So Spank Me

As much as I hate cross talk in a meeting there are times when sharing what needs to be shared and not cross talking seems almost impossible. Side conversations are annoying, too, but often less so. I’m afraid I participated in both yesterday. Actually I managed the cross-talk thing more successfully. The side conversation thing was to point out something to a sponsee. Since I frequently judge myself too harshly about many things I’m going to absolve myself of this particular sin.

I’m not as eager to absolve the woman who was the target of my cross talk. In fact I just got off the phone with my friend Owen who was also disturbed by this chick who was aparently there not for recovery, but rather to promote her business and spewed a version of the message on AA based on a poor understanding of both the program and the English language. I guess it’s OK for her to think that because the 1st step says “we WERE alcoholic” and that our lives “WERE unmanagable” that it means that she now has power over alcohol. She is, after all, a “nationally certified Christian counselor”. We were all invited to take one of her cards which were pinned up by the stack on the announcements bulletin board.

Correct me if I’m wrong, I said, but doesn’t the book say that no real alcoholic ever recovers control? My understanding is that lack of power and an inability to control is exactly what the problem is and that my only hope of being delivered from the problem is to seek and align myself with a greater power by taking certain, simple, clear-cut steps. I believe it says that what I get isn’t control, but rather a “daily repreive based on my spiritual condition”. I think it also says that at some point there will be nothing standing in between me and picking up except that Higher Power. My experience is that I “recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body”, not that I have regained power over drugs and alcohol. I have not been given the power to control drugs and alcohol. The problem of desiring to control them was simply removed. And that is what I shared.

I am impressed that she is “nationally certified” but wonder if she is state licensed. And since the message I heard from her was not THE message of AA, I threw her cards in the garbage after the meeting. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do.

So spank me.