There was no roundup blog last week and for that, I apologize. Before you forgive me—let me stop you right there: there won’t be a roundup blog today either. For a couple of reasons. The first is that it feels like writing it has become a chore, or work, which is the opposite of the point of this Substack for me. The second is time. Work is great and life is good but time is elusive and trying to jam several different topics into a coherent blog eats too much of it. Plus, it’s begun to feel less personal.

The bottom line is this—whatever it is—is moving in a new direction. I have no idea what I’ll be writing about every week moving forward but today I’m talking Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) because it’s topical in my life at the moment.

Let me know what you think—love it, hate it, too long, too short, not enough funny, too much funny, whatever—and if there’s something you’d like to see me write about I’m all ears.

At the beginning (sobriety), I leaned heavily on Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). I actually went to my first meeting at 8:30 am the day after I got home from detox. I went to a meeting every day for the first week and nearly every day for that first month until one day I showed up and there was no meeting—just another desperado like me wondering where the hell everyone had gone.

I really should’ve known, but apparently drunks can be a real sensitive bunch. It turns out a lot of deep-seated drama, politics, and in-fighting had been brewing for some time and I just happened to witness the final act of the group’s demise, though it wasn’t much of an act so much as it was a disappearance (which I guess is an act if you’re a magician). I wish I could give you more but I didn’t get any of the juicy details, nor did I give a shit—then or now, but especially then—I just moved on.

Because of the Covid overhang, AA meetings were relatively scarce at the time so I found it easier to get my fix via Zoom (where there is no shortage1). The convenience was nice, but attending meetings over Zoom also means you can join groups from anywhere which has the added benefit of more personalities, stories, insights, lessons, etc. This is important because over time, after attending the same meeting for long enough, you notice that the airtime gets hijacked by the same usual (often obnoxious) suspects who either have the irresistible urge to pontificate or just love to hear themselves talk.

Eventually, after you hear these spiels for the 17th time you start thinking to yourself, “this is a fucking waste of time”. Actually, I wouldn’t be shocked if this played a role in my group’s falling out. Anyway, I did those meetings for a while. I did them because despite my differences with AA (mainly the You’re-Not-Going-To-Make-It-Unless-You’re-Obsessed-With-God angle) there is a ton of value to be derived from hearing the life experiences of others, especially those who have made a lot of mistakes. Drunks fit that bill perfectly.

There are plenty of God-fearing folks reading this so I should probably back up and address that previous comment. I don’t mean to offend, I just think that AA limits its reach by attaching itself so closely to Him. Interestingly, in its text, the organization actually goes out of its way to disassociate itself from religion (or at least give agnostics an out) by stressing a “Higher Power of our understanding that is greater than ourselves” rather than just “God”. There’s even a chapter in the book called “We Agnostics” which attempts to make everything more palatable to nonbelievers.

In practice though (meetings), God often dominates the conversation and shares can turn into sermons. The thing is—even though it can annoy me—I get it. At AA they say alcoholism is a physical, mental, and spiritual disease, which I sort of agree with (though I think an argument could be made for it being just physical and mental), and the most popular way to get your spirituality on is via religion.

In any case, a little spiritualism never hurt anybody which is why I embraced the concept of a Higher Power of my understanding. My Higher Power is not something I can explain. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to describe it in one word, I’d say “love”.

Anyway. As you may recall, I picked up the habit of writing during this period of my life and these Zoom AA meetings were prime journaling hours. At first it started with writing down interesting things I heard that I thought I could apply to my life—quotes, personal stories, books, and so on. This led to me expanding on those thoughts which meant writing about my feelings (or whatever). I’d hear something interesting in the first few minutes of the meeting, I’d jot it down and then start adding my own thoughts to it.

Before I knew it the Zoom call would be wrapping up and I’d be sitting infront of 2 or 3 pages of handwritten gibberish exploring things I never would’ve come close to touching otherwise, half of which had absolutely nothing to do with the original thought. It didn’t take long after that for the benefits of this exercise to exceed the benefits of AA (for me), so I started logging onto meetings less and less until I stopped altogether.

In a way though, I was developing a skill that also happens to be the 4th step of AA:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

It’s not easy, but in my opinion, it’s the single most productive thing an alcoholic can do, especially early on in sobriety. It requires being honest with yourself, which isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially not for a drunk whose mind is a cunning, scheming little motherfucker. It also means coming to terms with the fact that you’ve underachieved for as long as you’ve been drunk because by definition you weren’t performing optimally: every single decision you’ve made over the last X years has been tainted by alcohol, which necessarily means you haven’t done your best.

I remember sitting in front of my coaches telling them that my being hungover had no impact whatsoever on my performance. I wasn’t lying either. That’s not to say that being hungover had no impact on my performance—though in the spirit of honesty my performance was always consistent regardless of my state, baseball was one of the few things I was able to protect from my addiction (mostly)—because of course it did. It just means that I believed it didn’t.

Shit like that doesn’t fly anymore when you force honesty from yourself and the 4th step helps you get to a state that allows you to do that. The 10th step helps you stay in that state forever:

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

This is what journaling is for me and it gets much easier to take this personal inventory once you’ve done it the first time (step 4). Personally, I’ve found that I haven’t been wrong since I started doing this exercise so I haven’t had to admit anything. Just kidding, I’m still wrong (A LOT).

The nice thing is that none of my mistakes are informed by booze anymore so when I’m wrong I know that I simply fucked up. I am very ok with fucking up—it’s fucking up to the power of alcohol that will get ya.

Anyway, I suppose I’m writing about AA today because of step 12:

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps , we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I found myself at a handful of meetings this week so I’ve been thinking about the program and my experience in it. Don’t worry—I didn’t relapse! I’m simply supporting a friend (who I could not be more proud of right now!!) who made the decision to stop letting booze dictate their life. I also chose to write about AA and the Big Book because even though they were created for alcoholics, you don’t have to be one to recognize that the principles they hang on are applicable to anyone with a desire to be a better human.