Two Chances Not To Read This

Item! The ominous Mimi at Applebones wants examples of nouns trying to slip over the verbage fence. For instance:... well I'm drawing a blank, but she gives some examples. You should visit! Catch her goat, it's fun in the comments if you can manage to provoke her.
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Item! Tkd Junkie has done a thorough 1st step with her sponsor and I want to congratulate her in her comments section, except, well..I have an oddball perspective on the 1st Step and when I talk in meetings about it there are always crickets.

Or maybe offended crickets, like I've joked about the patriarch's will or ...called the 1st Step a cop-out or something...

OK. One more try, or two: when I give my 1st step speech, let us say there is a Silent Penultimate Fourth Panel.

It's like a thread killer, this speech.
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Step 1, from "How It Works" in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous": "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable."

I walked in, age 32, read that with a prelude 'it goes without saying' and skipped to Step 2. ("Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.")

Years later, when I was really really really in trouble and backed up against nothingness, my unreflective resistance became obvious to everyone at my long term residential treatment home.

For four months, not only did my counselors tell me I had not completed the 1st step, but my best friend did too, and laughed---nicely, endearingly--- because she could see I really was oblivious and couldn't help it.
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That house. That nice home for free, with fellow "rumpots, crackpots", etc.

I can't believe how easy it was to get along, and I can't believe how stubbornly I refused to follow any of the rules.

For instance I would leave at will, to go up the block to the college to print off any emails I'd received.

I would use the kitchen after it was closed.

When they changed the smoking rules and we had to stay indoors after 10 p.m., I would find a way to turn off the alarm system.

I did my chores but unlike everyone else I never kept the daily record of my activities everyone was required to do and everyone felt so anxious about...

When challenged, I defended myself with what must have been insufferable self-assurance. To other residents, I'd point out that I was risking punishment, and they were free to also, if they wanted.

I'm not cheating you when I break the little rules. Why are you so offended? In fact I'm not cheating anyone. I'm just cheating. Intransitive.

I entertained myself with cat and mouse games with the staff. I turned group discussions into debates with the teacher, and half way through, forget which side I'd taken and--- like the proverbial zealot--- redouble my efforts.
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In the book, the writers say the 1st Step is difficult because for one it is difficult to accept that we are different. Also, that it is shameful to admit to being powerless. (The original first step is hilarious, by the way. So it is written: "We admitted we were licked.")

I couldn't relate to this. Perhaps I was genuinely shameless. Or so uninvested in life that I didn't mind powerlessness. (Oh I had dreams, but they were grandiose, and not realistic enough to inspire hope. I didn't "hope" to be a famous writer. I dreamed of being a famous writer.)
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Finally people started to say, "Surrender". You haven't surrendered, just consider your day to day behavior, it may be a one man play you're directing, but you're still the play director.

So I went back and wondered. They said this 'surrender' was about my 1st step. I had a problem with admitting my powerlessness.

Finally, long after I'd been evicted and moved into this Sober House, I could see there was , ahem, ladies and gentlemen, a misunderstanding. Between Bill W. and me.

The problem was that I'd regarded the 1st step as proclaiming my powerlessness. I was ashamed not because I was ill, but because I felt like maybe I was faking. Or that there was no such illness.

I thought, how would my family react if I told them I couldn't help being an arrogant drunk, thief, liar.
Wasn't that in actuality a laughable excuse?

(And Jumping Jehoshaphat! What sort of autobiographical re-write would be in order, if it turned out I had a disease. This wreckage of my years, involving so many people I loved and so many I admired and wished would love me...what if it were genuinely TRAGIC? Instead of me being criminal!)

To this day, and maybe forever, I sleep on it. I sleep on the 1st step, like my anonydoc told me to sleep indefinitely on another important question.

Most importantly I move on to the moral inventory, the confessions, the amends. This program, to me anyway, is about spirituality through right behavior. I'm not too good at it yet, I'm fundamentally a plotter rather than a planner, a schemer rather than a
manager. In short, I'm as selfish as ever.

But dear god in heaven, thank you for my water wagon, thank you for my new eyes. If I drink, I have no brakes, I drink to indefinitely postpone hangovers. If I drink again, I will drink forever, my eyes will be closed again. It would be to choose against life, to close the menu of life.

Deliberately. For now, I do have the power, by my lord jesus christ, son of the living god.
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I'm John, a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thanks for listening folks.

(and for those of you who missed it, here The Secret Storm (1955)