Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: AA

  • Hiding in Plain Sight

    *I don’t speak for AA*

    I attended a Grapevine writing workshop in Tucson two weekends ago – the area GVR told me about it and I figured it was the least I could do as the GVR for the home group. They wanted people there who had been published in the Grapevine to share their experience with that entire process. I met five other published authors there and we all brought copies of our stories to share with the workshop. There were funny stories, tragic stories and ones that taught valuable lessons about growth. The panelists were asked to share one of their stories with the group and how that all worked – all of us did so and were met with approval until the last person shared….

    Instead of reading her story and sharing on it she opted to step on a soapbox regarding anonymity. She let us know her feelings on the dangers of being too open on Facebook, too open in general and her fears about the future of AA. Sadly – most of the questions from the workshop then went to that topic instead of writing and sharing experience, strength and hope.

    (more…)

  • Football, Chickens and Jedi Knights

    For weeks we practice – we meet and discuss our game plan, our strategy. We go over in minute detail what our goal is going to be for the upcoming game – how can we keep the ball moving forward and reach the end zone?  Reviewing past games where things didn’t go so well, listening to excuses for why the ball was fumbled and nodding to assurances it won’t happen again. You’re prepared, the coach gave the pep talk, the players are anxious to get started.

    You line up on the field – everyone on their toes ready to go. You do the hard count:

    32 – 57 – Left – HUT HUT

    You watch, seemingly in slow motion as the ball leaves the center and you grip it in your fingers… pull back to  look downfield. (more…)

  • On Top of Grass Mountain

    I was bitten by a horse fly or some kind of damn fly… ouch. There, now I’ve complained about everything bad that happened this weekend. I’m so glad I got that off my chest, I was trying to look tough and not complain.

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    When I first met my current sponsor he let me know right away that he escapes from the Phoenix heat each summer and goes off to New Mexico – it’s a good thing to know if you’re looking to get spiritual direction from a guy that he’s not going to be local for half the year. He’s a good sponsor, a good example of AA in action and I’ve shared things with him that I’ve not shared with another living being – so he matters a little bit to me (ok, a lot). Even before he left in May he suggested I come out and visit, spend a few days at his cabin and take a break. I thought that might be a good idea, and at his suggestion asked one of his other sponsees (Scott) if he’d be interested in joining me, he said yes and we tried to get a few others to go as well, but only had one taker who had to back out at the last minute due to health issues.

    When I first started planning this little excursion I wasn’t sure I could get time off from my new job (only been there since February). But I asked and they were very kind to me and gave me the time off in a very nice way. I really love my job, in case you haven’t heard me talking about it recently.IMG_3662

    One of the objectives of the trip was to attend my sponsors Home Away From Home Group meeting on Thursday nights so tickets were purchased to get us into Albuquerque in time to make his meeting with him. Had the flight not been delayed a little bit we would have even made it to dinner before the meeting – but that was not to be. Instead, the Sponz picked us up and had beef brisket, extra moist beef brisket and turkey, corn …. a bunch of food that we ate on the way to the meeting in Pecos about an hour away from the airport.. He thought for sure we’d be late, but we made it just at 7:00. Good little meeting – a newcomer, cheesecake bites, and the topic was ego… I enjoyed it and it just felt good to be in a meeting with the Sponz again. A fellow sponsee was there (wearing a Breaking Bad t-shirt) a local there, so nice to meet him. The meeting space is pretty unique and I hope you all see it someday in the Grapevine. (more…)

  • Reimagining How It Works

    Tonight  at the meeting a guy at his very first meeting was asked to read “How It Works”. This is something most of us hear at almost every meeting we attend. There are folks that brag they can recite it from memory without looking at the book at all. I probably could if hard pressed to do so. It’s one of those things I don’t pay much attention to anymore, l hear it so often that it just something I sit through until the real meeting begins. When a newcomer reads it and stumbles over the words – members in the meeting look up. We recognize that if someone doesn’t recognize those words enough to to get them in the cadence and pronunciation that we’re so used to this person is new… and that means the potential to share the message so freely given us. It’s really the only time I see people paying attention there anymore. I’m guilty myself.

    I have a friend in the program that reads along when it’s being read – he says it keeps his head in the present instead of looking around judging other people he reads each word as it’s read. I kind of like that and if I’m feeling like my mind won’t stay on track I’ll do that once in a while. (more…)

  • Emotional Sobriety

    Sponsor assignment: Would you give your reflections on what “emotional sobriety” looks like to you?

    Emotional Sobriety… hmmm

    First thoughts are it’s about letting go again – I get to a point, on occasion where I think I can steer again and that’s when things start to get out of whack, my emotions go up and down, usually down, and I start to get comfortable in the wrongness. It’s an odd trap where I begin to enjoy the sadness, anger or the like – like the 12 and 12 says “we exult in some of our character defects”. When I start to think I know better than my boss, sponsor, group, government, AA… then I’m gonna be off soon, and with me it gets rather noticeable.

    When I was drinking and first getting sober I had so much going on inside my head – committee meetings, tapes of resentments stuck on repeat, “should of done different”, grand revenge schemes and more. Even one of those things today is a sign that I’m off kilter and need to readjust, it’s easy to recognize them, but not quite as easy to affect the change necessary for some reason. (more…)

  • What's a 'Home Group'?

    “This is your home group for the next year” he said

    “What’s a home group?” I asked

    “That means you’ll be at this meeting every Sunday night – unless there is a funeral, and it better be yours.”

    That was what my first sponsor told me when I came into the rooms. I took him literally and didn’t miss a single Sunday night that first year – we had a meeting on Christmas day and I was there. I had the flu and had been vomiting and feverish for days, I was there (side note, I always thought once I quit drinking I’d never have the dry heaves again… boy was I pissed). No matter what, I was at my home group… The Sunday after that year was up I was a no-show… that’s how I am, lol (more…)

  • I Know Better

    I always think I know better. It almost doesn’t matter what the case is – I have a better solution than the one you’re suggesting or using. Someone suggests something – I’ll think about it, but I probably already have a plan that’s better than that.

    For example, going canoeing for the first time outside Washington DC back in 98 or 99 people suggested sunscreen, but I wasn’t a city boy, I could take a little sun and be fine. Didn’t matter how long we’d be outside I don’t need not stinking sunscreen… burned the hell out of the top of my thighs, they were almost purple and it hurt pretty bad for a few days. I thought I knew better but obviously I didn’t. (more…)

  • Obsess Much?

    I shake hands at meetings. This isn’t really news to anyone who knows me in meetings – I’ve been doing it a long time. Lots of people look forward to shaking my hand too (or so I tell myself).

    Some folks don’t shake my hand and insist on a hug – makes the meeting feel incomplete to me, I’m considering telling them – “no hand shake, then no hug”. It’s all about me you know… usually. A former Green Bay Packer sometimes is at the meeting and insists on the hugs… but he’ll have to be told too.

    Tonight a regular member of the home group came in and I saw him coming and couldn’t recall his name. See him every week, shake his hand every week, sometimes we even hug (after the handshake, so you know I actually like the guy) but his name escaped me. (more…)

  • The Trap

    I recently enjoyed a book by Lawrence Block called – A Drop of the Hard Stuff.

    It’s a story about a former cop turned unofficial private eye who also happens to be in his first year in AA. It centers on one of his childhood friends whom took a different path than he did and ended up in a life of crime and even serving time for something. That friend is also in AA, with a little more time than our hero and he’s out there making amends for the wrongs he has done (Steps 8 and 9) when he’s killed – shot once in the head and after once in the mouth – a clear message, shut up. Matthew, our hero of the story, goes out at the request of the dead guys sponsor (a gay jewelry designer) to see if any of the names still on his eighth step list would be viable suspects for the murder – it’s actually quite interesting.

    One of the suspects sets a trap for Matthew – when he returns to his room at the hotel he finds a glass of scotch sitting on the table staring at him – and a full opened bottle next to it. Not only that but the smell of that glass seems overwhelming. There are moments when we think this guy’s going to relapse right there the way the author is describing his mind. Seems the bad guy also dumped an entire bottle of the stuff on his bed too for the smell. That’s just not nice at all, but the killer knew if he could get Matthew drunk he’d win, knew the alcoholic obsession and a good bender would get him off the case.

    The whole book was good, but I found that particular scene really good and frightening.

    Reminded me of a comic book story that I read a while back – Flash Thompson is Spider-man’s biggest fan, but a bully to Peter Parker. He becomes friends with Spidey over the years and it becomes known. Flash is also a recovering alcoholic (so is Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man in case you didn’t know). Well bad guys decide to use Flash against Spidey and tie him up in a chair, force his mouth open and pout alcohol down his throat until he’s drunk enough to want to drink on his own again – I can’t recall how much time sober Flash had at the time, but it was a frightening scene for me when I read it. Damn that’s not a nice thing to do to an alcoholic.

    I have a wicked mind I guess and often think of horrible things – I think that spiking a punch bowl or the like at an AA round-up would make a great story, lots of little stories would crop up as a result of that one event and many lives stand the chance of being ruined for good – but there is also the chance for change and growth for people that were spiked. I wouldn’t do that, today, but it would make an interesting story and maybe someday I’ll write that.

     

     

  • Programs, Pamphlets and Power

    At a retreat recently a speaker shared something from one of AA’s pamphlets that I either hadn’t heard, forgot about or didn’t sink in when I read it. I loved it when he was saying it and it’s been floating around in my head for a few weeks now. What do you think?

    P-41 A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous

    Tonight, if I could find one fault with A.A., it would be that we have not yet begun to tap the potential hidden in the last seven words of the Twelfth Step: “practice these principles in all our affairs.”

    It occurred to me not long ago that whenever I am sitting in an A.A. meeting, I am never aware that I am sitting next to another white man, another Catholic, another American, or a Frenchman, Mexican, Jew, Moslem, or Hindu, black man or brown. I am aware only that I am sitting next to another alcoholic. And it seemed deeply significant to me that this feeling of common humanity had been purchased by me at the cost of considerable pain and suffering.

    Should this hard-won understanding of, and feeling for, others be confined to the meeting halls and members of A.A.? Or does it remain for me to take what I have learned and what I have experienced, not only in A.A., but in every other area and endeavor of my life, to lift up my head, and to assume my rightful place in the family of man? Can I there, in the household of God, know that I am not sitting next to another white man, another Catholic, another American, nor yet a Frenchman, Mexican, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, black man or brown, not even another alcoholic, and can I finally — at long last, please God — come home from all the wars and say in the very depths of my soul, “I am sitting next to another human being”?

    -from the pamphlet A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous

    There are days when I think about all AA has done for so many very different people and how amazing the transformations of their lives is. This program of action, to change and help others is really the key to what is wrong every where. Imagine a world where the everyone cared not just for themselves and their pocketbooks but for their common man – instead of reaching out their hand for another dollar for their war-chest they’d offer it to the new man and help pull him up and show him a better way.

    The program of AA has been borrowed and adapted to many different fellowships – Alanon, NA, CA, SA, OA, GA… the list goes on and on. I know handfuls of people who – normal in every  aspect that I can see – who use our steps and traditions to guide their lives, they too say it’s life changing.

    So why aren’t we standing on the rooftops, screaming from the top of our lungs, opening churches and the like?

    In the book the Bridge Across Forever, Richard Bach and his wife get stuck traveling into different realities… in one of those realities they find a mystical book, seemingly dropped from the heavens with all the answers to lifes mysteries. Richard and Leslie want to take that book with them to share with everyone that here is finally the answer, here is something we can all agree upon. But the other Richard from that alternate-reality shows them what would happen if they did. Suddenly we’d have the War of the Book as people who interpreted it one way disagreed with anthers interpretation of it and people would die to see their way was followed.  Like the crusades of our reality the truth would be forced upon people or they’d be killed for not believing.

    That’s what comes to mind when I think about an AA church or of forcing this upon others, it’s not how were supposed to do it. Its about attraction, not promotion… I’ve had many religious folk ask me about prayer, meditation, helping others and resentments – I’m glad I can help, I’m glad someone else helped me to do those very things…. that’s the key, get out of self and help others.