One Day at a Time

AA Makes "Snopes"

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

SNOPES

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How Long is "Any Length" . . Really?

Link: http://www.dannyschwarzhoff.net/screens/faq.htm

Stop being " green" and start getting "real" about alcoholism -- by taking the Twelve Steps

How long does it take to go through a formal Alcoholics Anonymous program?

Greengirl

___________________________________________

Hi Greengirl,

This is a question that I suppose everyone should ask. If they have a brain anyway. Unfortunately the answer coming back may kill them - if they are real alcoholic - and if they ask the wrong person.

Yes, there is such a thing as the "real alcoholic" - just as surely as there are folks with financial interests in the rehab-detox-additions industry who do NOT want YOU to know it. "addiction" is BIG BUSINESS and they also do not want you to recover and so they will misinform you about "how long" the twelve steps takes to "work" through - as well as their purpose.

The "formal" Alcoholics Anonymous program to which you are referring is the "Twelve Steps". So many people confuse the 'the Fellowship" with "the program" - fellowship or "going to meeting" is for as long as or whenever you want. However the suggested Twelve Steps (the Program) is designed to be begun and completed within a matter of days depending on each individual. Since each of the twelve steps does require immediate action into the next upon completion. Traditionally (as well as historically) the program took less than total of thirty days before the

desired result occurred. Bill Wilson was nine days, Dr. Bob about three weeks. In My case it was forty four days, but that was because I am slow starter and particularly prone to balking. The men I sponsor do it in around four weeks.

It is a race. The key is in remembering that most people in AA don’t consciously know the difference between the Fellowship and the program. They think that by attending meetings of AA that they are utilizing AA’s program of recovery – they are not. What do we do - stop drinking THEN pursue spiritually - or do we purse spirituality first SO THAT we have a spiritual awakening and consequently stop drinking?

Which idea do you prefer? Which one is the standing proposal heard in your Group? Go to any meeting and you will hear the former idea pushed vehemently - religiously.

“Just don’t drink - go to meetings - THEN when you’re ready we’ll talk about the steps."

OK? “But what about the real alcoholic” (21:1) who if he could “just don’t drink” then would not ever need to come to AA in the first place? You see the problem?

Greengirl, if alcoholics had the choice to “put the plug in the jug” then the problem would already be solved - without the spiritual experience that is the result of doing the steps. It becomes obvious that anyone who has such power over alcohol isn’t even an alcoholic (powerless) in the first place - and never need come to AA in the second.

People who push the meetings and fellowship first - BEFORE the Steps and Spirituality that is the result of taking those steps - ought to come to the funerals I have had to attend.

They have been the funerals of the people who needed to get to God as soon as possible and who heard the advice middle-of-the-road solutions based guys, brandishing medallions, spouting pithy and practiced "shares" from their folding chairs - telling them to "take their time" and "its not a race" - saying that “meeting makers make it” and rarely if ever talk about God or the Steps.

These are folks who somehow - probably because they aren’t even real alcoholics - have been able to rely upon the human aid of meetings and the camaraderie of fellowship to “stay away from a drink for one day” and have never experienced the insanity of the kind of obsession that us real McCoy’s experience.

Maybe that is why when they speak of "insanity" it consists of the stupid things they do in life - but doesn't include any reference to a "queer mental condition", "strange mental blank spot" or "peculiar mental twist" that the co-authors describe and with which ALL real alcoholics can identify.

Sorry, but simply 'drinking too much-too often' does not even approach the insanity of the first drink that real alkies experience.

When we alkies hear this, it seems so easy - confusing “simple” with “easy” is one of the things we do best. We take that easy way out - and WHAM - we get struck drunk - like a freight train hitting a stalled car on the tracks.

In talk about sobriety it is commonly thought that in order to stop drinking and remain sober, “You have to REALLY want it!” “It” being “sobriety”. Anyone who believes this is true is very naive about the malady, yet I have heard respected and experienced “addictions counselors” use just this terminology.

Really wanting sobriety never helped me. In fact “really wanting” sobriety and not being able to achieve it is what helped define me as an alcoholic in the first place.

If I could achieve anything I wanted, if only I wanted it badly enough, I would have never have proceeded through the tortuous life of a real alcoholic to begin with. Trust me. I have spent almost thirty years being sick and tired of being sick and tired, and even THAT miserable life was no match for the one-two punch of true alcoholism - obsession of mind COMBINED with physical craving. If a real alcoholic could stop drinking just because it made him sick and tired and then got fed up with being sick and tired - he wouldn't be a real alcoholic.

As real alcoholics we cannot stop drinking EVEN THOUGH we are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

We use the phrases like “willing to go to any length” - - It is possible to really want to be sober but not be willing to go to any length? I don’t know. Those dead guys don’t talk. They have lost the race - the obsession won.

God help me, I love AA more than anything on earth. I love meetings, friends, Traditions, AA History, Concepts ALL OF IT. It is right up there with my kids, my wife, family and God Himself. But unless Primary Purpose is our "primary purpose"- and we cut out all this treatment center crap that treats AA's Twelve Steps not as a solution but as another competing "Recovery Model" from which to garner market share - then I'm afraid we are going to find ourselves as cooked as a Christmas Turkey.

Please whatever you do --- do not fall for that "it's a lifetime process" bullshale that confuses spiritual growth with spiral awakening. Spiritual growth is a lifetime adventure, yes --- the recovery through a spiritual awakening is instantaneous and ca n happen now. That spiritual awakening and consequential recovery from alcoholism through he the twelves steps can be yours and those steps are fast acting as well as they are effective. If you a re a real alcoholic Greengirl then I suggest you keep it real- not green.

Peace and Love,

Danny S - RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

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Best If Used By . . . . . . . NOW!

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

Spiritual Awakenings Don't Last Forever

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Igor, would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?

Igor: And you won't be angry?

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: I will NOT be angry.

Igor: Abby someone.

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby someone. Abby who?

Igor: Abby Normal.

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby Normal?

Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name.

There is a small but very important moment in the Mayflower Hotel incident that is extremely significant to my own identification and I like to share it.

Here is this guy, Bill Wilson - who just six months prior had God Himself shooting off roman candles next to his hospital bed.....six months later he is in hotel lobby and he has made yet another insane decision to drink.

Apparently a spiritual experience does have a shelf-life. In Bills case - six months - UNLESS.... and we discover what that "Unless" is by following through the story.

The reason I like to share this is because for a long time I was under a misconception of the Mayflower Hotel lobby incident. I was under the impression that Bill did not drink because he distracted himself with making phone calls, and 'It too passed'. Not true.

This was not a white knuckling - "It will pass" episode - the kind we hear today. Bill did not have the option of "hanging on" till he could get to a meeting, or reach his sponsor. Or 'just don't drink until midnight' and he would have another day under his belt. These concepts are not in the Big Book, "Alcoholics Anonymous" and if they did work for alcoholics then there would probably would never have been a Big Book. There would never have been a need for it to be written. That is why problem drinkers - alcoholic abusers - who eventually learn to "put the plug in the jug" and who can "just don't drink" by "keeping it green" and who can stay sober "One Day At A Time" are not as zealous, fired-up and pro-active with working with others and carrying the "this" message in the Big Book: The don not have to.

No. Something else came to Bill's rescue.

Upon careful reading it can be seen that in reality the desire left him FIRST -- THEN he went to help others. So if the action taken of starting his little telemarketing campaign did not save Bill, then what did?

Bill's mind tells him that he can go into that barroom and find "Companionship" (Women? Maybe) But he would need to drink or he would not have the courage. Instead of alcohol, his mind tells him ginger ale would be OK. Then his mind tells him that three drinks would be OK as long as that was all.

It is so apparent that Bill's mind is not working properly. It is telling him that to drink will be ok. It will get him through the weekend. Bill has decided to drink. Fear keeps him from walking into the bar just long enough to get him to the area of the directory. Yet fear does not keep him there.

What keeps him there? What exactly does he do that instantly vanquishes his insane obsession to go into that bar? Making phone calls does not remove the obsession; reading the directory does not remove it either.

There is ONE THING that Bill does which results in Bills sanity returning and frees him from insanity in that moment:

He stops thinking about himself and has a thought of being helpful to another person. The moment he does that, the insanity LEAVES! He thanks God. And THEN goes about his business of helping others.

Not only was Bills problem centering in his mind, but the solution as well. Bill's miracle occurs prior to setting one foot in that booth or even sticking his first finger in the first hole of that phone dialer.

Bill's miracle occurs where the problem exists. In his mind. He reacts sanely. And the new SANE thought end up sending him to the Gatehouse of the Sieberling Estate to perform his first twelve step call - just like was done for him by Ebby T - only now with Doctor Bob.

Peace,

Danny S

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We Do It With Our Tongues

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

Not Our Tome

One of my favorite stooopit POP-AA rhetoric tricks is the old “I was too jittery to read the Big Book when I first came in here”.

“I couldn't even hold a cup of coffee let alone a Big Book” -as an excuse for avoiding the Twelve Steps and staying dry solely on the fellowship without actually recovering, is pretty lame

“Shaking too hard to hold a book” -- ‘Too in-the-fog to comprehend the reading” - all that bottom of the barrel scrapping excuse making and justification for God avoidance. But do know it all too well!!!

"I HAD THE SHAKES! I couldn't do the steps!"

"Excuse me? Good God! You don't have a sponsor do you?"

Are you really LICKED . . . . . or not?

We are not suffering from an illness that the Big Book can conquer. Reading comprehension skills are not a requirement for recovery - neither is a steady hand. "Reading the Big Book" isn’t a solution - if it were then half of the jittery men I have known, some who were illiterate - and the sightless could never take the Twelve Steps and recover from alcoholism which of course we know is not true.

It is good to be clear in the head - that much is obvious. A man ought to be capable of following what someone is saying and this sort of clarity is merely hours off a drunken spree - not weeks, months or years. We are supposed to be twelve stepping new prospects when he is fresh off a spree - not after "the fog lifts'.

For years the co-authors did this ALL WITHOUT BIG BOOKS so we know that "reading the big book" has NOTHING to do with taking the twelve steps – having a spiritual awakening being the result and solving our alcohol problem. Then as we go through the book and read all of the successful twelve stepping stories of sorry sick and puking drunks – we learn that it is accomplished with the word and not with the ink.

There is only once when we talk about 'reading' the Big Book in the process. That "reading" of this book done is when making our 'approaches' - we ask him to read the book and we try to leave it behind until the second approach. This is all in "Working With Others".

Trust God, Clean House, and read the Big Book? Nope!

To take the steps all anyone has ever needed and all they ever used back in Akron is a good sponsor who has himself recovered to talk to and take him through the steps the same that Bill did with Bob, Bill and Bob with Bill Dodsen then Clarence Snyder, et al. What we really need maybe is a patient, experienced and able sponsor who will TALK us through the steps - not one who would have us "read the book".

It has always been “One alcoholic talking to another” alcoholic - not one alcoholic reading to another or passing out assignments to another.

Reading the Book? Of course. But it ain't being sponsored. There is no syllabus in AA for recovery.


Peace and Love
Danny S - RLRA

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Fishers of Men

Link: http://gourl.org/dsfaq

Here on the Peninsula of Doom - or the "Cape of Keel" if you are of Scandinavian ancestry - there are these massive holes in the ground that are filled with water and well known as ”Kettle Ponds” and “Kettle lakes”. Beautiful geo-pot holes, really.

They were formed by crumbling collapsing glacier ice that broke through to underground water sources like subterranean steams and the water table itself –filled up and left behind pretty little, and sometimes not so little, waterfront properties all up and down the length of the peninsula. The waters are then stocked by The State Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, stocks we fish.

Sometimes a pond becomes scummy stinky and stagnant – overgrown with algae. It stinks. It looks disgusting. A would-be fisherman stricken with the sophomoric notion that clear sparkling mountain waters teaming with fish leaping and dancing along the surface waiting to swallow his lures – the cool and refreshing spring fed lakes and ponds so pristine and potable he can sip as he fishes – is in for a letdown.

The stream of life is not pre-packed.

A good seasoned fisherman knows he must go wherever the lunkers are in order to catch one and that may not be in the clear streams of his imagination. So he goes to that stinky smelly green pond and casts into it. He is fully equipped with the tools he needs to hit his targets and land them -- and the knowledge to be in the right place at the right time.He catches fish.

Can an AA meeting be a fertile ground for catching fish even if it is covered in scum and smells like the bowel of dead crocodile? There are some meetings locally that I can barely stand the thought of attending. No, I mean it. I get dressed, wash up, put on a clean shirt – tell the family I’ll be gone for a while – head out . . . . and . . . . and . . . .and, “Oh God, why did I start out to this meeting?"

The very thought of enduring another goddamn 'junkolog' and how just about every stooopit AA slogan again and again "keeps me sober" and how it's becaue I hasng with "you people" and how a drug is a drug and how wonderful rehab is and one day at a time and take your time it’s not race and blah blah blah blah . . . oh GOD I TASTE BILE!!!!

That feeling is resentment. Thank God there is a Step Ten for it.

Some of us come to AA to stop drinking and then the unplanned for happens. We end up spiritually awakened, recovered and the bearer of real power to help others have the same experience we are having. It doesn't take long either - not years, certainly not a lifetime - but within a matter of days we find ourselves operating from inside a Fellowship of The Spirit. Yes there is a Fellowship of the Meeting too - and we can dip-and-dab there as well after all that is where the stick sick and suffering are. It is the Fellowship of The Spirit where the power is and form where we can fully exercise our new gift for the benefit of others.

One of my protégées who I ran into at one such scummy toxic meeting is only three months sober and he is already sponsoring three men through our Twelve Step Program. It is absolutely miraculous to watch these men at work.

The "wait a year" bullshale I am used to pales in comparison to the miracles of recovery I are witnessing right now in our little Beginners Big Book Step Meeting up here.

Why would ANYONE want to hold onto this for themselves one whole year before passing it on to others? My Big Book tells me that as recovered alcoholics we have been given the power to help others - we are hardly powerless. If you have ever wondered why some folks get so fired up and "zealous" about what has happens to them well, now you know why. Spiritual awakening and consequent recovery form alcoholism is monumental.

To come close to imagining what it is like imagine how you might feel if a Flying Saucer landed on your roof and you had dinner with a bunch of guys with spider heads and fingers with suction cups on their tips who gave you quick ride to Alpha Centauri before dropping you off back on earth to live out the rest of your life. It is that stupendous, that magnificent and to a real alcoholic. We are talking about extreme miraculous manifestations of supreme divinity, right here on earth, in our lives. Remember Moses's burning talking bush? OK it's like that. We aren't even sure if anyone will believe us and of course there are those who do believe - those to whom this experience has also happened - who have had a spiritual awakening as the result of the twelve steps.

We believe in a what that most others do not and cannot because it is not their experience. Fair enough. It gets a little kooky though, when they insist that it is OUR experience either. How do they know?

^{The clock is ticking with these suffering men. They, their little children and wives wait with tears in their eyes and it IS a race -- the obsession to take the next first drink is coming.}

I am in no position to pretend to them that I know when that is going to be. It might be today. It might be an hour form now. It might not be for another year. Unless that obsession has been removed, as promised, my protégée could be a dead man by tomorrow. Am I am going to tell them "Ninety-in-Ninety"? "Keep Coming Back"? "Easy Does It"?

"Just keep coming and forget about the Big Book for now - you're still in an alcoholic fog and you have plenty of time". Is that what EASY DOES IT means? This reminds me of when Bill W. said how he felt whenever he saw men, barely 6 months sober, recovered from this disease, working intensely with others.

"Watch any A.A. of six months working with a Twelfth Step prospect. If the newcomer says, "To the devil with you?, the twelfth-stepper only smiles and finds another alcoholic to help. He doesn't feel frustrated or rejected. If his next drunk responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other sufferers, yet gives none back to him, the sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn't feel rejected; instead he rejoices that his former prospect is sober and happy.

And he well knows that his own life has been made richer, as an extra dividend of giving to another without any demand for a return." (Bill W. - GRAPEVINE, JANUARY 1958)

SIX MONTHS and they were working with others? Damned right they were.

It seems that no one told Bill Wilson that newcomers first needed a YEAR of meetings under their belts. (Where does crap like that come from anyway?) What "controversy" and "SCANDAL" to the Fellowship "Suggestors" who are killing people with advice they have no idea about -- no basis of experience -- no right to foster on the real alcoholic who will die unless he carries THIS message of AA and not some other self styled malarkey designed to fit "Their" messages.

What it comes down to is not a new idea. It is in fact ancient. It is the concept of love. True love.

• Do I have enough love in me to take this phone call? This late at night? On a Sunday?

• Have I had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps and have THIS message to pass on by taking another man through the steps?

• Do I have enough love in me to stay up late and have coffee with this man, when I am so dammed tired?

• Do I have enough love to stay after the meeting for an hour or maybe two, when I had planned to go home?

• Do I have enough love in me to go speak with this man's wife? On a SUNDAY? When I could be with my family?

• Do I speak and act from a position of experience and love of the Twelve Steps or am I talking out of my ass about a Program which I have never personally experienced - which I do not live myself and for which I only have opinions.

All of my life, I thought that love was just an emotion or a feeling. A good feeling that was just this side of some sort of ecstasy. I was wrong. I was selfish. Love is ACTION. It is things that I DO, nothing that I feel.

Feeling love is selfish, acting love selflessness.

I have never known love until I began sponsoring other alcoholics through this thing, and began working with them even more intensely than any job task, home project or goal I have ever taken on. I need excellent sponsorship myself. And I do my very best to be an excellent sponsor to others.

I recently received a phone call from one protégée who just wanted to thank me for some time I had spent with him recently during a rough emotional situation, and he told me that I was "a great sponsor."

That is something that I never expect to hear, but I will tell you, I feel that it was God's way of letting me know I am barking up the right tree.

I hope everyone has such experiences.

Peace,

Danny S

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