One Day at a Time

"Alcoholics Anonymous" Metaphors

Being a writer there are some word usage tricks and slights of pen and keystroke that we use to try and excite, titillate and quite frankly entertain ourselves as well as the person flipping the pages - or at least beckon for that notable nod of the noggin - or a smile from a couplet of crappy or corny alliterations. You know, ' the perfect panda peed into the pail of putrid peanut butter'.

Another is a new and cool metaphor.

The Big Book is chock full of these and it has become standard practice among us Big book Thumpers, Twelve Step Attorneys and self appointed AA Jedi Knights to have them bandied about in workshops, conventions and recovery roundups -- or using them to break ice and gain  a chuckle and a thumbs up from a hard crowd at our local “Don’t drink and go to meetings” podiums.

These have become AA standards. Everyone knows about the "Triumphant Arch" through which we march to freedom - and all of its components.

The Keystone, the Foundation, the Cornerstone and what each of those signify to the Big Book student.

Or the fictitious and therefore silly-assed 'Jaywalker' model on page 38. Sorry about that all you Jaywalker fans but there are just way too many real life examples showing us alkies far better specimens of mental obsession than Bill’s cartoonish, made-up buffon.  Maybe the co-authors decided to leave it in the book so non-alcoholics reading the Big Book could get an idea about alcoholic insanity and if so then maybe I should not be so hard on it. I’ll be careful in the future. It does seem to get a giggle out of those types each time it is read in a meeting doesn’t it? I still think the Jaywalker is silly and a tad light in the weight department.

But I am not a non-alcoholic am I?

One metaphor that is about as true and fitting as a Barney’s hand tailored three piece business suit yet never much spoken about in AA meetings is the little beauty found on page 129. Now of course just mentioning any page in the low hundreds can lead a roomful of would-be Thumpers straight into a synchronous Pavlovian yawn that would rival inning seven at Fenway Park in 1998.

That is because they would instantly recognize that any page 104 to page 121 is in Chapter Eight, “To Wives.” and that chapter is so often skimped or overlooked -- because after all, “ I ain’t a wife”.

Then there is the school to which I belong that says any such idea is indicative of nothing less than stiff, self-centered prickedness yet un-mastered.

That chapter eight has direction and information for us Twelve Steppers to use and that we must have down COLD if we are expected to help others following the direction and not just winging it - like so many of us have done before we know better. But before this digression pisses you straight off of this page like a fly on a porcelain toilet rim - let me get back to the metaphor.

The metaphor to which I am referring is the one that warns us that, "He" the recovered alcoholic dad "may not see at once that he has barely scratched a limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product."
(129:0)

Seriously when was the last time you ever heard of spirituality being compared to a limitless lode to be mined - like precious metals or gemstone? This is a rarely if ever referred to metaphor for spirituality that the co-founders use.

Many dirty words have four letters but in this case I suspect we are looking at a nin'er. that word is "limitless" The only thing that many of us like to think of as limitless is our insanity, which of course is only true if we fail to recover.

If Dr. Bob or one of the other co-founders - Bill Wilson, Clarence Snyder, Bill Dodsen - it doesnt matter who, walked into a typical meeting of Alcoholics anonymous today and told the attendees that he didn't plan on drinking - not only today but that he had "quit drinking liquor for good and all"1 or "stop drinking forever" 2 or suggest that we might need to "submit to anything to get well, to stop drinking forever?" 3

. . . . do you think that these ideas, original ideas, that the co-founders embraced and discovered to be effective in their recovery and include in their wholesale solution published in the Big Book would be equally embraced?

No frakin' way - not even if it were their experience that they were conveying. It might be like a Money Python skit:

"Hello. I've come here to find a newcomer to pass on the message because I have recovered and been given the power to help others."

"No you haven't "

"Yes I have."

"No you haven't"

"What a stupid concert."

Peace,

Danny S

1 The Doctors Nightmare
2 116:1
3 142:1