*This is a long one. Sorry for the blabbermouthing.
**Debrettman. I have not forgotten the filthy story, I promise.

Many apologies for my unannounced hiatus from posting here. You see, I’ve been dealing with a little something, namely my drunk assedness.

You see, I’m not exactly what one would call a heavy drinker. I’m a drunk ass, which is not to say that I’m an ass when I’m drunk, I’m actually quite an agreeable drunk. The problem is I’ve been drinking way way too much for well over a decade; hence, a drunk ass. Do you remember how you drank in college? Ha! Amateur. Trust me, you have no idea. What most people call a hangover... I call that daylight.

Lies to family? Check. Unresolved responsibilities piled so high and forgotten I can’t even identify ninety percent of them? Check. Significant personal relationships unpersued or passed over for bar sluts? A big fat check on that one.

When I said earlier that the reason that I haven’t posted for nearly a month had to do with my drunk assedness, I didn’t mean to imply that I’ve been on a bender. Quite the opposite, in fact. Half of that time was spent trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to detox, the other half I’m happy to say have been spent dry. I’m even willing to admit, and I’m somewhat shamed to say this, that I actually gave Alcoholics Anonymous a crack, which the majority of this ridiculously long post is devoted to mocking.

Before I delve too deeply into my own brief, rather disturbing experiences with the group, I feel it is important to fast forward through the story and share my research into the group and give a brief outline the history of the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

history:

In the early thirties, a man named Bill Wilson found himself once again in the last of his many hospitalized alcohol detoxification programs. His treatment program depended largely on the use of morphine and other endorphin inducing narcotics to break him of his alcohol dependency. While in hospital, Wilson was visited frequently by an old childhood friend and former drinking buddy who had recently become a member of the Oxford Group, an evangelical society founded by an independent charismatic Lutheran minister named Frank Buchman. Buchman had founded the Oxford Group as a program for individuals to fight sin and to bring them closer into God’s elk through a multiple step program. Consistent with the christian tradition of numerology with numbers divisible by three (the holy trinity, the twelve apostles, the twelve stages of the cross, the number of the beast) Buchman created twelve steps to help people combat sin and defeat their own demons. In Buchman’s case, his primary sin and demon that he was combating was his own homoerotic fantasies (which is admittedly unfair for me to point out, but I can’t help myself).

So, while Bill Wilson was lying in a hospital bed in a morphine induced cloud, and while his old friend would frequently visit him and encourage him deal with his own sins based on his learning's from the Oxford Group twelve step teachings, Wilson experienced a spiritual epiphany, joined the Oxford Group and never drank again.

Early in his membership in the Oxford Group and his sobriety, Wilson befriended an atheist Doctor and alcoholic who was raised with a highly oppressive religious background. The two men became very close and began to use the Oxford Group structure as a way to help other alcoholics fight their drinking problem. Meanwhile, Frank Buchman and the rest of the Oxford Group became increasingly uncomfortable with this group of alcoholics within their own group who wanted to extend it’s teachings to Catholics and non-Christians and asked them to leave, upon which Bill Wilson began to write what is popularly known as the Big Book. The Big Book is the central text of the Alcoholics Anonymous to this day. Wilson basically reworded all of Frank Buchman’s Oxford Group teachings, and had his Doctor friend (known as Dr. Bob in the AA cannon) edit his work, where the Doctor would ask him to try to tone down the religious aspects of the text.

The timing of the schism between the Oxford Group and the formation of Alcoholic Anonymous could not have been better, as Frank Buchman was becoming increasingly unpopular in the public light for his pro-fascist political views.

Frank Buchman on Adolf Hitler:

New York World Telegram
1936

“I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line in defense against the anti-christ of Communism.

But I think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to the control of God. Or Mussolini. Or any dictator. Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last, bewildering problem... Human problems aren’t economic. They’re moral and they can’t be solved by immoral measures. They could be solved with a God-controlled democracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy, and they could be solved through a God-controlled Fascist dictatorship.”

In 1936, at the Berlin Olympic games, Buckman offered to introduce Kenneth Linsay, a member of British Parliament, to Heinrich Himmler, whom Buckman referred to as a “great lad.”

Throughout the thirties, prior to American involvement in the Second World War, Buckman would repeatedly visit his Berlin friends on the highest levels of the Nazi Party in an attempt to convert them from fascist anti-semites to fascist christian soldiers. This was the spiritual father of the twelve step programs and Alcoholics Anonymous (if you follow the official histories of AA, they do in fact make mention of this, but downplay it’s significance and make statements such as “Buckman didn’t understand what Nazism really was” etc. blah blah blah).

*/history*

So anyway, enough about history. Let me get back to me me me. I’ve been a self-aware drunk for about five years now. I’ve tried just about everything short of a structured program to curb my accessive drinking. My favorite of all was about a year and a half to two years ago when I decided to start up one of those “blog” thingeys. I thought that instead of going out every night and drinking myself into oblivion, I would stay home and write posts. Well, the frequency of my blog posts are testament to how well that worked. If I’m drunk or hungover, I find myself incapable of writing so much as my own name; thus, I’ve only been sober enough to write a post once or twice a week.

Approximately three or four weeks ago, another bullshit opportunity for me to curb my own drink presented itself. A woman whom I am friends with came to the realization that she too had a drinking problem and that she needed to quit. I thought to myself “hey, if I hang out with her while she’s not going out to the bars, it’ll be an excuse for me to not drink and pull my own drinking somewhat into check.” I told her if she needed someone to hang out with to stay away from the bars, I’d be more than happy to hang out with her to help break the social cycle (if you have a drinking problem, when all your friends and everyone you know go out and party every night, as ours do, breaking the social cycle is one of the most difficult aspects of controlling your own drinking).

For the next two weeks, we would frequently hang out. She would talk for hours about what she was dealing with and often share sometimes hilarious errors of judgment from her past. I would pretend to be a sympathetic ear when I was in fact an empathetic ear, as I knew exactly what she was talking about. I would watch the clock to about midnight, excuse myself, and race to the bar where I would pound about six scotches and three beers before stumbling back to my apartment at last call.

So, after a couple of weeks of that I found myself not feeling too terribly hot about myself. I felt weak, fairly worthless, and by and large generally depressed. I came to the realization that it was time to quit what I was doing to myself... immediately. I discussed what I was dealing with to my employer, with the before mentioned friend, and eventually with my family as well.

Well, before I talked to my family, and before I had done some research into the program, I actually went to a couple of those AA meetings. Now, what most people despise about AA meetings didn’t bother me one bit. You have to understand that I went to two meetings in downtown Baltimore, one the most drug and alcohol addled spots in the entire country. I didn’t mind one bit being one of a very small minority at the meetings that didn’t have a tattoo on my neck. People sharing stories of hitting rock bottom didn’t depress me, I actually enjoyed them, as many had a good sense of humor and were clever enough to share the stories in an amusing and comic manner. I thought the leaders of the group warning the female newcomers to the group, that if they had been prostituting themselves for drugs and alcohol, that they should only share that with their sponsor, lest otherwise male members of the group would likely proposition them for sex in the hallway after the meeting, was awesome. The guys from the halfway house? I was more than happy to meet them too.

In the first meeting I attended, which was specifically for beginners, AA had brought in a twenty-five year veteran who had an amazing sense of comic timing. The man could have been a professional and had everyone in stitches with stories about trying to be a pimp in the seventies and trying to walk drunk and be cool while wearing platform shoes, how he thought he was the black Bruce Lee and would get his ass kicked on Pennsylvania Ave, and how while suffering with the DT’s he would try to “direct traffic” on Howard Street. He was so good I would have paid to see him perform. I was almost ready to allow this one man to be my own personal savior. Until, of course, he dropped the bomb.

Upon finishing his routine, he concluded his speech by picking up the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book and read from the fourth chapter, titled “We Agnostics.” The gist of his quote stated, in paraphrase, that AA was the only way an individual with a drinking problem (which they consider by definition an Alcoholic) is able to stop drinking, must stay an active member for life, that that individual MUST accept the higher power of God, that if that individual fails to do so, that individual will undoubtedly slip back into alcoholism, and consequently will eventually die.

“Huh?” I thought to myself. I had known beforehand that AA was a little heavy on the God talk, but this statement seemed to be a little extreme to me. According to all of the AA literature, the organization insisted that it was not religious, but rather spiritual in nature. The quote I had just heard read from The Big Book had undoubtedly crossed the boundary from spiritualism to religiosity in my interpretation. I immediately began to feel uncomfortable.

After Mr. Comedy-Agnostics-Will-Die had finished, another speaker asked the group to announce any milestones they may have crossed. Admittedly, I had no idea what he was talking about. “One Year?” he asked. No one responded. “Six months... three months... one month... a week...” still, no one responded. “Twenty-four hours?” he finally asked. Stupidly, I raised my hand, having gone twenty-four hours without a drink probably for the first time in over a decade. The entire room erupted into a Pentecostal like delirium. People where whooping and hollering as though I had saved a hundred babies from an avalanche. The speaker stood up and applauded, demanding that I come forward to the front of the meeting. Confused, I walked up to the speaker, who handed me a coin sized medal. I reached out to shake his hand and lunged forward and embraced me. With my elbows pinned to my sides, my forearms flapping like I was a hundred fifty pound tyrannosaurus, I struggled to break free as the crowd of about sixty drunks and junkies danced, screamed and applauded. I returned to my seat and the crack addict to my right, noticing my confusion, leaned over and tried to explain to me what exactly had just happened. Admittedly, I really didn’t hear a word he had said to me. I was too busy looking at the coin that was just given to me, thinking to myself “A medal for twenty-four hours? Talk about a eleventh place ribbon.” Emblazoned across the top of the medal were the words “TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE.” I laughed and thought to myself that this not what Shakespeare was thinking when he was portraying Polonius as a bombastic sententious blowhard (ha. See, I’m a well read drunk).

After the embarrassing spectacle, the meeting resumed to the standard course of people sharing the stories of their alcoholism and drug addictions and how desperately they wanted to quit, and once again I began to feel a little more comfortable, as in this respect I knew exactly what everyone was talking about. In this we all shared a similarity. Of course, my comfort was short lived, as the meeting concluded with everyone holding hands and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. You have to understand, I am the product of multiple generations of secularism. Reciting the Lord’s prayer is an act perceived by my family (my people, if you will) to be roughly equivalent to ceremoniously slaughtering a chicken or sacrificing a virgin on a pagan alter. This was most definitely not “spiritual” in nature, it was undeniably religious. At the moment the prayer was over, I picked up my things as quickly as I could and practically ran out the front door.

Against my own better judgment, I went to another meeting the next day, thinking that one negative experience was not enough to write off the program. Unlike the first meeting, more than half of the second meeting I attended was devoted to attacking agnosticism. “You must give up your pride and accept your higher power” was repeated over and over and over again. “Pride?” I thought to myself. “Where have I heard that before? Oh, yes, that’s one of those deadly sins.” It was explained to us it was not necessary that the higher power to be God in name, but could be “astrology” if we wanted it to be. Astrology? ASTROLOGY!? Well, whoopy-fucking-do! That made me feel a whole lot better. I only disagree with the concepts of revealed religion and deism, I poo on astrology.

After leaving the second meeting, I was more depressed than I had felt in years. I was half broken. I knew of no other way to quit drinking, but unless I deconstructed myself to a point where I was no longer me, unless I betrayed my family and everything I was taught, unless I destroyed that which made me who I am, I thought the powerlessness that I had in the face of this addiction would eventually lead me back towards alcohol and in the end kill me.

And that’s when it hit me, “what the fuck had just happened to me?” An organized group, offering me help at a moment of great depression and despair, had just explained to me that I was “powerless” and that my only chance of survival, my “salvation” if you will, was to put my trust in them to save me from myself and my inevitable destruction?”

I had just been CULT-WHACKED!!! Had I just been almost willing to swallow that bullshit?! Oh. My. God. I had almost fallen victim to evangelism. Sure, AA is a process by which an individual can quit drinking. But in what way did they do it in a manner that was in anyway different than Wahhabist Islam? At what cost was the benefits they were offering me?

I had just come this close to rejecting my own free will to deal with a problem that I have, that I have not yet addressed using my own capabilities towards reason. There are no limits to an individual’s ability to reason. No one is “powerless” in the face of alcohol, drugs or anything else. You don’t even have to be that smart, you just have to hold yourself accountable for your own actions and decisions. The only power that I have to hold accountable for the fact that I’ve been drinking WAY too much for well over a decade is the power of my own poor decisions. I’m not biologically driven to be a drunk. That’s victim talk. Do I need to quit? Yes, I’m far too dependent on alcohol and have been so for far too many years. Will it be as easy for me as it is for someone who doesn’t drink as much? Of course not, but that’s not to say that I’m powerless to do it. Do I need some program that was created by an evangelist closeted homosexual fascist Hitler admirer with a God complex? NO.

It was after I realized that I had just been tooled that I started doing a little research into the nature of the AA movement in it’s history; hence the history piece at the beginning of this absurdly long post.

Anyway, to get away from my little anti-AA diatribe for a moment, so far I’ve gone nine days without hooch, and six days without AA, and about four days without dry drunk symptoms (if you aren’t familiar with the term ‘dry drunk,’ don’t bother googling it. The term has been hijacked by AA and misused. Recently, my more propagandic fellow Bush haters have hijacked the term to try to explain why Bush is such an idiot. The actual clinical term is used to explain the period a long term drinker needs to refamiliarize him or herself with walking in a sober state. I had morning dry drunk episodes for about four days), and thankfully no DT's. The nine days are roughly nine times longer than I’ve gone without alcohol for over a decade.

Unfortunately, the friend who had brought this all about in the first place is having a bit of a harder time at it than me. She keeps slipping. She’s still attending meetings, but so far all they’ve accomplished was to destroy her self-confidence. The other day she asked me if I wanted to attend a meeting with her. I had to explain to her that because of the religious aspects of the organization, that I could no longer attend them. She, like me, comes from a secular background; but unlike me, is the product of a Judaic secular background. I don’t think she is as prone to identify evangelism as readily I, nor do I think that the word “evangelism” had the same four-letter-word resonance as it did in my household. After I explained (in very vague terms. I did not tell her about the origins of the organization) to her that the religious nature was a deal breaker for me, she said “Yeah, I know. I don’t like the religious stuff either. But it’s not exactly religious... it’s more spiritual than religious.” I didn’t know what to say to her, so I said nothing. I’m not entirely convinced that the ‘kick-in-the-ass’ reality check that I gave myself would be appropriate for her situation. Nor do I think it would be fair to throw all that ‘12 step programs are the brain child of a Hitler admiring fascist’ in her direction. Basically, I have absolutely no idea what to say to her.

With all that said, I am walking away from the whole AA thing with one good thing, a cheesy little medal reminding me “TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE.”

I will, Polonius, thanks for the advice.