Little victories are the ones you’ll celebrate in your first few months of sobriety. You won’t have $300 ATM withdrawals that you won’t remember. You’ll get to work every day. But no one in the rest of the world will care. You can tell them, “Hey! I’ve gone a whole week without blacking out!” and they will not understand what a big deal that is. Perhaps someone will say, “What do you want, a cookie?”
~Bucky Sinister, GET UP
Ok, now I was born an alcoholic. Also, I have spent a lifetime struggling to stay sober. Or I’ve been dead drunk. And that’s it. There has been no middle ground, as a number of friends and family members can I'm sure attest. So AA became a force in my life very early on. As time passed, I started to sour on the entire concept of AA because of its overbearing god-consciousness, despite the prevalence of the ‘as you understand god’ rhetoric. And also because of the nauseating righteousness of a large part of its membership. So, needless to say, I’ve done some brutal wrestling with 12 step groups, to my detriment.
Ok, now I was born an alcoholic. Also, I have spent a lifetime struggling to stay sober. Or I’ve been dead drunk. And that’s it. There has been no middle ground, as a number of friends and family members can I'm sure attest. So AA became a force in my life very early on. As time passed, I started to sour on the entire concept of AA because of its overbearing god-consciousness, despite the prevalence of the ‘as you understand god’ rhetoric. And also because of the nauseating righteousness of a large part of its membership. So, needless to say, I’ve done some brutal wrestling with 12 step groups, to my detriment.
This is
where Bucky Sinister comes in. An angel
purchased a book for me as a Christmas gift after a particularly evil drinking
debacle that wound me up in an institution. I came home and started reading GET
UP and right away, I felt better. Vindicated. Supported. Understood. Bucky had hit a common thread that I could grasp. Post punk
rock sober existence without some god trip downer. Being an artist in recovery.
Applying AA’s principles minus the dogma. And above
all, a guide to being a stand up dude. Life ain’t easy these days for Americans,
but this solid chunk of REAL self empowerment helped me to GET THE FUCK UP. Thanks,
Chuck.
If your
searching for a no nonsense addendum to
the mighty blue book, this is required reading.
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