One Day at a Time

Oh James!

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

Tolerance. What a trait to possess. What a promise too. The co-authors of the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” claim that once we are practicing the Step Ten procedure – all five parts – that "love and tolerance of others is our code." (84:2)

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine not hating and not being overly sensitive to the injustices real or imaged of others? Someone steps on our toes and we are like, “Ho hum . . .yaaawn ”. Cool as a cuke. Real life James Bond types. Cool! The felt top of the baccarat table blushes green and bright like just cut grass while hot women in bikinis one hanging on each of our arms fawn over our . . . . . . . . . . sorry. I went over the top. Again.

What the hell is tolerance anyway? We sometime love to point to someone’s ‘intolerance’ when they have the audacity to disagree with us. But isn’t that showing how intolerant we are of others too – the every same “crime” of which we are now judging of having committed against us? Is tolerance the ability to “put up with” something that irritates us? Yeah fine, but might that mean that we still can be irritated? That doesn’t sound too cool.

007 doesn’t harbor ill will and grudges against his enemies, does he? Heck no. He takes care of business with only a tiniest bead of sweat, calmly steps over the bloody bodies and returns downstairs  to the casino for one more game and a nightcap.

Let’s see what Miriam Webster says about tolerance:

<sup>1: capacity to endure pain or hardship : endurance, fortitude, stamina

2 a: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own b: the act of allowing something.</sup>

That means that if I disagree with your view and get upset with you over it because I am overly sensitive to people places and things but I bite my tongue about it and manage to avoid a confrontation with you – that I am a “tolerant” person? Uh, no. Not if I am secretly upset with you – resentful , really. It also probably means that I am a pussy.

Being a pushover and a doormat is not tolerance – no matter how many times we pat ourselves on the back and feel superior to our enemy for “keeping the peace”.

If you cut me off on the highway and my first inclination is to road-rage your ass off onto the shoulder or at least get up close enough to you so you can see my middle finger but don’t do it because I am afraid and I let you go without further incident ----- that is showing tolerance, right?

No. Sorry. I don’t think so.

Even if I manage to dot it it doesn't. Both show exactly the same thing; that I am out of control - that my emotions rule me and that I am overly sensitive to you and so therefor you control me.

True tolerance is synonymous with forgiveness. As a fourth step promise, the Big Book informs us that as the result of praying and asking for tolerance, pity and patience toward those we resent that Go d will show us how to “take a tolerant view” – see things from a new perspective. That perspective is that others are perhaps sick – as we were or maybe ‘are’ sick. They show symptoms and and we do not like those symptom. We resent them. They piss us off – annoy us. So we ask God to show us how to be kind – how to be tolerant. Notice that we don’t ask him to install tolerance or kindliness or even patience.

"So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love." (83:0)

We ask him to “show us how” to be that way. We are going to have to take action in order to get it. Shit. More work. Right? Yup!

Making allowances for others -- because our view of them no longer disregards the injustices committed upon them and their own badly affected psyches. We take into consideration that they once had an innocence that has been stolen and so we experience this as a "giving before" or 'forgiveness'. It is the absence of judgment. It is not playing God. When we stop playing God because we have turned our lives and wills over to God then tolerance follows. The evidence of having "let go" is a tolerant view – which is love - and a higher threshold for not hating them for their trespasses. Instead we are forearmed with forethought in the form of this awareness and we automatically forgive those who trespass against us.

007 is not interested in getting even with those who have stepped on his toes. He is interested in executing his primary purpose today and moving on to the next one tomorrow - without prejudice. Without negative emotions mucking up the works. Now that is true love – true tolerance. What a code.

Love and tolerance of others is our code. (84:2)

Peace,
Danny S - RLRA

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The Role of Management

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

Can you drink OK at work? Driving around the The Peninsula of Doom here one just has to follow behind a landscaper pulling his trailer anytime after eleven AM on a Friday to know how many would answer "Sure" to that question - and man, good-God-almighty there are a lot of landscapers around here. I think its 3:1 on total population.

I just had to stop drinking during work hours. Damn! Only in my twenties too. I had been looking so forward to climbing out of the Bronx into that big Queens apartment in the sky and getting totally sloshed with the boys in the suits and the company cars. I had heard about the "three martini lunch" and think, How cool!

Yeah. Keep dreaming.

A mild hangover effect would kick in and the day would be finished. Getting a hangover without having had the benefits of a good drunk sucks. I would end up with my office door locked and my head down on the desk or else I would be sprawled out on my office Lazyboy chair. But money and power where still in the site of my gun and alcohol had not yet pulled its cruel punchline by rearranging the priority: Money, Sex, Power --- Alcohol. Later it would be: Alcohol - Money, Sex, Power. Impossible.

That was before I damaged my body into the irreparable state it is in today by working it like a fool. It like bending a wire coat-hanger back and forth repeatedly until it just heats up and pops into two pieces in your hands. Later just one beer or a single sweet slice of that drippy rum cake at "Il Boschetto" on Gun Hill Road and VAROOOOM! It would be

How can management manage the unmanageable alkie? The owner of a business is just as powerless over the powerless alcoholic as the alcoholic is powerless over alcohol. Of course he could just sack and replace the offending fellow or gal. Sometimes that is the only solution. It is never an easy task considering that alcoholics often possess extraordinary energy levels and exhibit suburb creative qualities that are valuable in the workplace - if only they could be harnessed.

In cases when the worker or associate is just a plain old self-absorbed, alcohol abusing, wife beating, dead beat who would not be interested in stopping if the solution were placed at his feet on a bed of golden straw -- well, what can one say then? Screw em'.

In the incredibly well organized book, "Alcoholics Anonymous" - or as it is called in the room of AA, "The Book", the chapter To Employers gives business managers a set of tools that are in essence the very same instructions that we alcoholics are given in the preceding chapters to follow when we are 'working with others.'

Management is being asked to begin the preliminary 'qualification' process of a standard twelve step call. We can be called in later to 'close the deal' and take him through the steps. It is quite detailed and specific. The employer is told what to say, when to say it even what not to say and do.

I have to know this stuff because when an employer or a business associate realizes that I have solved my own drinking problem they may come to me and ask how I did it and what should they do for the sick and suffering employee or even a business partner.

I must be of MAXIMUM service and this entire book is a valuable tool for education in these instances.

If my attitude is "Well, I'm not an employer so I'll just be aware of the chapter but I won't need any advice or to follow anyof the directions int it", then I probably haven't learned or adopted much about self-LESSness -- Have I?

If I skip a chapter because the title sounds like it might not apply to ME - "Oh wonderful ME" - well.........what else can be said?

On page 142-143, employers are told to make a determination as to whether or not he is a real alcoholic who wants give up alcoholic sickness. They want the employer to ask him whether or not he is willing to submit to anything in order to get well.

Is he willing to make a commitment to NEVER-EVER drink for the REST OF HIS LIFE and beyond -- otherwise be prepared to fire his butt the very next time he relapses.

They are told how if a guy just wants to go to rehab to dry out and then expects to be able to drink like a gentlemen - not to waste time with him.

If someone comes up to me in my business and says "What should we do about ol drunken Joe", and my best shot is "Tell him to go to an AA meeting"; or if I all I know is to offer to take him to one myself and then see if he "keeps coming back" -- then I am not following what worked for the co-founders in this area and I am definitely do some balking on this Program of clear-cut directions.

I'll go to meetings, speak in the jails, make the coffee, put away not one but TWO - by God - folding chairs at each meeting and pat myself on the back for being a good little AA-Bot and still I am not at maximum service.

Peace,

Danny S - RLRA

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Alcoholism, Depression and Meds

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

After attending enough meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous you begin to recognize that very many of us alky wahlkys have a few other . . . . . uh . . . mental issues besides the "mental obsession" characteristic of alcoholism. We seem to have a skewed share of depression, anxiety - some bi-polar disorder - to name the most common ones.

A number of years ago, a few years after having recovered from alcoholism, I experienced a bad bout of depression.

This was the real deal - following on the heels of 911. It was real, clinically diagnosed depression - not just feeling blue and full of self-pity for not being able to get laid, a job, a car or whatever reason it seems that so many of us get into our internal whining funks blaming poor old 'Demon EtOH' when all we really need is a counselor to unlock us. Nothing to do with alcoholism. Everything to do with self pity.

I had recovered from alcoholism and was yet "young" in spiritual growth and had "practice" living the new way of life we call the "12 steps" - you know. . . . beginning each day with a set of certain prayers and meditation, praying particular prayers and meditating and inventorying all throughout the day - and before bed - the typical 12 step lifestyle - - - - all that stuff that the folks so often seem to never learned is actually thor even knew. If some asshole takes medical advice from another asshole sitting in a folding chair in a church basement - instead of picking up the spiritual toolkit that is laid out in the Big Book - that ought not be a reflection on my own relationship with my own creator and my life - it s got no bearing on me, my sobriety, my concept e AA Program - --- and I sought help from a doctor whose care included Effexor.

It worked fine.

After becoming more and more disciplined spiritually and growing in that spirituality - I then, again under my doctors' direction, slowly weaned off -the meds. it took about six months or so - not days or weeks. IN my case I discovered what MANY of us Twelve Step practitioners find - - that the new-found and continually growing spiritually eradicates depression even better than the drugs ever did. WAY BETTER!

There was no involvement of AA with my depression. No sponsors or members were consulted - NO ONE human except my doct

of spirituality or practice of the AA Program.

AA doesn’t claim to have a 'fix' for stupid and taking medical advice from a sponsor who is not a doctor is just plain idiotic. Unfortunately the fellowship also is not short on kookie Deputy Dogs who would just as soon impress us by flashing their sobriety “badges” feeding their already bursting-at-the-seams egos by feeling ill-conceived direction to folks ill prepared to use the God given balls with which they were born -- than they would show us what they were like, what happened and what they are like now.

The Book specifically tells us that we alcoholics following the path of the book should see doctors if and when we need. It does not say go see ol' fish-breath sitting in the back of the room by the coffee machine where he can ogle the young 'chicks” with lower-lumbar tattoos and purple thongs pulled way up their wazzoos who just rolled in from the NA meeting across town, the courthouse or the local wind-up joint and have him tell us what to do with our medications.

Peace,

Danny S - RLRA

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Getting Rid of God

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

Rejecting God - or someone elses' concept of God. That is how the AA spore was germinated in the first place - when Bill rejected Ebby's Oxford God.

Wanted nothing to do with it!

It was after Ebby told him to use his own concept instead - so that Ebby could continue his Oxford sales "routine" on him Bill saw that he was free to accept his very own concept of God as long as it was God - however right or wrong that concept was.

HE WAS OFF TO THE SPIRITUAL RACES and AA got born.

Like all religions the Oxford Group would have been happy to have Bill (and everyone) accept their concept of God but if he had done that AA probably would not be here today. Not as is anyway.  It woul d probably be know as the "Latter Day Saints of Bill Wilson" or "The Wilsonians" or something. Bill might be getting a 'spiritual-chubby' right now in his grave -- just me mentioning it.

So most of us end up riding with Bill W. on that liberal idea and NOT the Holy Rolling Oxford idea of God!

Besides, everyone knows that God is a Big Old Fat Guy with a white beard sitting on a giant purple velvet lined throne with Jesus bouncing on one knee and Elvis on His other knee --- and he calls everyone "Cuz".  You know that, right? RIGHT?

"Hey Cuz! Welcome to Heaven, man"

Peace,
Danny S - RLRA

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The Alcohol 'Disease Model' - AA or Not?

_{Occasionally I post some of these Q&As that I receive from my Internet Advice Column . These are from my alcoholism help site “The Broad Highway.” They are real and recent questions from readers.}

Why in the word is alcoholism considered a disease?

Blitzkreig
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Hi Blitz,

Not everyone does Blitz. Just some. You may be happy to learn that those with the most experience and success with alcoholism and alcoholics do not consider alcoholism to be a disease at all. There are many people in AA who THINK the disease model is an AA concept- but it is not. It is merely part of a movement to re-classify alcoholism as a disease and is product of the medical profession. For them it is all about money.

Look to the experts - AA. AA's co-founders NEVER ONCE refer to alcoholism as a disease in their Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” – even though they certainly had the opportunity to do so. This is a glaring omission and likely intentional. The word “disease” is avoided like the plague in the AA book. Bill Wilson, in an interview years later was asked if he believed in the disease concept. He did not – and neither did the co-authors/co-founders and I don’t either.

The disease concept/model comes from the medical industry as it hones in on the alcohol and drug recovery business. They are, after all, in “the disease business” and if alcoholism can be classified as a disease – they’re good as gold!

They are successfully doing it too – taking back the business they abandoned years ago because they had no success and couldn’t make money at it – (Alcoholics don’t really pay their bills very often — now do they?)

Now, today – fueled by the health insurance industry, who pays the doctors and rehabs even as the “treatment” inevitably fails. What a deal! The rich get richer and real alcoholics die from a disease that does NOT even exist – and cannot be “treated” — from chronic alcoholism stemming from spiritual malady that is beyond the capabilities of medical science and "BOARD APPROVED" opportunists — and NOT DISEASE. Nice.

Think of how rich exterminators would get if they could convince the world that alcoholism where a rodent?

Well that is exactly what doctors have done.

Whether it really is a 'disease' or not not may be a semantic and money issue for some time and until everyone is one the same page with with words -which will be never - we will never really know will we?

Hope that helps.

Peace,
Danny S – RLRA

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