An egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

Of all the (many many) saying of twelve-step recovery, this is the one that whacked me most precisely with the two-by-four of “I belong here.”

I am wonderful. I am funny and brilliant and suave and a fine conversationalist. I can hold my own against just about anybody. I can handle whatever life (or my boss) throws at me. I just need, you know, a couple of drinks to get me started, loosen me up, whatever.

I am a piece of shit. Any second now someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and say “what the hell do you think you’re doing and who do you think you’re fooling?” I can’t get out of my own way. Everything I touch turns to ashes. But if I could just get, you know, a couple of drinks, I’d find a way to relax, pull myself together, say something clever, make you like me just a little, survive another day.

So now, without, you know, a couple of drinks to alter me, there are days when I remember that, although I have some fine qualities, I’m not Uberman. And although I have my faults, as long as I think about what’s important and put effort into doing what’s right, I’ve done what I can do to help the people who matter to me recognize my worth. (The convoluted nature of that sentence is entirely the fault of that other AA concept, letting go of the outcome. Which is a topic for another time.)

Seriously. I just saw a true “what were they thinking” ad.

We see a bullet flying through the air (slowed down a great deal, so it’s clear). It flies into the neck of a bottle and crashes through the bottom of the bottle. Out of the spray of broken glass, a car emerges.

Is it an ad about car safety? About the dangers of drinking and driving?

No. It’s an ad for the car.

Dumbest. Ad. Ever.

We hear it all the time. “Keep coming back.”

People say it as a mantra when a newcomer talks about how hard it is. Or when someone slips and wonders if the program can really help them. And mostly, we mean it when we say it.

But I’ve heard some old-timers … no, wait. Not old-timers. More like “middle-timers.” Anyway, there are sometimes people who grumble about people who slip over and over. Expressions of “they’re just wasting our time” or “they’re not serious about sobriety.”

While I recognize that some days it can be hard to applaud convincingly when seeing someone get their umpteenth 30-day chip, I think the grumblers are missing the point. As far as I know, we have all slipped many many times. Some of us do it in the rooms. Some of us do it on our own, before we ever find our way into the program.

Think of all the folks who NEVER find their way in. I betcha many of them tell themselves “tomorrow I won’t do this to myself again” over and over. We would welcome them gladly if they ever found one of our clubhouses, despite the fact that they’re big-time slippers.

We should celebrate the courage of anyone who comes back, no matter how many times it happens. Hell, we should celebrate each and every one of us who attends a meeting. We’re miracles.

So quit your bitching.

Okay, I’m done now…

Most of the meetings I go to are pretty loose. We suggest that there be no cross-talk, but it’s usually okay, unless it goes too far. But one thing I hear a lot is “that topic didn’t have anything to do with alcoholism.”

Humbug, says I. As I was reminded just the other day, only the first step mentions alcohol. The other eleven deal with life, with character, with thoughts and actions. As far as I’m concerned, anything that threatens my serenity is a valid topic.

I guess I just need to attend meetings of people who feel more or less the same way. And, perhaps, the people complaining about this could do the same.

Here’s a story I heard in a recent meeting.In more or less his words:

While driving through a rural area, I spotted a sign: AA Salvage Auto. Spread over a hillside were row on row of wrecked cars. I wondered if they were all from DWI accidents? Probably not. I know that when I came to AA, I thought I was junk, a wreck.

As I got closer to the sign, I saw the recycling symbol (not unlike our triangle in a circle) and the words “This group recycles.” Fortunately, my group does the same thing. I’ve been recycled and I’ve been salvaged.

So I decided it might be nice to add a link to the AA website, and, being a detailed-oriented type, I thought it might be nice to fact-check. You know, so that I got the right link.

As it happens, the right link is AA.org.

The wrong link is, well, I’m not going to link it here. But I will send you to a lovely article about the lawsuit over it.

So do us all a favor – use the real site, and promise to never, ever go to the imposter. Schmucks. (Not you… them. You I like.)

(In an attempt to write more regularly, it occurs to me to try my hand at the topic of meetings I attend. Hey, if I’m actually going to think about the topic, maybe I could talk in meetings, too. Nah…)

This topic reminds me of the old saying “That which does not kill me makes me stronger. But most things kill me.” And for those of you who say “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle,” how do you explain suicide, nervous breakdowns, homicide, etc., etc.? But I digress.

When I’m in the middle of something painful or tedious or depressing, I find it more helpful to ask “what can I do about it right now?” How can I affect the situation in a positive way? The (unspoken) goal is to help this unpleasantness “pass,” but really the immediate goal is to regain a sense that I have some tiny portion of control. Powerlessness sucks. When we say we are powerless over alcohol, the real sentence is a bit longer, more like “I am powerless over alcohol if I put it in my body or if I let the concept of alcohol have too much space in my brain.” Clearly if we were flat-out powerless, none of us would get even a week sober.

On the other end of the spectrum, when life is good, I definitely don’t want to hear “this too shall pass.” Instead, I try to file away what it feels like to feel good, to know that life is pretty nice, thank you. So that the next time things suck, I can reflect on the fact that things can be otherwise.

A recent topic reminded me of one of my weakest links with the program, and that is my reluctance to socialize and/or to reach out. When I’m in a good place, I’ll happily go to breakfast with the mob or hang around after a meeting, but it’s much more common to find me scurrying out as soon as the meeting is over.

Someone recently asked me why, after a few years, I still didn’t have a sponsor. Well, mostly it’s because I’m sure a sponsor would try to make me do something. Anything. And there I’d be, out there. No thank you. I have made myself a promise (and shared it with others so it’ll be harder for me to avoid it) that if I relapse, I’ll get a sponsor on the way back in. Assuming I make it back.

Wow, this is depressing…

My father was raised in a particular form of Scandanavian Lutheranism, which can be summed up thusly:

Life is hard. Your job is to do the best you can, to do your duty, to shoulder the burden, to work hard, through whatever multiple adversities may afflict you. Then you will die, and God will casually say “eh, not good enough” and send you to hell.

And so I’ve spent most of my life believing that whatever I was doing, it wasn’t good enough. I’ve heard of something called “Imposter Syndrome,” (which I have in spades). That’s where you’re always expecting someone to tap you on the shoulder and say “what do you think you’re doing? You have no business doing that!”

And then there’s recovery, where I’ve been taught that we do things one day at a time. We work at building a sober history. As long as we’re taking a step away from a drink, instead of a step towards one, well, that’s good enough for today.

The point is to try, try hard. And know that if you keep trying, you’ll keep getting better. And it’s all good enough.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett