Not According to The Big Book
Reprinted from 6/2010
It is true! Alcoholics really are like pickles. Aside from being a little bumpy, warty and sometime even a little bit leaky - alkies, like pickles, are made . . . . . . not born.
Man-made too.
Pickles and alcoholics; neither are the product of Divine Design.Did I mention "green"? Yes some of us have been "green" too - long before the current "Progressives" ever made it politically fashionable.
Despite the commonly held delusions to the contrary, we alkyholics are aberrant, unnatural creatures. Freaks of nature. One might even say "artificial" since no one is a ‘natural’ alcoholic. Not by birth. Not by instinct. Not by God. And yet being set apart from all the rest of humanity as a “distinct entity” we call "real alcoholic" is exactly how Dr. Silkworth described us freaks. So it must have somehow happened, anyway - after the fact.
Those letters in “The Doctors’ Opinion” provide a shitload of ideas concerning alcoholism that will have your average POP-AA, meeting hobbyist, church basement , fellowship zombie bemoaning the Big Bad Big Book “fundamentalists” like we were some kind of cross burning, sheet wearing clan of recovered religious kooks. Some of them seem to be terrified of the very Book from which the very fellowship they so fondly claim membership gets its name. Does that seem sane to you?
It is the good pleasure of your humble narrator to blow your mind. However if you do have a good grasp on AAs “our description of the alcoholic” then none of this should come as a surprise.If you have never had alcoholism properly described to you then some of this may be a little mind blowing.
Anyone who thinks that they were born alcoholic is severely uneducated in AA’s ”Our description of the alcoholic” as is marvelously delineated in exacting detail in that magnificent spiritual text, story and prayer book, “Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism”
Johnny Cash may have “walked the line” but real alcoholics actually cross over it. They do it just once and “Goodbye," That's all she wrote, Jackson.
“You can’t turn a cucumber back into a pickle”,
“Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic” and the perennial maxim that speaks of “Crossing the line” from being normal - or 'non-alcoholic - into a peculiar, particular and pernicious state of alcoholic dysfunction, are each very Big Book reconcilable ideas.
Yes, the “I was born an alcoholic” concept is well refuted and entirely disabused by the co-founders of the AA fellowshipand yet as asinine and utterly stooopit as it is – it is still heard every day, bellowing through the halls of the AA fellowship and spilling out like sour puke onto the water warped linoleum tiles of the church basement floors. All the time!
I mean, who is sponsoring these people? Certainly not the spiritual descendants of those insightful “more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.”
Early on, many of us drank regardless of the consequences – not because we could not stop -- but because we are too self-centered to give a flying crumb about stopping.
Whoever came up with that silly idea does not understand the illness much at all. Real, un-recovered alcoholics drink even though they are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Try that shit for ten or twenty years, Bub! That'll make your pitiful divorce, repossessed car and DUI jail-time look like a frakin' cakewalk.
You think you want to stop drinking because your wife won’t do the ding-dang-doodle anymore and because your kids have stopped giving you their approval? They hate your guts and make you feel like crying? Man, you have not even approached an alcoholic bottom, dude. Not yet. Don’t mistake self-pity for soul sickness. They aren’t even close.
These were conditions severe enough to make us feel worse about doing something that we didn’t even want to do anymore –yet still did it. Drink.
“Though there is no way of proving it, we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking.” (32:1)
Many of us would love to blame genetic misfortune for our troubles, as if we had not much to do with our malady – that we were victims of some biological fate. Go there only to be a complete ass.The co-authors tell us that they knew they could have stopped at some point. It’s just that they didn’t. Could have but didn’t! That is power over alcohol and indeed we all do have power over alcohol at birth. Oh, of course we might have a genetic proclivity toward having a weak body–part, like a pancreas or liver, that cannot properly assist in metabolizing EToH in as enduring a fashion as others can, but we still have to do the finishing damage ourselves.
How many Type II diabetics would never have been created if not for Hostess Twinkies and their sugary friends, Ho-Ho's, Krispy Kreme and Wonderbread?
Some of us lose our eyesight sooner than others too – that is no excuse for an adult to childishly stare for hours at a TV, three inches from the sc
reen.
“But the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time.” (32:1)
That self-centered attitude bites us hard in the ass the very moment we “cross the line” (physically break down, loose our ability to drink without experiencing a strange 'craving") and then we can never physically return to normalcy. Our healing then must come from a spiritual solution.
“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!” (62:2)
Pickles don’t come out of the ground. Cukes do. Alcoholics don’t come out of the ground either, but many of us who fail to understand our own malady end up back in the ground much sooner than later.
Peace and Love,
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
Early on, many of us drank regardless of the consequences – not because we could not stop -- but because we are too self-centered to give a flying crumb about stopping.
Then, fueled by our own self-absorption, we crossed the line and it was too late.After that, even unpleasant, horrific consequences and loss weren’t enough to stop us. Real un-recovered alcoholics don’t magically acquire the power to stop drinking because they suddenly find themselves sick and tired of being sick and tired. IF ONLY!
Whoever came up with that silly idea does not understand the illness much at all. Real, un-recovered alcoholics drink even though they are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Try that shit for ten or twenty years, Bub! That'll make your pitiful divorce, repossessed car and DUI jail-time look like a frakin' cakewalk.
You think you want to stop drinking because your wife won’t do the ding-dang-doodle anymore and because your kids have stopped giving you their approval? They hate your guts and make you feel like crying? Man, you have not even approached an alcoholic bottom, dude. Not yet. Don’t mistake self-pity for soul sickness. They aren’t even close.
These were conditions severe enough to make us feel worse about doing something that we didn’t even want to do anymore –yet still did it. Drink.
Great . . . . but feeling bad about drinking is a long cry from actually ceasing and desisting from the selfish indulgence.Shit, even sober gamblers bet money they haven’t got!
“Though there is no way of proving it, we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking.” (32:1)
Many of us would love to blame genetic misfortune for our troubles, as if we had not much to do with our malady – that we were victims of some biological fate. Go there only to be a complete ass.The co-authors tell us that they knew they could have stopped at some point. It’s just that they didn’t. Could have but didn’t! That is power over alcohol and indeed we all do have power over alcohol at birth. Oh, of course we might have a genetic proclivity toward having a weak body–part, like a pancreas or liver, that cannot properly assist in metabolizing EToH in as enduring a fashion as others can, but we still have to do the finishing damage ourselves.
How many Type II diabetics would never have been created if not for Hostess Twinkies and their sugary friends, Ho-Ho's, Krispy Kreme and Wonderbread?
Some of us lose our eyesight sooner than others too – that is no excuse for an adult to childishly stare for hours at a TV, three inches from the sc
reen.“But the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time.” (32:1)
That self-centered attitude bites us hard in the ass the very moment we “cross the line” (physically break down, loose our ability to drink without experiencing a strange 'craving") and then we can never physically return to normalcy. Our healing then must come from a spiritual solution.
“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!” (62:2)
Pickles don’t come out of the ground. Cukes do. Alcoholics don’t come out of the ground either, but many of us who fail to understand our own malady end up back in the ground much sooner than later.
Peace and Love,
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
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