Through most of my life, the issue of heavy drinking has been front-and-center, be it through Alcoholics Anonymous membership, or actual time spent drinking, and all its varied consequences therein.
Following my first ever alcohol-related hauling to the police station at age 16 (three of us got caught drinking a 12-pack of Molson while camped in front of an unauthorized bonfire) came the first warning from my mother about my having a possible "predetermined alcoholic disposition", inherited from my father's side of the family. The American Medical Association recognizes "alcoholism" as a disease, while the DSM-IV eschews the term "alcoholism" in favor of the phrases "alcohol abuse," and "alcohol dependence." Nonetheless, a blanket genetic theory had been prematurely adopted, blossoming in tandem with acceptance of the 12-step recovery model by the treatment center industry. This was 1981.
A year later, I totalled my father's truck in a drunken blackout, and wrecked my own car some months after that. Dad, who at that time had put in over three years of sober time in A.A., rightly ordered me to either get help for my drinking, or find another place to live. So I checked out a meeting, immediately declared myself to be an alcoholic (though not really believing it, but "when in Rome..."), and thus began 25 years worth of alternating binge drinking with 12-step sobriety (six years at one point, five at another).
My six-year stint in A.A. ended in 1992. I moved from suburbia to the big city, to play bass guitar in a working rock band, and to drink, smoke, snort, and dose with no regard for the future. I drank daily most of the time, with few breaks in between. I played in at least ten different bands/musical projects, and had lots of fun. On the down side, friends and lovers (prospective or otherwise) beat frequent paths to the door so as to avoid me, as drunken and/or hungover behavior became my normal state of being. I stopped going out with friends, for the most part, and spent more time drinking at home, alone.
After a few years of this, I returned to A.A. This was more a matter of feeling disconnected with others, than having been prompted by the aftermath of any heavy drinking-related incidents that I had suffered many over those eight years: drunken fights, three arrests, one mugging, bass guitar stolen thanks to drunken negligence, a dislocated shoulder, all threaded with numerous blackouts, hangovers, some shakes, and a lot of sweat.
Into my last run of sober time, I found some meetings that, to my relief, maintained a toned-down approach to the 12 steps. I met fellow musicians and other artists who could be every bit as humorous and ironic as any of my drinking buddies. Yet, underneath it all existed the generally held conception that a spritual approach was required in order to stay sober. No amount of cognitive dissonance, be it self-induced/A.A. related/both, could convince me to absorb this approach into my own truth.
In reflecting upon this, I offer you a basic and visceral view of kudos and bitches, with regard to my time in the rooms. Though factual in spots, my views are anecdotally based.
Positives:*For nearly 30 years, my father has remained sober while attending meetings. Not only is my dad a better person who helps his community and others around him, but he remains dismissive of the archaic and cloying dogma that is piled shit-heap high in the Big Book (pet name for A.A.'s official text). My father actively practices the positive aspects of the program slogan "keep it simple", in saying, "The thing in this program that
works is that as recovering alcoholics, we touch base, we support one another... and never mind all that horseshit Big Book text, fer chrissakes!" He takes this basic message (a good one, I believe, when omitting the 12 steps/higher-power/cultist trappings) to a weekly jail meeting in his region. After suffering a heart attack seven years ago, my father received a signature-rich get-well card from the jail inmates. Upbeat under the circumstances as they were, dad got a real boost out of this.
*Over the course of my meeting attendance, I have made some damn good friends. I also have some good friends at ... well, y'know, wherever! The bar(s), the rehearsal space, on the 'net, in a jet, along with those met through family and other friends, Still, I feel like I lucked out in having met fellow travelers (punks, hippies, metalheads, gearheads, and single moms alike, kind of like Opus' band in
Bloom County) who shared with me a heightened sense of irreverence towards all irony-bludgeoning things that are A.A. We spent much time telling dirty jokes and vamping sarcastic parodies of the more popular A.A. propaganda over all-night over coffee, and doing things in our free time that were judged by many hardcore A.A.'s to be engaging in "unhealthy behavior...
definitely not sober!" (cigars and poker, pagan bonfires up and down the coast of Lake Michigan, midnight skinny-dipping, dancing at punk/techno clubs that served... alcohol? Just plain "driving too fast"???).
Negatives:*Alcoholics Anonymous is sexist. See: the "To Wives" chapter (written not by Lois, but by Bill Wilson!), the He/Him references to "a higher power", the ego-deflating steps that apply poorly to problem drinkers who are often victimized (mostly female, with nary a doubt), and the overall unwillingness of Alcoholics Anonymous to collectively "amend" their archaic literature, which was written well before the womens'/civil rights movements awakened many Americans in the 1960's.
*In addition to those friendships described above, I have also had others that went comatose, upon my uttering the words "A.A. is no longer working for me."
*Phrases heard daily in "How It Works" (a page-and-a-half long reading that precedes 99% of all A.A. meetings:
----"alcohol... cunning, baffling, powerful" (alcohol-as-evil-spirit metaphor)
----"those who do not recover are people cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program" (ever felt like one of
those?)
----"we asked
His protection and care with complete abandon" (I can't keep myself sober, so I have to put all my eggs in the basket of a hypothetical power?... though based on on the bold-faced/italicized/upper-case pronoun, we have determined that this 'higher power' is swinging pipe, Sgt. Friday)
I have heard at least 5,000 meetings worth of these phrases, along with many others that are only slightly less inane. And I did my best to process them: to screen them, to manipulate a reasonably sane version of them, to make up my own "meeting-friendly" version of them, not to mention a "sponsor-accepted" version, in some cases. To integrate this faulty program into my own belief system.
*As a fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous fails to disclose to its membership alternative sources of recovery from problem drinking. Not once in those five thousand-plus meetings had I ever heard anyone offer to a discontent new member a way to get a grip on their drinking besides "just keep coming back to A.A...., it gets better,"...
(leans forward and whispers)... "else, ya die, junkie!" While having lunch with fellow A.A.s on two separate occasions, I found space in the conversation to discuss the confirmed existence of, like U.F.O.'s,
secular recovery alternatives to A.A. (Women For Sobriety, SMART, SOS, Rational Recovery). None of my fellow steppers had ever heard of these, and replied with nothing more than a collective gaze akin to that of a dog being shown a card trick. I don't blame them for this lack of knowledge. I mean, hell, what is a stepper to do? When he/she believes that a spiritual awakening is the only way for that strawman alcoholic to recover, is there going to be room in the discussion for a purely secular strategy?
To me, this item is the most egregiously offensive. Though there is an A.A. tradition that observes non-alliance with other organizations, I did not know that there was a corresponding tradition that outlaws this fellowship from maybe giving a helpful tip to a problem drinker who doesn't want to believe in an invisible buddy. No tip, just a response: "hey, you can go back out there and try it again. We'll be here for you when you are ready." Implied in the half-assery of such a statement is A.A.'s assumption upon me, by way of personal projection, that because I am unable to accept this so-called "spiritual solution" as the answer to my problem, then surely I must be looking to get loaded.
And now, the closer. A poor man's O. Henry, if you will, by way of an acknowledgment: that those A.A.'s were probably right about me wanting to drink again, even while failing to realize that their own subscription to mythology-as-a-substitute-for-drinking is more responsible for their organization's poor membership retention, more so than that of the lure of King Alcohol, pushups-in-the-parking-lot, ad nauseum. But about the "drinking again" thing, that most serious of all offenses, that activity which I was told will doom me to resume an ever-increasing amount of booze consumption, jails, institutions, and death?
Yeah, what about that? Many A.A. members I have either known or befriended had died upon resumption of drinking. I accept the theory of "abstinence violation effect" (hazardous alcohol consumption resulting from the drinker's lack of environmental or personal control... i.e. "powerlessness") as the mental impetus for a binge. As for the addictive physical aspects of problem drinking, I believe that my system may very well be poorly set up to metabolize alcohol, and I will pay a price for this, on occasion. But some knowledge and practice of new habits has enabled me to avoid high-risk drinking episodes of the past, blackouts and all.
Based on all this, can my drinking be managed? Or will it be too much damn work? And if I decide that the enjoyment of a buzz is not worth the effort, can I successfully abstain from drinking without the aid of a shiny doorknob that obviously has more power over alcohol than I do? And if I can do
this, was I ever an alcoholic to begin with?