Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: alcoholics anonymous

  • Burning Desire

    Apparently we need some clarification! When the chairperson towards the end of the meeting says:

    “does anyone have a burning desire – anyone feel like they might drink if they don’t share?” That means exactly what it says… IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT DRINK TODAY SPEAK UP WE’RE HERE FOR YOU!

    Below is a list of things that are NOT considered “burning desires” and instead more likely self-centered, ego-centric bullshit that none of us need to hear… chances are you’ve talked too much this week anyway, go help an alcoholic and get out of yourself already

    Things not considered burning desires (that I’ve actually heard)

    • I’ll be teaching the clown school in Tempe this week and would love to see you all there
    • The Mental Health Workshop (the field you happen to work in) will be downtown this week and it’d be great if you could drop by
    • My 40th birthday (not AA birthday, belly button) party is this Saturday, it’s a potluck and we need more volunteers for food
    • No one talked about the point I was thinking of since the meeting started… well they did kind of but I can say it so much better and really need to, because sharing and stuff
    • I really loved what you said about cats, it just touched me spiritually

    This is not a point in the meeting where you should speak up because you’re feeling the need to share your wisdom (especially if you’re on your third relapse and only have 60 days – take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth)

    … ok, sorry… I feel better now

  • Like Passengers of a Great Liner

    I attended the SRI Roundup this weekend – well as much as I attend roundups: I went to the Friday night speaker, the Saturday banquet and Saturday night speaker. I would have attended the Sunday morning speaker which I normally associate with the “spiritual” talk, but they do it differently here – here it’s a local person on Sunday’s and I figure I’ll hear them ranting eventually in a meeting so I can stay home and do chores.

    Friday nights speaker was the energetic Katie P from Austin, TX. She told a very powerful story and it hit all the right points, I really appreciated her talk. She was funny at times, told of tragic happenings and stressed the importance of the Big Book, the Steps and even the Traditions. During her talk she talked about having “meeting based sobriety” which is different than “solution based recovery” and it was just right.

    “The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.” Alcoholics Anonymous, page 17

    The fellowship is not sufficient on it’s own for real recovery from alcoholism was what she was relaying to us. In her experience she spent decades going to meetings for the sake of going to meetings before she needed something more. When she finally hit a spiritual bottom while sober for quite a while she found real solutions in the Book.

    I myself never found a need to go to more than a few meetings a week, it would seem odd to stop going to bars and hangouts only to now to to AA houses and fellowship things. To be recovered we become a part of society again and that’s all society not just the rooms of AA.

    Here in Phoenix I hear people say they are going to meetings two times a day, seven days a week and it just baffles me, these people have 20+ years and say they have to do that to maintain their sobriety… I say, there is a real solution in the book that will show you precisely to recover from alcoholism – and that solutions doesn’t mention 4 hours each day in AA. Going to meetings every day is “meeting based sobriety”, going every day to get a small spiritual fix in a meeting when a real solutions is in the action described in the book is insane.

    The AA program is threefold: Recovery, Unity, Service – we need all three.

    The Saturday night speaker was a “slogan slinger” he had a lot of slogans and stories to tell, most of them not his. It brought lots of laughs and claps, but it wasn’t his story really and that would have probably been a better talk.

     

  • Finding a Home Group

    Walking into new meetings the first thing I notice almost every time: OMG they’re so young! Where are the old people? It’s at that point I realize I consider myself old and that my age prevents me from remembering that I was one of the young people when I came into the rooms. Which makes me say out loud, almost every time, “Well crap”. Last night at my friend Cliff’s home group we were talking about that and he said “if they’re lucky some day they’ll be as old as us and still going to meetings” or something to that effect.

    Cliff has made that meeting his home group recently and people have been asking me recently where my home group is and I just haven’t decided yet. It was so much easier when I was new to find a home group: my sponsor said “this is your home group” and I nodded and made coffee, set up chairs, greeted or whatever they would have me do. Oh… you might not know what a “Home Group” is …

    Excerpted from “The A.A. Group . . . Where It All Begins”, a pamphlet published by A.A. World Services and available online here http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/p-16_theaagroup.pdf

    The A.A. Home Group 

    Traditionally, most A.A. members through the years have found it important to belong to one group which they call their “Home Group.” This is the group where they accept service responsibilities and try to sustain friendships. And although all A.A. members are usually welcome at all groups and feel at home at any of these meetings, the concept of the “Home Group” has still remained the strongest bond between the A.A. member and the Fellowship.

    With membership comes the right to vote upon issues that might affect the group and might also affect A.A. as a whole—a process that forms the very cornerstone of A.A.’s service structure. As with all group-conscience matters, each A.A. member has one vote; and this, ideally, is voiced through the home group.

    Over the years, the very essence of A.A. strength has remained with our home group, which, for many members, becomes our extended family. Once isolated by our drinking, we find in the home group a solid, continuing support system, friends and, very often, a sponsor. We also learn firsthand, through the group’s workings, how to place “principles before personalities” in the interest of carrying the A.A. message.

    Talking about her own group, a member says: “Part of my commitment is to show up at my home group meetings, greet newcomers at the door, and be available to them—not only for them but for me. My fellow group members are the people who know me, listen to me, and steer me straight when I am off in left field. They give me their experience, strength and A.A. love, enabling me to ‘pass it on’ to the alcoholic who still suffers.”

    It was definitely easier when someone assigned me a home group and when I was ignorant about the things that matter so much to me now (Traditions, knowledge, Big Book, steps, history…). Now it seems I start dismissing a groups chance before I even attend a business meeting. I think a part of me will always want the Northside Group to be my home group, or the Eau Claire Pacific Group or the Tuesday Night Big Book Group… Those groups hold special places in my heart and are the model for me to find a new home group where I feel like I belong… All of those groups had flaws, some more glaring than others, but each of them felt like I belonged there.

    What I want in a home group isn’t that much, I don’t think…

    • knowledgable people talking about the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
    • knowledge and working of the 12 Traditions
    • regular business meetings
    • structure
    • reliability
    • greeters (this one is just a hope… but it was a part of some great meetings I used to attend)

    There will always be a part of me that wants old-timers and big book thumpers to be armed with stun guns to shock people who are off topic and or rambling on and on… I’ve had that desire since I started attending and it’s never going to go away. But really, I want to be at a meeting where they aren’t afraid to call someone on their bullshit and ask them to shut the fuck up.

    So, for now I’m still without a “Home Group”, but i haven’t given up looking and I haven’t given up hope to finding one. It took me almost 14 years to find a home group in DC and being the type of alcoholic that searches for loopholes to slip through I’m glad this sentence is the first in the Home Group portion of the pamphlet:

    “Traditionally, most AA members through the years have found it important to belong to one group which they call their ‘Home Group.’”

    That “most” keeps me looking and keeps me from settling for second best when the right group is probably out there for me to find.

  • In All Our Affairs

    In All Our Affairs

    Everything I know about being a good worker I learned from 12 step programs.

    One of my first sponsors told me to shake hands with everyone before and after the meeting and introduce myself to them. 

    When someone comes to the office I stand up from my desk, walk over and extend my hand, introducing myself – they apparently like this and I see their shoulders relax a bit and a smile form on even the grumpiest of people.

    Our basic text, the Big Book, tells us “Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.” A.A. page 62

    If I’m manning a table/booth at an event I smile and welcome people over – I ask about them, I want to know what they do and how they like it. I find out how I can help them. If I focus on helping others then I can’t spend time in my head thinking about me which is a great thing.

    I am Responsible.  When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.  And for that:  I am responsible. 

    and

    “How can A.A. best function” and, “How can A.A. best stay whole and so survive” A.A. page 177 (in the mini Big Book)

    I am responsible for my job too, my company and my co-workers. I want them to always be there for me so I have to be responsible. That means I ask how I can help them do their jobs, if there is anything I can do to make their loads lighter – if their load is lighter than that might make them have a better day. It also means I have to be aware of the rules and how the company is doing. “How can my work best function?” and, “How can work best stay whole and so survive?” Those are some great questions to consider when thinking about your job.

    “Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.” A.A. page 178 (in the mini Big Book)

    I try to stay out of gossip at work – I don’t want to need to participate in it and become involved in any drama. I also just focus on the job at hand there and keep politics and religion out of discussions with co-workers. Yes, I do have an opinion about all kinds of things – but that doesn’t mean work is the place I need to share it.

    “…and when we were wrong promptly admitted it…” A.A. page 59

    That one’s easy – usually… it throws some people off when you come at them and say “Hey, I screwed up here, how can I fix this with you”. People like the honesty, the openness when you do things like that – sometimes it makes them wary but if they see you practice it more they’ll come to understand it’s a part of you.

    “As we go through the day we pause when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.” A.A. page 87

    This one saves my bacon time and time again – before I toss out my witty retort or type off a heavily worded email I stop and take a deep breath and consider what I’m about to do – sometimes I have to take a few pauses before I’m alright again…

    Sponsor Direction: Show up early, help set up the meeting – make the coffee, get to know people. Stay late – help tear down the meeting and get to know people.

    I’m always early for meetings, I’m always early for work. I make sure that I’m there to talk to people before the day starts and to see how they’re doing. I make the coffee (sometimes my co-worker does) I turn on the lights. At the end of the day I clean up the coffee (sometimes my co-worker does) and make sure everything is locked up tight… It helps to get the day off on the right track. Staying after is nice if someone needs help there you are, you can be in a place of maximum helpfulness to them.

    A.A. can and does make it easy to go to work and do what I do, it also bridges a gap in relationships with my co-workers and people my company serves that otherwise I wouldn’t have. My natural instincts are to stay to myself not talk to anyone else – even when I was drinking I was that way. But I have to be involved in the stream of life and participate, I’m meant to.

    November 2014 edit: People have commented over the years and recently about my great work ethic – I used to credit it to being raised in the Midwest, but then I recall my younger days at factories when it was all about me and my jobs didn’t last very long at all. Being a better worker means thinking about your coworkers, organization and those goals – it means focusing less on you and yours. Surprisingly these small changes can make a world of difference in every day.

    originally published July 2013

  • Big Book Quoters Don't Stay Sober – Oh Really?

    I heard in a meeting this morning “people who quote the big book don’t stay sober” and saw heads nodding along in agreement. Then I heard “you can be too smart to get the program, I hope I stay a dumb”.

    My first thought was “Fuck off”. Then my next thought was that what he really meant to say was you can get trapped in intellectualizing the hell out of the program and it’s really simple – clean house, seek a higher power and help others.

    I can’t count on both my hands and feet the number of people I know with long (double digit) sobriety that regularly quote the Big Book in their shares, stories and every day life. It’s our text book, it has directions “To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book“. So discounting those who know it is like stabbing yourself in the foot.

    Knowing what’s in your Big Book is vitally important to recovering from “a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body“. If you were diagnosed as a diabetic, you wouldn’t just start injecting yourself with insulin all willy nilly – you’d learn about your disease, what to eat, how to eat, warning signs – and you don’t get that information from your next door neighbor or a person on a bus – it’s given to you in information packets and meetings with your doctor or health professional that understand what you’re going through.

    The same is true of alcoholism. We have a “common solution” that has worked for countless people who were once just as hopeless as I was – I can choose to follow that path to recovery or I can choose to go a different route or skirt the edges of the Happy Road of Destiny and get what was promised when we practice half-measures: nothing. Our book says time and time again “further on are clear-cut directions showing precisely how we have recovered” and “Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery”

    On remaining dumb:  “Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness”. Page 84

    Our book tells us also that self-knowledge is not the answer, so just knowing you’re an alcoholic and doing nothing about it isn’t going to get you far. You can quote the Big Book in meeting until your blue in the face but if you fail to enlarge your spiritual life it won’t help you at all – I think this is what the gentleman was trying to convey (actually I don’t really think this, but I kind of hope that it is, because remaining ignorant shouldn’t be a goal of anyone).

    The common solution I talk about here isn’t the group therapy you see where you come and talk about whats wrong with your life, the common solution is a program of action – getting out of yourself and helping others, specifically alcoholics, but all others “Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.”

    “…there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet.” page 25 We don’t use a jack hammer when a hammer will do, but we also don’t use a hammer when we need the jackhammer, we use the tools that are given to us.

    Read your book, talk to your sponsor, find the solution in the book and work our program of action. Lastly I’ll quote the back of the book twice:

    “To those now in its fold, Alcoholics Anonymous has made the difference between misery and sobriety, and often the difference between life and death. A.A. can, of course, mean just as much to uncounted alcoholics not yet reached.

    Therefore, no society of men and women ever had a more urgent need for continuous effectiveness and permanent unity. We alcoholics see that we must work together and hang together, else most of us will finally die alone.

    The “12 Traditions” of Alcoholics Anonymous are, we A.A.’s believe, the best answers that our experience has yet given to those ever-urgent questions, “How can A.A. best function?” and, “How can A.A. best stay whole and so survive?” AA Page  561 (4th edition

    and (I guess this one is Herbert Spencer not AA)

    “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance–that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” AA Page 568

  • Adjustments

    May already, wow how times flies.

    Having to drive every day is a big change from life in Washington DC where I could walk or Metro almost anywhere. The morning commute is pretty easy and relaxed, my work day starts at 7:30 (so I’m there by 7:15) and traffic is still pretty light that early. In the afternoon I get done at 4:00 and that traffic is pretty heavy. I manage to avoid freeways and my commute home is a little over 20 minutes, the way to work is about 15. Buses, at least on Thomas Road don’t always have pull offs and more often than not just sit there at the stop they arrive at until they’re supposed to leave… unlike DC buses which depart seconds after arriving and loading… so it blocks up some of the traffic.

    Everyone here speeds, I know everyone every where speeds… but here its extreme to me anyway. 50 in the 35 zone is typical, most people do at least 10 miles over the limit and it gives me issues 🙂 I usually just go along at the speed limit but sometimes I can just sense how annoying I am to others and go faster, they still pass me. I brought up the speeding thing to my insurance agent and she said “the speed limit is just a suggestion.” Really…

    I have finally stopped waking up at 3:00 a.m. and just lying there in the dark… now it’s about 4:15 or so that I wake up… but that’s a whole lot better really and I feel like I have extra energy and am less tired.

    I’ve found some good AA meetings here, well at the moment I think they’re good… One is a traveling Big Book meeting that goes from house to house and I was all excited about it – until I came and they were reading the stories in the back… /sigh. The other two are Big Book meetings also, one follows along to the Joe and Charlie CD for 15 minutes and then discusses what they heard and relates, mostly they stay on topic, but there is a lot of new or recycled sobriety here and not that many folks yet that have over 5 years. The other is a step meeting, big meeting – reminds me a bit of Pacific (the size and personalities) and Northside (the literature aspect and traditions), the lead shares their experience strength and hope but can only use the Big Book for reference… I’ve only been to the Step 8 and 9 meeting so far… I wonder how Step 6 and 7 did… we’ll see next round. Every meeting I’ve been to here I hear the Traditions read and it sounds like such a simple thing… but it makes me feel better.

    I haven’t done too much “fun stuff” outside of work or AA… but there is a new Sober Bowling group starting and I’m going to try that. I’ll be seeing Iron Man this weekend and I’m looking forward to the Comic Con here at the end of the month. Next weekend I’m going to a baseball game for work.

    So far, I’m pretty happy with moving here… I know summer is coming but so far the weather has been spectacular.

    Love and miss friends and family, but happy to be here.

  • Run Out of Hate

    My first thoughts when I heard about what happened in Boston yesterday was “this is religious based”. I wasn’t thinking Muslim at all I was thinking US “Christian” that feeling in the back of my head wont go away. It’s a sad state to think organizations that should be teaching love and peace are the first to pop into my mind when I see acts of terror and hate – or maybe not so surprising. I saw on the net all kinds of people jumping to conclusions and all kinds of other people telling people not to jump to conclusions. So I’m not going to start pointing fingers at a million hate spewing, discriminatory assholes in US churches, but I really want to.

    My next thought jumped to the OK City Bombing and Timothy McVeigh and the rampant amount of gun nuts that need machine guns to hunt deer and wild pheasant. Some of those people call upon Jesus’s name and have bumper stickers that say “Guns, God and Guts” or some crap – like their god is perfectly all right with the continued killing of innocent children, mothers, fathers, daughters, brothers and friends.

    But the phrase that keeps coming back into my head is from AA:

    “If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the sudden rage were not for us. Anger is the dubious luxury of normal men, but for us alcoholics it is poison.” – As Bill See’s It, Page 5

    That applies to me as a sick individual that shouldn’t hate anymore and when I do I have measures/tools to take care of it. But it should apply to our country now too. We are a country that is filled with hate, fear and intolerance of others. We are a country that reacts violently, forcefully and dangerously.

    I think we’ve had our fair share of hate and violence and oppression and need to give it up. Maybe it’s time we found a different way, a better way. Perhaps so many people in other countries that hate us would look more kindly if we were in fact kinder and less concerned with oil and the size of our tanks. Maybe we could again be the land of the free and the home of the brave by helping other people to become better people and finding ways to make the planet safer for even the lowliest members we have.

    Something has to change and someone needs to lead the way. All this hate and fear are dangerous to us as individuals and even more so as a country … a nation… a world.

    We have to be free of anger – or it kills us.

  • Breaking and Entering

    Back in 1985  or 86 I wasn’t the most well behaved individual.

    On a particular school day me and a couple of friends skipped out and were looking for some money to get beer, cigarettes and maybe score some pot. I had been lifting $20s out of my grandmothers purse for quite a long time but this day she wasn’t home and we were desperate.

    She had this door in the house that she kept padlocked and that of course means there must be money in there (teenage thinking). We didn’t know how to pick the lock but the hinges were on the outside of the door with the lock and someone suggested we just take the door off the hinges – brilliant.

    We ruffled around in that room for probably 20 minutes and maybe found $15 – and left. My grandmothers probably wouldn’t have ever known we were in there except we didn’t put the door back on the hinges…. /doh

    As a result of that break in I was shipped off to foster care a few days later – really one of the best things that ever happened to me.

    Flash-Forward 2013

    There is no key to the supply closet door, someone the previous night had locked it – trying to be helpful or something. So this morning I couldn’t get in there.

    The life I live now is such that taking the door off the hinges didn’t even cross my mind. When other folks arrived and we explained what had happened THEY did it and it brought that memory back to me of how simple it was…

    Let me assure you, I wasn’t going to be the new guy that got fired for breaking into the supply closet … but it was cool that someone else knew exactly what to do (the door had been locked before).

    Also, let this be a lesson to you about security… hinges on the inside of locked rooms.

  • One Week in Phoenix

    I arrived in Phoenix a week ago today and all seems to be going well. The weather has been really nice mid 70s – 90s and all of it comfortable heat – everyone keeps telling me I’ll wish I had never moved her in the summer.

    My one bedroom apartment is really all that I need and moving in means I had to do some shopping. I’d go buy all the important things like the shower curtain and liner and not realize until I arrived home that I forgot the shower curtain rings and i’d run out again to get those and remember a slew of other things too. At this moment I think I have almost everything I need – maybe I could use a frying pan and a spatula… but I’ll be ok for a good while. For the first few days I didn’t do a lot outside of shopping, eating and driving around – oh, and I tanned by the pool every day, which is really a nice thing to be able to do.

    Everything is cheaper here – except gas. It’s an amazing concept, but when people make less money they have to sell things for less i guess.

    I didn’t have my Passport, which I need to get an AZ license, until yesterday (I shipped it UPS instead of taking it with me like a doofus) so I don’t have that yet. I do have a nice car that is quiet and gets me from A – Z very well. The amount of emails I’m getting now from Allstate and  VW makes me wish I had stayed carless. I’m sure I’ll figure out the settings for that soon.

    I tried out two meetings so far, one on Thursday night and one on Sunday. Each had things that I liked about it and each had things I didn’t – the Thursday night step study was the winner so far, I plan to keep looking but that one is close and the people friendly.

    Monday was the first day of work so of course I didn’t sleep well. I was at work at 7:00 – a 15 minute car ride and my day starts at 7:30 there. The boss and the other new person were there to meet me and they showed us the ropes of how to open up (making coffee, drawing drapes, turning on the printer) and before you knew it we were taking notes in the board meeting. To be honest I didn’t take many notes I was really interested in what they were talking about. For lunch the boss got us tacos and burritos. The day went by really fast and before I knew it it was quitting time – 4:00 p.m. It had been a really great day and then I checked my voicemail (See this story).  So it was an up and down day mostly up.

    My Desk at Work
    My Desk at Work

    Tuesday I spent good quality time with my boss going over how I’m going to help her – she’s never had an assistant before and she’s excited and wary about it. I put some of those cares to rest right away by giving here items that she had been expecting but didn’t ask me for and then pointed out three errors on the website and in email signatures that should be addressed ASAP. They said the appreciated it I hope so I was only trying to help and get used to everything.

    Wednesday, today I started to discover how unorganized the office is – there are all kinds of documents in the “Forms” folder that don’t resemble forms at all and the “Inventory” folder has mostly letters about events. *sigh* Well at least I wont be bored.

    My protector at work
    My protector at work

    As it stands today I’m pretty happy here in AZ. I know the weather will change and the job will get incredibly busy in the summer – but i’m ready.

  • Fahrman Flyer

    Several years ago I used to write a weekly newsletter for residents in an inpatient treatment center. I’m packing so I scanned them and can toss em and still have them – I really love technology.

     

    Here’s a sample:

     

    Fahrman Flyer

     

    It’s not Pulitzer worthy but hey, I enjoyed writing it back in the day.