Defiant Brats!

 I love this paragraph from Tradition Nine where we're reminded that Alcoholics Anonymous ought never be organized:

"We recognize that alcoholics can't be dictated to - individually or collectively.  At this juncture, we can hear a churchman exclaim, "They are making disobedience a virtue!" (Church people like people to get in line and follow rules - their rules - and alcoholics are committed to not being dictated to.)  He is joined by a psychiatrist who says, "Defiant brats!  They won't grow up and conform to social usage!"  (This line always gets a laugh in a meeting - we're pretty sure we're still defiant brats . . . and proud of it.)  The man in the street says, "I don't understand it.  They must be nuts"!  (Another laugh from the bratty, nutty crowd.)  But all these observers have overlooked something unique in Alcoholics Anonymous.  Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.  His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles."

I love this belief that our punishment comes not from alcohol but from our lack of a spiritual essence.  I am/was always looking for someone to blame for the shitty outcomes that sometimes/all the time were tormenting me.  No one in A.A. can punish me or has the authority to punish me - I'm being disciplined by my adherence to carnal desires.  When I was a drunken asshole it wasn't because I wasn't following any prescribed A.A. rules.  No, sir, I was suffering because I wasn't following any good, true, kind instincts that were in me.