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MIKE
As some of you might already know, Mike helps me respond to the comments made on Youtube in response to my videos. Here is a little information about who he is. Many thanks Mike for your time.
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I am, of course, from the USA, currently residing in central Ohio. Divorced, I have been in a long-term relationship for the past twelve years, and have two grown children. I'm fifty-two, and semi-retired. I drive tractor-trailer part-time, and have worked at a variety of jobs over the years, including farming, professional dog-training, and municipal work. I'm also an army veteran, having served for seven years as an infantryman in many locations world-wide, including a stint as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
My AA career began in 1981, when I was twenty-five. I have been drug/alcohol free for nearly fourteen years, and have been an increasingly-harsh critic of the 12-step process for about the last twelve. My research and knowledge of the history and methodologies of steppism is in-depth and thorough. I continue to attend AA, mostly as a critic and contrarian, but have maintained friendships with both steppers and ex-steppers. Politically, I am unaffiliated. My memberships include the Freemasons and Mensa. Spiritually, I follow the American Indian (Lakota) religion. The attached photo is of me in front of our Sundance Chief's sweatlodge frame in South Dakota.
And there you have a little about me.
Take care,
Mike
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To some, it seems strange that I would still attend AA after all these years, given my opinions about steppism and it dogma. Further explanation is in order.
I first attended AA in 1981, at age twenty-five. Alcohol had caused me several large problems in different areas of my life, so I resolved to quit drinking. AA seemed like a genuine way to validate my sincerity in that endeavor to my spouse, employer, family, and the authorities. My first meeting was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on May 17, 1981. As an atheist, I was immediately struck by AA's overwhelming religiosity and proselytizing nature. After my legal issues were resolved, I attended meetings for another few months, mostly because my marriage was in turmoil and AA offered an excuse to get out of the house and be around people. AA's cliquishness and intrusiveness into one's personal affairs got the better of me, however, so I soon quit attending altogether. I truly didn't give AA much thought for the next eleven years that I remained abstinent.
In 1993, I had a horrific relapse, which lasted fifteen months.By the end of it, my drunkedness had damaged all areas of my life: job, business, marriage, family, mental health, relationships, morals, integrity, the whole gamut. On June 12, 1994, suicidally depressed and at the end of my rope, I once again resolved to quit alcohol and, again, AA seemed like the ideal vehicle to prove my sincerity to the world. Two huge differences in my second AA experience disguinished it from my first. A religious conversion I had experienced made AA's religiosity no longer an initial deal breaker, and the damage my personal life had sustained made AA's social opportunities attractive. Besides, AA gets people sober, right?
Socially, AA and I served each other very well for the first couple years. I gave leads, attended the social events, dated a few AA women, went to out of town meetings, hung with the crew at Denny's, sponsored, and was generally well-thought-of. Privately, though, I found myself increasingly unable to accept the dogma and groupthink that true adherence to the program demands. I also was seeing the terrible attrition and relapse rates of my contemporaries. From January to December, 1994, eighty people had signed my homegroup book and received 24-hour coins. By early 1996, all but three of us had left AA, relapsed, or both. Today, only two of us have remained continuously abstinent. Over the many years between then and now, I have come to know and care about many hundreds of people who have come into AA seeking help and solutions. I have watched all but a handful of them go, usually the worse for wear from the AA experience.
The failure of the program to deliver what it has promised to people I care about has left me saddened. Its lies about its success rates, religiosity, coerciveness, and absolutist nature have left me angry. Its inept laiety, dangerous psychiatry, lack of self-monitoring and determination to reject blame at the expense of its victims have left me driven. That sadness, anger and drive are what keep me attending. I go to speak the truth as I have come to understand it to those who are unlikely to be hearing it from anyone else in the room that particular day. Want me to leave AA? I will, as soon as AA starts telling the truth.-----------------------------------------------------
Just about every bit of AA dogma and traditional wisdom I have ever heard uttered in the rooms has given me cause for pause and disagreement. In this section of BlameDenial I will do short essays on some of those AA truisms with my own thoughts added to the mix. The first one came from the discussion meeting I attended today, with more to follow on an ongoing basis. Enjoy (or not). Mike
"I Work The First Three Steps Every Day"
Today, the topic of the meeting was working the third step. Many people remarked during their comments that they work the first three steps every day. I have heard that remark countless times before. Does anyone except me ever wonder what they are talking about when they say that? It makes me think that every night while they are sleeping, something transpires which, upon awakening, has made them once again powerless, insane, and without commitment to their deity one more time. What is that all about? The day I resolved to quit drinking, I quit. That was as close to "working" the first step as I ever needed to be, and I have never had to re-visit that resolution. Nor do I lapse into periods of insanity from which I need to once again come to believe that some Guy in the Sky is going to miraculously re-rescue me. As for the religious commitment the third step implies, my belief system never inexplicably disappears during my sleep, so I have no need to reconfirm it every morning. I guess the stepper God is much different than the one of my understanding.
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Since We Have A New Person...
This one comes up at lots of discussion meetings, and is probably the most common topic at many of them. There are a couple variations on it, but it generally goes something like this..."Since we have a newcomer, it might be helpful if we talk about what brought us to AA", or "Since we have a new person, maybe we should talk about the first step". However it goes down, the results are invariably the same. People who normally pass get to do a mini-drunkalogue, while everybody gets to put in a little tid-bit of wisdom. By the time everyone has spoken, the newcomer has been given an overwhelming, incomprehensible volume of nonsensical "suggestions", including, but not limited to: get a sponsor; the only thing you have to change is everything; get rigorously honest; do 90 meetings in 90 days; no intimate relationships for the first year; no major changes for the first year; read the first 164 pages of the bigbook; sober people and places your best thinking got you here; if you want to drink, put this chip in your mouth and see if it melts; work the steps; jails, institutions, and death; do the first three steps every day; pray often, on your knees; call your sponsor every day, and do everything he tells you; alcoholics are the only ones who really understand us; if you want what we have, there are no "musts".
Ever wonder why forty percent of all AA's attend one meeting and then leave?-----------------------------------------------------
Discussing Relationships In Meetings:
The topic of AA sobotaging personal relationships from could fill volumes, and I will likely add other pieces on the subject from time to time, but a discussion meeting which took place not too long ago brought up much food for thought.
When the chairperson asked for a topic, a young woman announced that she was attending her second AA meeting ever. She further stated that her husband was unhappy that she was attending AA, and that she could use some advice in easing his discomfort. At that point, we had ourselves a ballgame. Keep in mind that this was a treatment center meeting, and that there was likely not a functional relationship to be found in within the entire group of expounders. Also keep in mind that she gave no indication of the circumstances surrounding her AA attendance, nor any further information about her husband.
Nobody in the room passed, which is unusual. In fact, nearly everyone offered up what they clearly believed to be stellar insights and gems of wisdom. The comments included: only drunks can really understand you; he is afraid you will get better and he won't be able to control you any more; he is jealous because we can help you and he can't; you need to worry about you right now and he will just have to get used to it; and so on. Of course, there was the usual generic advice, as well: meetings, bigbook, prayer, get a sponsor, etc.
The real gems, though, came from a woman with double-digit years in the program, AA married and divorced, and a long-time veteran the Adult Children of Alcoholics mind-twist. She also has plowed through an impressive list of not-so-impressive AA newcomers. She immediately launched into the spiel about how everything the woman's husband did constituted abusiveness, and that if she really wanted to get sober and to get better, she was going to have to get rid of him. He was sick, he wanted to keep her sick, and, well, you get the idea. This woman also happens to be one of the most active AA sponsors in the town we live in, so she closed with an offer to be the woman's sponsor.
This scenario is commonly played out within the confines of AA. Whenever the topic comes up, the comments are pretty much as I described above. On the up-side, I haven't seen that particular newcomer in a meeting since then. I guess she didn't want what they had, so wasn't willing to go to those necessary lengths.
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Fwd: Eleventh Step Prayer /Advice Dochotomies/Correction:
In the eleventh step, we are told we should seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as WE understand Him, praying ONLY for knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out. Elsewhere throughout AA text and dogma, however, the nature, methodologies, and guidance for those same prayers become very specific and exacting. The St. Francis prayer and third-step prayers are very presumptive in their knowledge of God's will, character, and nature, and are virtual demands upon God to imbue the petitioner with particular qualities and attributes. Not too shabby for a group claiming to be "spiritual, not religious", praying only for knowledge of God's will.
Another genuine twist to the prayer angle of AA is the specificity of prayer instructions given by gurus in meetings. "Get on your knees" has always been advice I have found particularly troubling for me, personally, since that concept is so alien to my belief system. Even more troubling, though, is the insistence upon praying for people who have caused harm, to the degree of telling people they should pray every day for the next thirty days that their enemy should receive that which they would ask for themselves. It all sounds specifically dogmatic and religious to me, and I have trouble seeing the theraputic value in it.
In fact, it all seems potentially toxic, especially when posed to abuse/trauma victims, which constitute many in AA's ranks. Atheists are put off by it all, as well.My Views on the above post:
Sponsorship:
A sponsor is, by definition, someone who accepts responsibility of another during a period of instruction, probation, or apprenticeship . Although the responsibility of sponsorship as it applies to the 12-step-movement is poorly defined and not clearly-delineated, it is one of the lynchpins of the entire program. Upon it depends the indoctrination and retention of new members, and the continuation of the movement itself.
Sponsorship is often dangerously lacking in several critical aspects. Lack of qualification, ambiguity, lack of oversight, warped priorities, and lack of ethical or moral imperatives are shortcomings found in many who act as sponsors. Newcomers are pressured early and often to get a sponsor, yet are usually completely left to their own devices to determine what constitutes effective sponsorship and who is up for the task. Typically, these newcomers are at low points in their lives, and are advised to "find someone who has what you want, and/or can relate to." For me, personally, all I wanted early on was for the voices in my head to take a break and the chaos in my life to diminish. My efforts to choose and recruit a mentor would have been, at best, haphazard. Others often experience the same dilemma.
Perhaps I could be more helpful here if I listed questions I would today find to be critical in choosing someone to help me solve some of life's puzzles. Does the person I am considering as a sponsor:
Seem honest, honorable, and credible?
Have integrity?
Set an example in his actions and behavior I would be comfortable following?
Have religious views and practices not in opposition to mine?
Have functioning, healthy relationships both in and out of AA?
Have a job?
Treat people fairly, respectfully, and considerately?
Have the knowledge and expertise to deal with me effectively and appropriately?
Have similar ethical and moral values as I do?
Seem well-balanced in most everyday situations?
Speak in the experiential rather than the theoretical or dogmatic?
Allow me to question?
Allow me to think and speak for myself?
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Mike's First Video:
Mike can be contacted at mike@blamedenial.co.uk