Aa Meeting Quotes

Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.

His dress told her nothing, but his face told her things which she was glad to know.

...one of the primary differences between alcoholics and nonalcoholics is that nonalcoholics change their behavior to meet their goals and alcoholics change their goals to meet their behaviors.

If you're going to drive a Hummer and buy carbon offsets, that's like getting drunk every night and getting into an AA meeting, throwing money in the basket, and leaving.

Sometimes he thought of a saying Nora had brought home from her AA meetings: the past is history, the future’s a mystery.

How did people have conversations anyway? How did they meet and then begin to talk as if they had known each other for years?

Hei! Aa-shanta 'nygh! You are off! Send back earth's gods to their haunts on unknown Kadath, and pray to all space that you may never meet me in my thousand other forms. Farewell, Randolph Carter, and beware; for I am Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.

Excuse me? You went for a walk and quit drinking? I have spent upward of $7 million trying to get sober. I have been to six thousand AA meetings. (Not an exaggeration, more an educated guess.) I’ve been to rehab fifteen times. I’ve been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death’s door. And you went for a fucking walk?

Peg came over with dinner tonight and told me about this dumb schmaltzy poem she heard someone read at an AA meeting.  It got me thinking.  It was about how while we are on earth, our limitations are such that we can only see the underside of the tapestry that God is weaving.  God sees the topside, the whole evolving portrait and its amazing beauty, and uses us as the pieces of thread to weave the picture.  We see the glorious colors and shadings, but we also see the knots and the threads hanging down, the think lumpy patches, the tangles.  But God and the people in heaven with him see how beautiful the portraits in the tapestry are.  The poem says in this flowery way that faith is about the willingness to be used by God wherever and however he most needs you, most needs the piece of thread that is your life.  You give him your life to put through his needle, to use as he sees fit.

....the Crocodiles say they can't even begin to say how many new guys they've seen Come In and then get sucked back Out There, Come In to AA for a while and Hang In and put together a little sober time and have things start to get better, head-wise and life-quality-wise, and after a while the new guys get cocky, they decide they've gotten `Well,' and they get really busy at the new job sobriety's allowed them to get, or maybe they buy season Celtics tickets, or they rediscover pussy and start chasing pussy (these withered gnarled toothless totally post-sexual old fuckers actually say pussy), but one way or another these poor cocky clueless new bastards start gradually drifting away from rabid Activity In The Group, and then away from their Group itself, and then little by little gradually drift away from any AA meetings at all, and then, without the protection of meetings or a Group, in time--oh there's always plenty of time, the Disease is fiendishly patient--how in time they forget what it was like, the ones that've cockily drifted, they forget who and what they are, they forget about the Disease, until like one day they're at like maybe a Celtics-Sixers game, and the good old Fleet/First Interstate Center's hot, and they think what could just one cold foamer hurt, after all this sober time, now that they've gotten `Well.' Just one cold one. What could it hurt. And after that one it's like they'd never stopped, if they've got the Disease. And how in a month or six months or a year they have to Come Back In, back to the Boston AA halls and their old Group, tottering, D.T.ing, with their faces hanging down around their knees all over again, or maybe it's five or ten years before they can get it up to get back In, beaten to shit again, or else their system isn't ready for the recurred abuse again after some sober time and they die Out There--the Crocodiles are always talking in hushed, 'Nam-like tones about Out There--or else, worse, maybe they kill somebody in a blackout and spend the rest of their lives in MCI-Walpole drinking raisin jack fermented in the seatless toilet and trying to recall what they did to get in there, Out There; or else, worst of all, these cocky new guys drift back Out There and have nothing sufficiently horrible to Finish them happen at all, just go back to drinking 24/7/365, to not-living, behind bars, undead, back in the Disease's cage all over again. The Crocodiles talk about how they can't count the number of guys that've Come In for a while and drifted away and gone back Out There and died, or not gotten to die.

At the end of almost every AA meeting, someone read the Promises. One of these was 'We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it'. Dan thought he would always regret the past, but he had quit trying to shut the door. Why bother, when it would just come open again? The fucking had no latch, let alone a lock.

All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need…fantasies to make life bearable.” REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. “They’re not the same at all!” YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—” MY POINT EXACTLY. She tried to assemble her thoughts. THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT’S RIGHT. “Yes, but people don’t think about that,” said Susan. “Somewhere there was a bed…” CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A…A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT. “Talent?” OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS. “You make us sound mad,” said Susan. A nice warm bed… NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death

Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life. The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances. I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances. It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve.

Meetings are the Hail Marys of alcoholics. You can do or almost do anything, feel anything, commit any number of non-sober atrocities, as long as you follow with an AA chaser. "After I cut off his penis, I sauteed it in rosemary butter and ate it." "But did you go to a meeting afterward?" "Yes" "I wouldn't worry about it then.

It was only my first AA meeting, but I was certain assaulting a fellow alcoholic wasn't one of those Twelve Steps.

Why are you here, Wesley?” “I told you,” he said. “I got worried. You’ve been avoiding me for the past week at school, and when I called you today, you didn’t answer. I thought something might have happened with your dad. So I came to make sure you were okay.” I bit my lower lip, a wave of guilt washing over me. “That’s sweet,” I murmured. “But I’m fine. Dad apologized for the other night, and he’s going to AA meetings now, so…” “So you weren’t going to tell me?” “Why would I?” “Because I care!” Wesley yelled. His words crashed into me, stunning me for a second. “I’ve been worried about you since you left my house a week ago! You didn’t even say why you left, Bianca. What was I supposed to do? Just assume you would be all right?” “God,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-” “I’m worrying about you, and you’re fucking that pretentious little-!” “Hey!” I shouted. “Don’t bring Toby into this.

Traumatized human beings recover in the context of relationships: with families, loved ones, AA meetings, veterans’ organizations, religious communities, or professional therapists. The role of those relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened. BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

He hadn’t taken drugs for many years, and had also given up drinking. According to Tony Visconti, he and David went to AA: “David found it very useful. We talk about being each other’s support system. If two people from the program sit together, that’s technically an AA meeting. Every two or three days we talk about it, although we don’t start and end with a prayer. I’ll say, ‘I’m coming up to my twelfth birthday,’ and he says, ‘Well it’s been my twenty-third.’ I ask, ‘Do you miss it?’ and he says, ‘I don’t miss it at all.

Carson Craig!” Bertha was trying hard not to laugh. “You stop making fun of my granddaughter this instant. I haven’t laughed that hard in years. Well, unless it was the time that Tennyson was shouting at me in the grocery store and some guy invited him to an AA meeting.

Years later, my father, too, would take his own meaningful walk: he had had a bad night on the drink where he fell through some bushes or something, and he talked to Debbie about it the following morning and she said, “Is this the way you want to live your life?” And he said, no—then he went for a walk and quit drinking and hasn’t had a drop since. Excuse me? You went for a walk and quit drinking? I have spent upward of $7 million trying to get sober. I have been to six thousand AA meetings. (Not an exaggeration, more an educated guess.) I’ve been to rehab fifteen times. I’ve been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death’s door. And you went for a fucking walk? I’ll tell you where you can take a walk. But my dad can’t write a play, star on Friends, help the helpless. And he doesn’t have $7 million to spend on anything. Life has its trade-offs, I suppose. This begs the question—would I trade places with him? Why don’t we get to that one later?

Whenever he was reminded that it was largely fools and galoots who ran the world, Leo resorted to subvocal mantric recitations of the true-yet-banal moral directives that he had picked up from the few AA meetings he had ducked his head into after the blacked-out drive home: Reserve Judgment. My Side of the Street. Principles Before Personalities.

I hardly ever went to the AA [alcoholics anonymous] meetings. I’ve just never felt comfortable in those places. It’s my worst zone. I’ll get up and sing my heart out in front of two hundred thousand people at a rock festival, but when I’ve got to talk about the way I feel to people I’ve never met before, I can’t do it. There’s nothing to hide behind.

IMPATIENT? TRY LEVITATING We reacted more strongly to frustrations than normal people. AS BILL SEES IT, p. 111 Impatience with other people is one of my principal failings. Following a slow car in a no-passing lane, or waiting in a restaurant for the check, drives me to distraction. Before I give God a chance to slow me down, I explode, and that’s what I call being quicker than God. That repeated experience gave me an idea. I thought if I could look down on these events from God’s point of view, I might better control my feelings and behavior. I tried it and when I encountered the next slow driver, I levitated and looked down on the other car and upon myself. I saw an elderly couple driving along, happily chatting about their grandchildren. They were followed by me—bug-eyed and red of face—who had no time schedule to meet anyway. I looked so silly that I dropped back into reality and slowed down. Seeing things from God’s angle of vision can be very relaxing.

Traumatized human beings recover in the context of relationships: with families, loved ones, AA meetings, veterans’ organizations, religious communities, or professional therapists. The role of those relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened.

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.

—so much more opportunity now." Her voice trails off. "Hurrah for women's lib, eh?" "The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed." The apocalyptic word jars my attention. "What do you mean, doomed?" She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …" "Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?" Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different. "Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see." Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons. "Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch." No answering smile. "That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a—a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine." "Sounds like a guerrilla operation." I'm not really joking, here in the 'gator den. In fact, I'm wondering if I spent too much thought on mahogany logs. "Guerrillas have something to hope for." Suddenly she switches on a jolly smile. "Think of us as opossums, Don. Did you know there are opossums living all over? Even in New York City." I smile back with my neck prickling. I thought I was the paranoid one. "Men and women aren't different species, Ruth. Women do everything men do." "Do they?" Our eyes meet, but she seems to be seeing ghosts between us in the rain. She mutters something that could be "My Lai" and looks away. "All the endless wars …" Her voice is a whisper. "All the huge authoritarian organizations for doing unreal things. Men live to struggle against each other; we're just part of the battlefield. It'll never change unless you change the whole world. I dream sometimes of—of going away—" She checks and abruptly changes voice. "Forgive me, Don, it's so stupid saying all this." "Men hate wars too, Ruth," I say as gently as I can. "I know." She shrugs and climbs to her feet. "But that's your problem, isn't it?" End of communication. Mrs. Ruth Parsons isn't even living in the same world with me.

Each person in the group said something except for me. My silence became noticed. About halfway through the meeting I started to think, I've got to talk. Today, I've got to talk. Fear racked me so bad that sweat ran down my sides. I thought, After the curly-haired woman stops talking I'll raise my hand. A man with a cocky smile told the curly woman that her story was nothing compared to his, he'd been passed out cold from heroin and God knows what, and I wanted to tell him to quit glorifying hinself. I was just about to say the words, a few faces turned toward me as if they could sense my imminent speech, when a man across the circle interrupted. The opportunity passed; what I wanted to say wouldn't fit now. I tilted on the back two legs of the chair and waited for my desire to speak and be noticed and be part of the group to travel back through my nervous system. Up the synapses condemnation rushed: Why couldn't I spit something out like a normal person?

In the one-treatment-fits-all approach, clients sit in group meetings all day and all evening and listen to each other stories. At the end of the first week, everyone in the room knows everyone's story. That goes on for three more weeks, and then most people go home with the same problems they brought with them when they arrived.

Jordan B. Peterson says self-esteem doesn’t exist… and that SE training mostly results in narcissism. Jack Canfield says he wrote his first book about it. And guess what? They’ve BOTH been to Harvard! What are we to do in this confusing world? I started going to AA meetings and people there tell you to find a loving God… and then to get a job at the Kroger… Something’s wrong with this picture. If self-esteem exists, and I pray to God that it does, I cannot possibly find a job that will pay me enough money without undermining the dignity of my work, after all this Spirituality, and Sobriety, and Self Esteem & Therapy I've accumulated.... don't make me laugh. And I’m a bright guy, too. Officially.

Years later my father too would take his own meaningful walk. He had a bad night on the drink where he fell through some bushes or something. And he talked to Debbie about it he following morning, and she said is this the way you want to live your life? and he said no. Then he went for a walk and quit drinking and hasn't had a drop since. Excuse me? You went for a walk? And quit drinking? I spent upward of $7 Million trying to get sober. I've been to six thousand AA meetings, not an exaggeration more an educated guess, I've been to 15 rehabs. I've been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for 30 years. Been to deaths door...and you went for a fucking walk? I'll tell you where you can take a walk. But. My dad can't write a play, star on friends, help the helpless, and he doesn't have $7 million to spend on anything. Life has it's tradeoffs I suppose.

The Wellbriety path does not compete with A.A. or any other pathway of personal recovery, but instead enriches those pathways by embracing them within the web of Native American tribal histories and cultures.  In these pages, you will meet people who have committed themselves to live their lives on the Red Road.  Here you will meet Native people whose stories embody the living history of Native American recovery.  You will hear the details of their addiction and recovery journeys and feel the life and hope in

It’s not your fault,” says the speaker. “That’s the first thing to understand. There are addicts who were abused and addicts who from all accounts had ideal childhoods. Yet still many family members blame themselves. Another thing they do is try to solve it. They hide liquor bottles and medication and search for drugs in their loved one’s clothes and bedrooms, and they drive the addict to AA or NA meetings. They try to control where the addict goes and what they do and who they hang out with. It’s understandable, but it’s futile. You cannot control an addict.

To get a sense of what I mean by evangelism as the practice of hospitality, visit your local church. Don’t go upstairs, to the sanctuary, go downstairs to that room in the basement with the linoleum tile and the coffee urn. That’s where the AA and NA meetings are held. At its best, Alcoholics Anonymous embodies evangelism as hospitality. They offer an invitation, not a sales pitch. They offer testimony — personal stories — instead of a marketing scheme. They are, in fact and in practice, a bunch of beggars offering other beggars the good news of where they found bread. At its worst, AA sometimes slips into the evangelism-as-sales model. You may have found yourself at some point having a beer when some newly sober 12-step disciple begins lecturing you that this is evidence that you have a problem. He will try to sell you the idea that you are a beggar so he can sell you some bread. The ensuing conversation is tense, awkward and pointless — the precise qualities of the similar conversation you may have had with an evangelical Christian coworker who was reluctantly but dutifully inflicting on you a sales pitch for evangelical Christianity.

Dan Lynch was chuckling, his hand around his small glass. 'I remember Billy saying that AA was a Protestant thing when you came right down to it. Started by a bunch of Protestants. He said he didn't like the chummy way some of them were always calling Our Lord by his first name. I drove him to the first meeting and waited to take him home, 'cause Maeve didn't want him driving, and when he came out he said you could tell who the Catholics were because they'd all been bowing their heads every ten seconds while the Protestants bantered on about Jesus, Jesus Jesus.' (And sure enough, up and down our stretch of table, heads bobbed at the name.)

I became a very timid individual. I became introspective. I wondered what had made me act the way I had acted. Why had I killed my fellow men in war, without any feeling, remorse, or regret? And when the war was over, why did I con­tinue to drink and swagger around and get into fistfights? Why did I like to dish out pain, and why did I take positive delight in the suffering of others? Was I insane? Was it too much testosterone? Women don’t do things like that. The rapacious Will to Power lost its hold on me. Suddenly I began to feel sympathetic to the cares and sufferings of all living creatures. You lose your health and you start thinking this way. Has man become any better since the times of Theog­enes? The world is replete with badness. I’m not talking about that old routine where you drag out the Spanish Inqui­sition, the Holocaust, Joseph Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, etc. It happens in our own backyard. Twentieth-century America is one of the most materially prosperous nations in history. But take a walk through an American prison, a nursing home, the slums where the homeless live in cardboard boxes, a cancer ward. Go to a Vietnam vets’ meeting, or an A.A. meeting, or an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. How hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses. Is the world not rather like a hell, as Schopenhauer, that clearheaded seer—who has helped me transform my suf­fering into an object of understanding—was so quick to point out? They called him a pessimist and dismissed him with a word, but it is peace and self-renewal that I have found in his pages.

MATHEMATICAL MIRACLE Some years ago, I heard a story which has been making the rounds in Midwest A.A. circles for years. I don’t have any names to back up this story, but I have heard it from many sources, and the circumstances sound believable. A man in a small Wisconsin city had been on the program for about three years and had enjoyed contented sobriety through that period. Then bad luck began to hit him in bunches. The firm for which he had worked for some fifteen years was sold; his particular job was phased out of existence, and the plant moved to another city. For several months, he struggled along at odd jobs while looking for a company that needed his specialized experience. Then another blow hit him. His wife was forced to enter a hospital for major surgery, and his company insurance had expired. At this point he cracked, and decided to go on an all-out binge. He didn’t want to stage this in the small city, where everyone knew his sobriety record. So he went to Chicago, checked in at a North Side hotel, and set forth on his project. It was Friday night, and the bars were filled with a swinging crowd. But he was in no mood for swinging—he just wanted to get quietly, miserably drunk. Finally, he found a basement bar on a quiet side street, practically deserted. He sat down on a bar stool and ordered a double bourbon on the rocks. The bartender said, “Yes, sir,” and reached for a bottle. Then the bartender stopped in his tracks, took a long, hard look at the customer, leaned over the bar, and said in a low tone, “I was in Milwaukee about four months ago, and one night I attended an open meeting. You were on the speaking platform, and you gave one of the finest A.A. talks I ever heard.” The bartender turned and walked to the end of the bar. For a few minutes, the customer sat there—probably in a state of shock. Then he picked his money off the bar with trembling hands and walked out, all desire for a drink drained out of him. It is estimated that there are about 8,000 saloons in Chicago, employing some 25,000 bartenders. This man had entered the one saloon in 8,000 where he would encounter the one man in 25,000 who knew that he was a member of A.A. and didn’t belong there. Chicago, Illinois

I’d worked so hard and kept up the schedule they set for me—basically four weeks on, four weeks off. When I was on, I did three two-hour shows a week. And on or off, I also kept the weekly schedule they set for me: four AA meetings, two hours of therapy, and three hours of training a week, plus fan meet-and-greets and three shows. I was burned out. And I wanted to control my own destiny. One hairdresser caught a glimpse of my schedule and she said, “Oh, honey, what are you doing?” She had two little girls and was very maternal. I liked her a lot. “You think it’s too much?” I asked her. “It’s more than too much,” she said. “That’s insane.” She leaned in like she had a secret to tell me. “Listen,” she said. “In order to be creative, you have to have room for play in your schedule. It helps ground you to have that time to yourself. Hell, to just stare at the wall if you want. People need that.” It must have gotten back to my father, what she’d said, because the next day, someone else was doing my hair. I never saw that hairdresser again.

until the sun dipped down beneath the horizon at dusk. He had felt closer to a drink in Tokyo than he had for months, and had resolved to attend a meeting every day for a month in order to find his balance again. There were plenty to choose from, most of them attended by US sailors from the nearby base. His Wednesday evening meeting was in a gazebo at the north end of Chatan beach, close to the Hilton. He checked his watch as he made his way to the gazebo, the sand warm between his toes. He had struggled to find the venue the first time, the familiar AA sign just visible in the darkening light. He took a folding chair from the stack at the rear of the gazebo and sat down at the back of the small congregation of men and women. It was a rich mixture of colour and age, a collection scraped from all strata of society and united only by their addictions. There were the usual unlikely alcoholics: the well-turned-out men and women who would have looked more at home at a tennis club or on a golf course. They sat among those who more readily fulfilled the stereotype of the drunk: red noses and bloodshot eyes, the unwashed and unwanted.

It took me two relapses,” I shared one evening at an AA meeting, “but I had my last drink in 2002 after I stared down my fears. Some of you may have been dealt a bad hand in life in one way or another, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reshuffle the cards.

They looked like alcoholics trying to choose between an AA meeting and a bender.

When we encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God’s will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not defiance. In A.A. we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol’s final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay.

Stoner forbids her from attending her AA and NA meetings because so many men go there.

He pitied Bill, of course, and he might have offered some encouragement, some advice, or a ride to his weekly AA meeting, but it seemed Bill was still in denial of his demons. Graham knew his own demons too well. They lived in the pediatric cancer ward.

The secret of AA is one drunk talking to another. There’s nothing else. Everything else in AA is to facilitate one drunk talking to another. We have conventions, we have meetings, we have literature, we’ve got all of that, but the real action is the sponsor talking to the alcoholic.

Most people using the term are referring to debate or criticism or other forms of oppositional confrontation, which are more closed communication processes of persuasion and influence aimed at winning a disagreement. Dialogue, in fact, is completely the opposite. It is a process of open and reflective speaking, hearing, learning, and discovery that is unfamiliar to most of us. It is more like what you would hear at a Quaker meeting or an AA meeting. After another

I ATTENDED THE FRIDAY noon meeting of an AA bunch known as the Insanity Group. The meeting was held in a dilapidated house in a poor section of town, and was supposedly a nonsmoking one. But people lit up in both the front and back doorways and flooded the house’s interior with amounts of smoke that few bars contain. The people in the Insanity Group had paid hard dues—in jails, detox units, car wrecks, and the kind of beer-glass brawls that quickly turn homicidal.

11. No clerics. What would you think about a religion with no clergy? We here at SoulBoom are all for it. One of the miracles of the Twelve-Step Recovery Program at AA is the lack of leadership roles. The inmates are running the asylum! Elected servant-leaders run the meetings for limited terms while following the adage “principles above personalities.” As expertly quoted in the Twelve Traditions of the AA Big Book, “For our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.” What if modern religion was like that? (Or politics, for that matter!) Leaders as trusted servants. We no longer need people with funny hats (whose only historical “expertise” was knowing how to read when most of the population didn’t) to interpret the holy writings for us. What if no member of this faith had more power or authority than any other member? What if, like at an AA meeting, there were regular, democratic elections, where a rotating staff of elected folks helped to serve the needs of the community… and nothing else?

Jessie nods. She’s going through a transition, too, having recently given up drinking. “What you’re saying reminds me of something I heard at an AA meeting. It’s the idea of being ‘right-sized.’ And I’m still trying to figure it out.” She pauses and takes a sip of coffee. “Can you give me an example?” I ask. I’ve missed these talks with Jessie. How we alternate between laughter and the deep questions of our inner lives. “Well, like alcohol for me. Alcohol became too big a part of my life. I couldn’t get through a day without it, so I’d spend way too much time thinking about when I would be able to drink. And then I’d drink too much, and the next morning would be shot because I felt terrible. I just couldn’t manage to keep it right-sized—drinking always seemed to take over. So I decided I had to quit. I’m wondering if there’s some wisdom there for you, too. Like, when Stewart got so upset because you couldn’t stop talking about Karl and Martina. Or when you felt like you were losing your mind because you were obsessing over how to handle the whole situation.

Years later my father too would take his own meaningful walk. He had a bad night on the drink where he fell through some bushes or something. And he talked to Debbie about it he following morning, and she said is this the way you want to live your life? and he said no. Then he went for a walk and quit drinking and hasn't had a drop since. Excuse me? You went for a walk? And quit drinking? I spent upward of $7 Million trying to get sober. I've been to six thousand AA meetings, not an exaggeration more an educated guess, I've been to 15 rehabs. I've been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for 30 years. Been to deaths door...and you went for a fucking walk? I'll tell you where you can take a walk. But. My dad can't write a play, star on friends, help the helpless, and he doesn't have $7 million to spend on anything. Life has it's tradeoffs I suppose.

Whatever science has done to destroy the world, it has unquestionably saved the lives of women and their babies. Nature is not gentle with us when left to her own devices. Now we survive childbirth and face the dilemma turning fifty. Mary Wollstonecraft never trod this path. Greedy for more and more life, we seldom appreciate what we have. Many of my friends have become mothers in their forties and their babies are beautiful and smart. We have extended the limits of life, yet we dare to rage at growing old. It seems damned ungrateful. But then we baby boomers are a damned ungrateful bunch. Nobody gave us limits. So we are good at squandering and complaining, bad at gratitude. And when we discover life has limits, we try to wreck ourselves in anger before we learn the importance of surrender. We are the AA kids, the qualification generation. We have to be hurled to the bottom again and again before we come to understand that life is about surrender. And if the bottom doesn't rise to meet us, we dive into it, carrying our loved ones with us. Only a lucky few swim back up to air and light.

One of them told me the craving disappeared as soon as we turned the electricity on,” Mueller said. “Then, we turned it off, and the craving came back immediately.” Eradicating the alcoholics’ neurological cravings, however, wasn’t enough to stop their drinking habits. Four of them relapsed soon after the surgery, usually after a stressful event. They picked up a bottle because that’s how they automatically dealt with anxiety. However, once they learned alternate routines for dealing with stress, the drinking stopped for good. One patient, for instance, attended AA meetings. Others went to therapy. And once they incorporated those new routines for coping with stress and anxiety into their lives, the successes were dramatic. The man who had gone to detox sixty times never had another drink. Two other patients had started drinking at twelve, were alcoholics by eighteen, drank every day, and now have been sober for four years.

and if that means I’m destined for hell, then I just hope they have weekly AA meetings.

(Incidentally, the word “pigeon”—as applied to an A.A. newcomer or prospect—was probably coined by Dr. Bob himself. “He used that word,” said Smitty, and one A.A. recalled that Doc would often announce at a meeting, “There’s a pigeon in Room so-and-so who needs some attention.’ ” Or he might refer to the patient as “a cookie.”)

God doesn’t rescue perfect people. He wants people with problems. People with nothing to fix have nothing to say to God. Those who are poor in spirit, those who are in mourning, those who are meek—those are blessed (Matt. 5:3–5) because they can be filled, can be comforted, can be helped. He never said, “Blessed are those who have their act together.” If nothing is broken, nothing can be fixed. We are drawn to this gospel message because we have problems. And after joining a church, we spend our next forty years trying to hide our problems. Having no problems is a problem. The self-righteous attitude of thinking we have no problems is what birthed Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1940s. People found that in A.A. meetings they could still have struggles; they could still be needy. In fact, they had to confess their shortcomings at every meeting. The church today is making great strides in embracing this biblical attitude. The church should be a place where it’s safe to be unfinished, incomplete, and needy.

Effectively imitating the model of AA meetings, feminist consciousness-raising groups will take place in communities

You’re better than an AA meeting, Marigold. And way cheaper than a therapist.” She laughed, then trailed off into a wistful sigh. “I need a friend, Marigold. I wish you would wake up.” But for my sake… or for hers?    

At first I didn't mind, since we were now “strangers”, I no longer had to do their dishes, take them to AA meetings, make sure they’d taken their pills, fight them off, go to counselling with them, worry about them, be jealous of them, suspect them of lying, miss them, hold their babies, take them to the hospital, help them move, fantasize about them, comment on their haircuts, see their points, admire their looks, proffer my goodwill, keep their secrets, pacify them, reassure them, seek their approval, recover from their abuses, read their manifestos, find them unreliable, try to see their good qualities, hope they’d vote, impress them, ignore their stupidity, or compete with them for jobs and housing.

In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.

In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are hundreds of millions of people who still need help who are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.

I don’t have a spare two weeks for more than two years. That’s how booked out I am. I have commitments and I always keep them. It’s how I earn the big dollars. It’s why, amongst the slim echelons of ghostwriters in the world, I’m famous. It’s why Mr Basketball has waited twelve months to meet me and agreed to sandwich it into a day we were both flying to other cities. My flight left in an hour.

Little did anyone know what addictions and sins I was subjected to as a child from a similar ‘fallen angel’. I couldn’t bear sharing what had happened to me at the group AA meetings—too humiliating. I only shared the secret with a select few and requested it be kept confidential. More than the special attention the priest received, I was overwhelmed with the eerie resemblance he had to my abuser. His pale freckled skin and strawberry-blond hair made me uncomfortable in his presence. I could feel my abuser’s satanic touch when in the same room as that man. But I was in a mechanical state, staying the course, hoping something miraculous would pull me out of my miring in the past. This perseverance contributed to being the turning point of my recovery, that being when I told him what had happened. “What’s the name of this priest, Marco?” Father Todd said. I told him. To which he replied, “He was arrested for molesting another boy, and he did some prison time.” “I did hear about that, Father,” I said. “You should go to the diocese. They’ll appoint a therapist to you. I’ll give you the contact names,” he said, pulling out a pad of paper with all the information I'd need.

The questions raised by Lucretia [Mott]'s life are "How are you called into action?" and "Are you faithful to that call?" Your actions might be public or so quiet that they are never notices, which Emily [Dickinson] would have applauded. Your act of courage might be taking the time and developing the spirit to reconcile a relationship. Or it might be simply getting out of bed if you suffer from depression or going to that first A.A. meeting. You might be quietly writing letters to political prisoners through Amnesty International or sending anonymous donation to help the orphans in South Africa. You might take time each week to go to the hospital nursery to rock the neglected babies with AIDS. You may have a strong desire to cultivate your own garden and participate in growing the food you eat, allowing time for your inner spirit to grow and be nurtured as well. You may be protecting and valuing time as a parent. It is not important whether our actions are considered large or small; it is important that they stem from the center of our being. When we learn to live from our own authenticity, we activate our still inner voice. Although Lucretia [Mott] was a lead singer on the world stage, she would have been perfectly happy singing backup for someone else -- as long as the music was right and all the people were included in the dancing.

We’re not just some higher form of animal that’s got a little better brain and a thumb that can meet the first finger to grasp a weapon or light a fire and so make us superior. We’re a different breed entirely. We’re unique because of the universal law that like begets like—a rosebush can’t produce a lily of the valley, and a cow can’t produce a colt. If God is a spiritual being, then we are spiritual beings.

I hope it won't come to that," Kate said. "Me too. I may have to go to my AA meetings twice a week until this is over to stay sober," Jessup said.

Could you at least give me some time to get accustomed to the idea and get to know you before we are wed?” He sighed and nodded with obvious reluctance. “Within reason.” “One year?” she asked in the sweetest voice she could manage. His silver gaze glinted as he frowned. “One month.” “Six months?” she ventured, struggling to maintain her saccharine, imploring tone. “One month,” he repeated. His arms crossed over his broad chest as his frown deepened. “Four months?” Angelica begged, hating the desperation in her voice. But she needed time to devise a plan on how to get out of this predicament. “One month.” His tone was firm, implacable, autocratic. And there was something unnerving about the way he looked at her, as if he knew she sought escape. She sighed, exhausted with his refusal to yield. “You will negotiate with my father, but not with me. Some suitor you are!” Biting back her temper, she gentled her voice. “Six weeks, please?” Burnrath nodded. “Very well, six weeks it is.” He smiled suddenly and a small dimple appeared in his cheek. “I suppose I should take the time to court you properly. Now, let’s seal the bargain with a kiss.” He grasped her shoulders, but Angelica stepped back. The idea of his lips on hers made her knees turn to water and her stomach leap around in the most alarming manner. “A-a handshake should suffice, I think.” His rich laughter overwhelmed her senses. “Come now, you are to be my bride. No kiss, no bargain, my beauty,” he challenged. “Do not tell me you are afraid.” Angelica lifted her chin. Hell if he would call her a coward! “Very well.” She stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek, shocked at the thrill rushing up her spine at that small contact. He smelled of exotic spices. “D-do we have a bargain then?” she asked, hating how her voice shook. The vampire’s eyes seemed to glow dangerously. With a low growl, he pulled her into his arms. She gasped at the feel of the warm steel bands holding her to his large, hard body. “That is not what I had in mind.” Keeping his arm around her, he stroked her back as he tipped her chin up with his other hand to meet his smoldering silver gaze. With one finger, he lightly traced her cheek before tangling his fingers in her hair. The vampire’s breath was warm on her face as he whispered, “This is a kiss.” His

Roseanne Boyland, 34, had never been much interested in politics, but she adored children, particularly her two nieces. She became convinced that the QAnon conspiracy theories were real, especially one that claimed that children were being trafficked in furniture shipped by the online retailer Wayfair. Somehow, that led her to seeing Trump as a savior of endangered children, and from there, it was easy to believe that she had to go to Washington, DC, to help stop the steal and thereby save the children from pedophiles. It didn’t help that Boyland suffered from substance abuse and that pandemic restrictions on gatherings had cut her off from her AA meetings.

Dear Sara, First I want to apologize for everything that I have done. I am so sorry for hurting you. I was just so angry with Tom; I had no right to take it out on you. I thought it would be best if I moved out of the house for a while. I started attending AA meetings on Monday nights. I have also been talking to a counselor. He has helped me to face a lot of the problems that I couldn’t deal with on my own. A lot of the drinking and the violence was from the fact that I miss my mother. I never got a chance to see her or even get to hear her voice. My dad hated me for all these years because he blamed me for her death. Sara, I had no one. No one to talk to. No one to hug me. No one to tuck me in at night. I never had a father/son talk. I envied you. You grew up on a farm with people that loved you. I think a part of me was jealous. For once in my life, I have someone to love and I don’t know how to handle it. The problem is not you, Sara. It never was. The problem is me. I need to learn how to love, so that I can be a husband for you and a father for my children. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take and if you want to divorce me, then I’ll understand. The court hearing is in two weeks. I know that you have to testify. When I turned myself in, I told the police that I hit you and you fell on the floor, causing your cuts and bruises. I know that I lied to them, but I really need some help, Sara. If I’m locked up in prison, I can’t get the help that I need. The prison system doesn’t help those guys. They come out of prison doing the same things that they got locked up for. I want to change and be a better man. The only way I can do that is if you testify that I only hit you once since we’ve been married. I hate to put you in this position, and if you want to tell the truth, then I understand. You do what you feel that you have to do. I just feel positive about our future. With the counselor and the AA meetings, I know that we can finally be that perfect couple that you always wanted us to be. I love you and our beautiful children. Give them a big kiss for me, baby. I want to hold you in my arms so bad, but I know I can’t, not until I get the help I need. Love, Mike

Mike walked out the front door and slammed it behind him. A drink? He told me that he had been attending AA meetings and he wasn’t drinking anymore. That liar. How could he have made all those promises to me? They were all just a pack of lies. You did it again, Sara, falling again for his crap.” CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Real Mike Is Back Two years went by. Everything was pretty much the same. Mike did his thing and I did mine. We barely even saw each other. At least the beatings had stopped. He’d come home from work while I was on my way out the door to work. Most of the time, he’d be gone in the afternoons when I got back to the house. The kids didn’t miss him. Michael Jr. never really got a chance to know him as a father anyway, and Michelle had more respect for Rex and Tom than she had for her own father. The kids and I spent a lot of time at the neighbors’ house.

That gave me time to go back outside and throw that definitely not repairable tricycle into the Dumpster down the street. “I hate Mike Farraday.” Oh my goodness, did I say that out loud? Michael Jr. scared him to death. If it had not been for my little boy today, there’s no telling how bad Mike would have beaten me. All of the AA meetings and counseling is not helping him at all. What was the deal with him and Chris? He spent more time with him than his own family. It didn’t matter anymore. I was tired of all the different changes. I wanted my kids to grow up in a stable, happy, loving environment, and it just wasn’t going to happen at that house. Mike just wasn’t getting any better. It had been eight years. I wasn’t even thirty and I felt like I was eighty.

All our problems would melt away if we could sit peacefully in a room. Catherine had heard that somewhere, probably at an AA meeting. Fractured pieces of wisdom, cobbled together from half-remembered axioms: put them together, and you had what passed for a philosophy, in the twilight world of the drunkard. And sober drunks could be just as dull as the real kind. Something else she’d learned at meetings.

Traumatized human beings recover in the context of relationships: with families, loved ones, AA meetings, veterans’ organizations, religious communities, or professional therapists. The role of those relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling shamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened. BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, The Body Keeps the Score:

As for learning communication skills, where would A.A. and Al-Anon be without communications, without the caring and honest sharing that activate the meetings? And where better to practice these skills than at home?

I’m interested in religion, only because certain churches seem to be a place where things can be talked about. What does your life mean? Do you believe in something bigger than you? Is there something harmful about gratifying every single desire you have that is harmful?… One place where I discovered stuff was being talked about was AA meetings. I’m not in [Alcoholics Anonyous], but I went to open meetings.. There’s a certain amount of goo, and there’s a certain amount of serious [stuff]. Like the fact that it takes enormous courage to appear weak. Hadn’t heard that anywhere else. I was just starting to entertain the fact that that might be true.

I went to a few AA meetings and realized that, in essence, the Twelve Steps were supposed to teach me how to have a conscience, how to care about things other than myself, how to correct my mistakes and act with honor and integrity, as well as how to understand good behavior and taking responsibility for bad behavior. They taught me how to understand a sense of “good” that went beyond my personal feelings, lusts, desires, and opinions. These very basic concepts of good and bad gave me a concrete foundation.

The worst were the Christians who would try to have ‘a quiet word’ with him before the meeting, trotting out the usual shit. They based the twelve steps of recovery on the Bible. He needed to say his prayers every morning. Fire and brimstone. Nothing worse than a converted alcoholic who then becomes a bullying AA zealot.

WHY DO PEOPLE in A.A. claim they pay the biggest membership dues in the world? That’s easy. Early in life, you set out to deconstruct everything good you thought you’d turn out to be. When you’re finished doing that, you foul your blood, piss your brains into the street, trade off your tomorrows, destroy your family, betray your friends, court suicide on a daily basis, and become an object of ridicule and contempt in the eyes of your fellow man. That’s for openers. The rest of the dance card involves detox, jail, padded cells, and finally, the cemetery. If you want your soul shot out of a cannon, or you want to enter a period of agitated depression and psychoneurotic anxiety known as a Gethsemane Experience, untreated alcoholism is a surefire way to get there. The big surprise at your first A.A. meeting is the apparent normalcy of the people in the room. They come from every socioeconomic background imaginable. The only thing most of them have in common is the neurosis that has governed their lives.

This was not an ordinary AA group. The failed, the aberrant, the doubly addicted, and the totally brain-fried whose neurosis didn't even have a name found their way to the Work the Steps or Die, Motherfucker meeting: strippers from the Quarter, psychotic street people, twenty-dollar hookers, peckerwood fundamentalists, leather-clad, born-again bikers, women who breast-fed their infants in a sea of cigarette smoke, a couple of cops who had done federal time, male prostitutes dying of AIDS, parolees with a lean, hungry look who sought only a signature on an attendance slip for their P.O.'s, methheads who drank from fire extinguishers in the joint, and Vietnam vets who wore their military tattoos and black- or olive-colored 1st Cav. and airborne T-shirts and still heard the thropping of helicopter blades in their sleep.

The chicken's great," says Grace on the TV screen as she gnaws on a chicken bone, much to Will's disgust. I've always felt a kinship with Grace Adler's character. Maybe it's the red hair or the fact that she's Jewish, or the way in one episode she pretended to be an alcoholic so that she could get free Krispy Kreme doughnuts and hot cocoa at AA meetings. I can relate to all of those things. There's very little I wouldn't do for a free Krispy Kreme doughnut.

When I lived in Manhattan, I went to a lot of AA meetings in the city, in Connecticut, and in New Jersey. I won’t say I was unhappy in my sobriety—it saved my life and my career—but I didn’t find the meetings that fulfilling. After three years of sobriety and recovery, the Twelve Step meetings started seeming familiar and repetitive. To me they were like trips to the dentist—necessary and healthy, but not anything I enjoyed or looked forward to. I was kind of puzzled by how, in meetings, some people would glow like they were at a religious revival. At that point in my recovery, I’d never felt anything like that. The Twelve Steps made sense to me, and they’d made a big difference in my life, but they never revved me up or made energy rush up my spine. I assumed I must have had a spiritual awakening somewhere along the way, because I was sober, I hadn’t relapsed in almost two years, and I was feeling okay.

I’D HAD A SLIP from my A.A. program the previous year. The causes aren’t important now, but the consequence was the worst bender I ever went on—a two-day blackout that left me on the edges of delirium tremens and with the very real conviction I had committed a homicide. The damage I did to myself was of the kind that alcoholics sometimes do not recover from—the kind when you burn the cables on your elevator and punch a hole in the basement and keep right on going. But I went back to meetings and pumped iron and ran in the park, and relearned one of the basic tenets of A.A.—that there is no possession more valuable than a sober sunrise, and any drunk who demands more out of life than that will probably not have it. Unfortunately the nocturnal hours were never good to me. In my dreams I would be drunk again, loathsome even unto myself, a public spectacle whom people treated with either pity or contempt. I would wake from the dream, my throat parched, and walk off balance into the kitchen for a glass of water, unable to extract myself from memories about people and places that I had thought no longer belonged to my life. But the feelings released from my unconscious by the dream would not leave me. It’s like blood splatter on the soul. You

The place I felt most welcome and comfortable was AA meetings, even though there was a sticky-sweet optimism there I found insufferable.

aa.nkh se aa.nkh milaanaa to suKHan mat karnaa Tok dene se kahaanii kaa mazaa jaataa haihe poet/lover advises that if eyes ever meet eyes, one shouldn’t interrupt the quiet communication with speech. The real communication is wordless.

OK. So here’s the deal. In order to get the free Anna Ameci’s donuts without having to wait in line, we gotta attend a meeting.” “What kind of meeting?” She’s subtly dragging me over to the swings and I let her. Because fuck it, if I gotta spend the day with her, I’m gonna make it one to remember. She sits on a swing and I start pushing her. “It’s…” I sigh. “It’s just people talking. You don’t have to talk. And I’m not fucking talking either. We just grab our coffee and donuts, have a seat and listen to these people talk while we eat, then at the break, we grab another donut and hit the road. Sound good?” “Sounds good.” I stop the swing. “OK, let’s hit it. I’m hungry.” She doesn’t complain and that’s nice. Usually my nieces are loud and bossy. I like the new quiet model. Inside the gym, the AA meeting is just getting started. “Here.” I point to the donut spread. “It’s a good one today.

You can’t kick people out of an AA meeting, Alexa.

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By this stage I had switched my patronage to AA—as Tolstoy might have said, drug addicts are all alike whereas every alcoholic is crazy in his own way. This led to far more interesting meetings and I had decided that if you were going to spend your life on the wagon, you might as well be entertained.

You know what they say at [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings. Coincidence is your Higher Power acting with anonymity.' 'I didn't know you were in the program.' 'I'm not. I go for the dialogue. It's great material.

After 15 years in America, I learned just two things for sure about America. One, they give you three meals a day in jail, no exceptions. Two, the only real way to make a living in this place is to be a bullshit artist. After 20+ years in America including 8 years of AA meetings, I decided that I finally have an American Dream. My american dream is to drink beer all day and host overtalkers anonymous meetings. Please vote for Andrew Yang.

Nobody knows exactly what he felt, because he didn’t share the dark bits. But the dissipation of dignity can drive even the strongest men mad. He didn’t sleep and went to a lot of AA meetings.

As the Divine Tongue, I came here not only to perform my duties as a taster... but also to meet with various authority figures and key members of the culinary industry. Someday, I will shoulder both the Nakiri family as well as Japan's culinary world. It was imperative that I be shown off so as to impress upon the right people that I was a person to be respected and followed. It was simply a business transaction, one meant to further Nakiri interests. Whenever I left the Nakiri mansion, it was always for some official business like that. Looking back on it now... I think that the young me was so used to being led around that she never tried to look at things for herself." "That can't be right. Um... as the daughter of the Mito Group... I got to officially meet with you a time or two when we were both kids. Even back then, I thought you were amazing, Miss Erina. A-as another kid from a big business family... I know what you're going through." "Mito?" "Um! N-not to imply that my family is anywhere near as important as the Nakiris! And I'd never do anything so rude and disrespectful as imply that the two of us are in any way equal! It's just... I know what it's like to be bound by family duty." I will not have the Mito family heir showing any signs of meek girliness! Listen, Ikumi. You must be strong! Think of nothing else! "But in my case, the pressure from my family got to be too much. It overwhelmed me, and, well... I kinda went off the rails until recently. You had to be under way more pressure than I ever was, Miss Erina. But you always appeared graceful and acted with dignity.

There is a hedonistic element to alcohol,” said Ulf Mueller, a German neurologist who has studied brain activity among alcoholics. “But people also use alcohol because they want to forget something or to satisfy other cravings, and these relief cravings occur in totally different parts of the brain than the craving for physical pleasure.” In order to offer alcoholics the same rewards they get at a bar, AA has built a system of meetings and companionship—the “sponsor” each member works with—that strives to offer as much escape, distraction, and catharsis as a Friday night bender. If someone needs relief, they can get it from talking to their sponsor or attending a group gathering, rather than toasting a drinking buddy. “AA forces you to create new routines for what to do each night instead of drinking,” said Tonigan. “You can relax and talk through your anxieties at the meetings. The triggers and payoffs stay the same, it’s just the behavior that changes.

Despite these uncertainties, researchers have found some evidence that AA works. When two things go together and researchers want to know which one causes the other, they sometimes try to track them over time and see which comes first—assuming that causation moves forward across time, so the cause precedes the effect. After tracking more than two thousand men with drinking problems for two years, a team led by John McKellar of Stanford University concluded that attendance at AA meetings led to fewer future problems with drinking (and not the reverse—they found no evidence that the presence or absence of drinking problems affected attendance at meetings later on).

Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.

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