exclaim: "Boy, everything in my life is great. I have plenty of money, a nice house and cars, a doting family, and everyone at work loves me. What the hell - I think I'll go to Alcoholics Anonymous!"

Good, meaty, clear as hell, straight-shooting phrases: gates of insanity or death, driven to AA, lash of alcoholism, doomed to an alcoholic death, beat into a state of reasonableness. I'm not normally a big fan of violent imagery but sometimes we have to take off the kid gloves and tell it like it is.

We were in a position where life was becoming impossible and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: one was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could, and the other, to accept spiritual help.

Absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.

We alcoholics have lost the ability to control our drinking.  We know that no alcoholic ever recovers control.

Because most alcoholics don't want to . . . you know . . . actually stop drinking the founders made sure to stick in these reminders. It's over. You're done. You're toast. You've tried everything and nothing has worked. You are out of options. It's enough with the bright ideas already.

Why don’t you try some more controlled drinking?

They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so he can't feel the ache.

Yes, we know there's at least one more thing you need to try: controlled drinking. Get mellow and then stop. Yes, yes, that's going to work this time. And the hammer analogy - some more violent imagery to hammer home the idea that We. Are. Done.

Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress.

For people who hate pain so much we are sure eager to endure as much of it as possible

God, Oh NO!

We had a spirited discussion this morning about the god or higher power part of the recovery process in Alcoholics Anonymous.  The topic, sometimes controversial, always groan-inducing, amuses me because - whether you like it or not - it's a big part of the process.  It seems we either tip toe around the idea of a higher power or we jam it down your throat.   

In the chapter devoted to Step Two the founders spell out all the ways the recalcitrant manage to push the god concept away.  There are five categories discussed as popular excuses among the unwilling excuse makers among us: Atheism, or saying that god DOES NOT exist; focusing on instances of hypocrisy instead of concentrating on all the good that can be found in religion; loss of faith - having once had it but losing it under a tsunami of alcohol and drugs; the proclamations of the overly pious, reeking of faith and telling you all about it; and, one of my favorites, being too smart for all of the god bullshit.

The first time I read this I found myself saying: "Yes!  That's it!  That's me!" before realizing I said that after each category was discussed.

Where I live we often are covered in a blanket of fog for an hour or two before the sun exerts itself influence.  I was listening to people share about god while looking into this soup right outside my window.  I like fog for brief spurts so I thought: "There's god.  Right there."  Art and music and nature and animals, all god stuff.

"The minute I stopped fighting or arguing, I could begin to see and feel.  Right there, Step Two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life.  I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of AA's program as enthusiastically as I could."

"We need always to distinguish pain from suffering. Pain is physiological and should always be alleviated when possible, for pain can erode the spirit’s vitality. Suffering is spiritual, for it inevitably raises questions of meaning."  James Hollis

Meditation is not about stopping my thinking.  It's about watching my thinking without judging what I'm seeing or trying to control it.  Brains think.  It's what they do.  They've got it and they're going to use it and they're persistent about it.  Try to tamp your thinking down at your own peril.  Even if you're a seasoned, diligent practitioner of meditation your brain will prove to be a worthy foe.  Some days I can't keep the bastard quiet for a single breath without some useless bit of minutia intruding.  Today I don't fight that - I laugh at it.

Get Away From Me

I can be a stand-offish guy.  I'm friendly and outgoing but wary of many people.  Frankly, I'm suspicious of every fucking thing on the planet but that's a much larger topic that should be reserved for another day.  Often I'll watch people for a while before wasting my precious time in getting to know them better.  My default position is this: You aren't worth my time until you prove otherwise.  I know this sounds a tad arrogant.  I don't mean it to.  I no longer think I'm either better or worse than anyone else and that used to be the case.  I looked down my nose at you or I resented the advantages you possessed, whether you deserved those advantages or not.  Today I believe we're all little sperm-like creatures floating in a murky soup, swimming like mad trying to get somewhere for some reason.  Mostly we're just flailing about.

I'm especially suspicious of Alpha Dog male types.  They have a swagger and a self-centered aura that rubs me the wrong way.  Part of this, I'm sure, is that I'm kind of a off-center, low-key, semi-conscious Big Personality myself - I certainly don't mind being the center of attention if . . . and this is a big if . . . I'm in control of the circumstances.  And I certainly have no problem speaking my mind in public . . . like right to your face.  But as a general rule I'm not calling attention to myself.

In my morning meeting a man who had recently been released from prison on a murder charge began to attend daily.  I've asked him about his time in prison - over 20 years in prison, to be precise, which is a long, long time to be in prison.  He said when he was young he was involved in a robbery where someone was killed.  I'm not sure of the extent of his involvement and I didn't press him on the matter.  He was a little hesitant and reserved in his explanation.  I get this, too - I'm sure it's one thing to say that you've been in prison and another altogether to expound on the particulars.  I'm guessing the reaction from your average citizen isn't too positive.

 He's calm, peaceful sort of fellow so I surmise that he was wasted or needed money to get wasted and that money was the goal and not violence.  Maybe he'll elaborate someday and maybe he won't.  I don't really care, frankly.  This Program is all about rehabilitation and second chances, and anyone that can get sober in prison - not jail, prison - is okay in my book.

I will say it took a while for the two of us to warm up to each other.  I'm older than he is and he's one of those charismatic drunks who attracts a lot of newer people.  I dunno but I find this off-putting in a way, and that's totally on me.  I'm not jealous but I'm wary about the occasional   Sponsors that I see in A.A.  You know the type - they have a whole raft of sponsees.  I did note, however, and grudgingly, that it was a lot of rougher characters, people who wouldn't normally gravitate to me and my stand-offish brand of antiseptic intellectualized recovery.

He got a job as a firefighter in California and is gone for long stretches of time.  We've been texting back and forth and they have been warm exchanges.  This makes me feel great.  I see where I'm lacking and he's not, and vice versa.  Anyone who is working a good Program is bringing good stuff to the table.  Glad I'm there to scarf some of it down.

Who's Will Be Done Now?

Will:  Mental powers manifested as wishing, choosing, desiring, or intending.

Willpower:  The unwavering strength to carry out one's wishes.

I am confused to this day when the concepts of "will" and "willpower" appear in our literature.  (Here's a fun fact: willpower only appears 6 times but will shows up 560 times.  I realize this is deceptive: most of the references are of the future tense as in "if you share one more time I will scream" but that's still a lot of references.)  To me will means What I Want.  If I turn my life and my will over to God that means I'm not in control of what happens and, more significantly, I think, I should give up all the wanting and wishing and desiring and grasping.  The practical example is waking up to a flat tire on my car.  I wouldn't be very upset about that.  I'd take action to fix it or, more plausibly, get someone else to fix it.  But am I comfortable relinquishing my desire to never have a flat tire ever again?  No, sir, I am not.

It is when we try to make our will conform with God's will that we began to use it rightly.  Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower.  We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God’s intention for us.

At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling him what it ought to be.

The following category is called "Gimme Gimme Gimme." Thou mayst take thy will and stuffeth it where the sun shineth not.

We had not even prayed rightly.  We had always said “Grant me my wishes” instead of “Your will be done.” 

We consider our plans for the day.  Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.

We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only.  We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.  We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.

Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.  We relax and take it easy.  We don’t struggle.  We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.

This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual development.

What Alcoholism Is

In rereading some of my old notes I'm impressed by how many references there are in our literature to the insidious nature of the disease of alcoholism.  There is some good, practical information here.  My first sponsor always encouraged new people to read The Doctor's Opinion in the belief that the doc did a good job of explaining what alcoholism is: a weird allergy and an even weirder obsession.  We have a physical reaction and we have a mental over-reaction. 

The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us; first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.

And we see some warnings about our experience with alcoholism: you're not going to be able to use your smarts and you're not going to be able to use your willpower and if you don't believe us head over to the bar and try to control your drinking. See how that works out for you. Courage? Bullshit. Determination? Fuck it. You don't have the tools to defeat this scourge.

Absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.

. . . so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence is no good whatever.

He has been convinced that he has more problems than alcohol, and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster.

The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.  Why don’t you try some more controlled drinking?

Finally, we're reminded and re-reminded and over-reminded that we do not have this. We have lost the ability to drink normally. If we drink we're going to have problems and that's compounded by the fact that we don't even know what's going on.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false.

. . . their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly hard to solve.

We Suck At Relationships

But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.  The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being.

Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes.

We were having trouble with personal relationships . . . 

We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.  Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide beneath it.  This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relationship with any one of those about us.  Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension. 

When the words "twisted" and "defective" are used to describe my interpersonal relationships I know I'm in for a tough time of it. When the phrase "total inability" is used to characterize my skills I realize that The Program isn't going to stress my ability to form fine and really good relationships with other people. Apparently "true" brotherhood or "true" partnerships are incomprehensible to us. And in case we haven't been bludgeoned enough The Book offers up that last paragraph which has a slow, steady, relentless cadence to it; just when you think the abuse is over there's another example, another phrase, another twist of the Truth knife.

It's not them - it's you.

There's NOTHING Wrong with Me

Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring.  To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with.

I like this sentence which is a starting point for our Fourth Step Inventory.  Bill is saying: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it - you're good.  You're squeaky clean.  YOU don't have to do an inventory.  YOU don't have any defects."

Then we are provided with an extensive and seemingly ever-expanding list of "defects" that apparently almost every alcoholic except for us, personally, seems to have.  Take a gander and see if any of these apply to you . .  . while keeping in mind that this is a partial and woefully inadequate list.

Self-righteous:  Piously self-assured and smugly moralistic.  (Whew.  Ouch.)

Self-righteousness, the very thing we had contemptuously condemned in others, became our own besetting evil.  This phony form of respectability . . . 

Defiant:  Bold; insolent; open resistance to or disregard for authority, opposition, or power.

As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. 

Self-centered: Concerned with the self as opposed to the greater good of one's group, community, etc. (Wait a minute, wait a minute - what about me?)

Selfishness - self-centeredness!  That, we think, is the root of our troubles.

Pride: An unreasonable overestimation of one's own importance in terms of one's talents, importance, etc. which manifests itself in lofty airs and contempt for others. (Zing. These are really starting to sting.)

For pride, leading to self-justification and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress.

Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us . . .  (Dammit! Self again!)

Resentment: A feeling of anger or displeasure stemming from belief that one has been wronged by others or betrayed. (I like the addition of "belief." Once again, facts don't matter, facts are trumped by our feelings, real or imagined, no reasonably ridiculous belief refused.)

Resentment is the “number one” offender.  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.  From it stems all forms of spiritual disease . . . 

Pride slips in to justify our excesses. (Dammit!! Pride, again?!)

And driving the whole unholy mess is fear. Fear that we're not going to get what we want and fear that we're going to have things happen to us that we don't want to have happen to us.

Fear: A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger or threat. (Nice that the danger or threat doesn't even have to be real. This is why some of us think FEAR stands for False [or Future] Events Appearing Real. There's also something somewhere about Fuck Everything And Run, but I'm trying to keep it clean here.)

Unreasonable fears that our instincts will not be satisfied . . . 

Fear.  This short word somehow touches every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread.  The fabric of our existence was shot through with it.  It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn’t deserve.  A soul sickness.

It's Not Them -- It's You

 Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes.  Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person entirely.  The inventory was ours, not the other man's. (This is patently unfair. My ability to spot defects in others is unparalleled and my faults so minor, few, and far in between as to not be worth inspection. What is it that Jeebus says? "So why do you see the piece of sawdust in another believer's eye and not notice the wooden beam in your own eye?"  That kooky Jeebus.)

The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong.  To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. (Sometimes real fucking slowly.)

Our present anxieties and troubles we cry are caused by the behavior of other people. . .   To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time.  We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. (Again with the other people. Again with the blaming thing. Again with the suggestion that we're a little too quick to find fault in others and a little too slow to see our own.)

Or if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change?  If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are?  It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were. (My heart soared for a moment at the initial suggestion that other people really WERE the cause of my problems. Alas, the euphoria was short-lived. And it's back to me. Back to me working on me.)

The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person our emotions go on the defensive. (It's not me - it's them.)

Finally, we begin to see that all people . . . are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.  Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick, too. (

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.  They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so.

This is such an important part of my recovery that I choose to highlight in blood red ink. I can almost always put my troubles into one of two categories: (a) troubles of my own making and (b) stuff that happens to everyone all the time but really seems unfair when it happens to me which is why I do so much bitching about things that are . . . you know . . . really pretty common and normal.

Narcissist Seaweed

 "Narcissists work very hard to conceal their inner poverty from recognition by others.  They may boast, inflate their reputations, swagger and belittle others, or they may fall apart at the first hint of neglect and criticism, making others feel guilty for the alleged injury done to them.  All of these behaviors are designed to deflect us from the central truth, that their sense of self is predicated upon emptiness, and derives from early childhood neglect or insufficient mirroring.  The will to power of narcissists is, however, a fearsome thing, and wreaks havoc in their psychological domination of their spouse and children or in workplaces where employees are obligated to comply."  James Hollis

We all have this syndrome to a certain degree.  How big a presence in my life am I going to permit it to be today?

Can't Someone Else Do It?

From time to time I can't come up with any fascinating stories about me, Little Stevie Seaweed, to draw you in and leave you riveted to the narrative . . . so how about some good stuff from our literature? I believe that I'm a Problem Person and that the solution - one of the solutions, a solution that works for me, anyway - can be found in the texts of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a technical German scientist I tend to shy away from spooky, indistinct spiritual mumbo-jumbo but I do sense that there was a larger purpose to the stuff Bill W and Bob S came up with. These guys were social architects, combining medicine, religion, spirituality, and knowledge gleaned from a life inside the active alcoholic's School of Hard Knocks. None of our founders were smart enough to do this without a hand from beyond the pale touching their lives.

I often will jot down passages from the literature in a notebook that I carry around. I decided to reread some of these journals and combine the passages that struck my fancy at the time into some kind of organized document. One of the things that always makes me laugh is how often important concepts are repeated in the literature. It's as if the founders knew that we were too busy thinking about the minutiae of our miserable little lives to . . . you know . . . pay attention to what they were trying to say.

I'm struck by how often there are references to the work that we're going to have to do, the actions we have to take. I have always hoped for something or someone to sprinkle magic fairy dust on me so that my defects melt away without me having to do anything. Certainly anything hard. I want to be struck sober. I don't want to have to work to stay sober.

Homer Simpson once ran for garbage commissioner. His slogan? "Can't someone else do it?"

Work: Sustained human effort to overcome obstacles and achieve a result.

Action: Something done so as to accomplish a purpose.

Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life can bring the much-desired result.

More sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and by attendance at a few meetings is very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from permanent sobriety and a contented, useful life.

All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will.

Like all the remaining Steps, Step 3 calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action, that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God . . . into our lives.