“The only reason why God is mentioned at all, is because without God, alcoholics perish. But, it’s not good to present that fact until the alcoholic sees the hopelessness of their condition in the 1st Step” – McGowdog (Stinkin’ Thinkin’ reader and AA zealot)
“It all goes back to building our Program on a Truth or a lie.” – Also McGowdog, written less than twelve hours after the first quote.
June 7, 2009
Quote of the Week: McGowdog
Posted by M A under The Tool Shed | Tags: AA jackasses, AA lies, alcoholics anonymous, assholes, lies, mcgowdog, old-timers, Quotes, sober recovery, wingnuts |[21] Comments
Stinkin' Thinkin' 
June 7, 2009 at 8:07 pm
ma,
that’s classic.
i can just imagine a young m-puppy scribbling in a coloring book around dinner time & yelling, “mom, is it ‘truth’ yet?”
speedy
June 8, 2009 at 4:32 am
check him out at http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-aa-religion.html
June 8, 2009 at 4:50 am
r,
thanks for the link, but there’s way too much crazy on that site. just the thought of cheesecake danny & the m-puppy sharing any kind of discourse signals to me the rapid approach of the end of days.
speedy
June 8, 2009 at 8:42 am
Thanks, Richard.
I checked it out, but will have to go back to read the rest of his comments. Reading what McGowdog writes is like looking at the sun: I can only do it for short periods at time before I turn my head away. You know that really bad feeling of empathy for someone who makes an ass of themselves in public? That is how I feel when I read what that poor bastard writes. No doubt his AA buddies read it and think, “shut up, already; you are making us look bad”.
June 8, 2009 at 4:45 pm
God is mentioned “at all” for a different reason than you imagine. You do a lot of that odnt’ you? Thats OK – in the absence of education oneselfe it’ll do.
“Its main object” (the book) “is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral. And it means, of course, that we are going to talk about God.”
You guys have a whole past-time, cottage industry going here based upon hatting our fellowship. Do you at least have SOME familiarity with the Big Book after which the fellowship is named? I have to wonder.
God isn’t simply “mentioned” in the Big Book. God is the SOLUTION in its entirety.
Peace,
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
June 8, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I am referring to the quote of the week by the way
June 8, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Hi Danny,
Do you honestly believe that we’re here passing our time hating on your fellowship? My impression of your position is that in its present incarnation, AA is just a behemoth of mediocrity – kind of like the newspaper comics page, whose sole function is to not offend anyone or to tax their brains too much. If my impression is correct, then we have some common ground. We don’t agree about AA, but, so what? If it were just a matter of thinking it sucks, do you really think we’d just be here pissing into the wind like this?
It seems—correct me if I’m wrong—that you take as much issue with AA as we do. I could walk into an AA meeting at random, right this minute, and find myself in the middle of a bunch of dysfunctional, slogan-spouting, meeting-dependent, self-righteous, passive-aggressive, petty, abusive, manipulative whackjobs. And many of these people would have been ordered there by the courts or sent there as aftercare. I could call an addictions counselor at random and he or she will be 12-step certified meeting-maker. If I ran a google search on AA in the news, I’d see only two kinds of stories: puff pieces on AA or stories about how someone on their 5th DWI was sentenced to attend AA.
That’s what we’re hating on.
Conventional wisdom is that this (the AA I described above – or pop-AA, as you say) is how alcoholism is treated, that it’s the Gold Standard. Speaking of industry, that’s exactly what this is. It’s an enormous clusterfuck, and it’s designed to fail (like built-in obsolescence): keep on keeping on coming back!
I would be very happy to see your version of AA become the standard. Then there would be no question in anyone’s mind about what it is; it would relegate AA to its proper niche and simultaneously cut the knees off this pollution-spewing 12-step treatment machine.
And regarding this quote of the week post, I just wanted to point out that it’s not the “God” part of the quote that’s at issue, but the inherent dishonesty in not being upfront with the newcomer about the “God” part. Yeah, all of us have Big Books, and we’ve all read the quote about holding God behind your back with one hand while you lure the new member through the door. We wonder how this jibes with an honest program.
June 8, 2009 at 8:20 pm
AA does define “alcoholic” by the way. AA’s definition of an alcoholic: someone who cannot quit drinking without the intervention of a supernatural entity.
It was spelled out for me pretty clearly in a meeting recently. For years I’ve gone to AA and identified as an alcoholic and generally kept my atheist opinions to myself, at least at the meeting level. Everyone accepted me as one of their own. However, when I was vocal about the fact that I had been sober over six years without ever relying on a “higher power,” next thing you know people are telling me how I was probably never an alcoholic to begin with.
Go figure. By the way – I probably spilled more alcohol during my drinking career than Danny and McGawdawg drank combined :D. I kid, but that gives you a good description of the strange circular thinking that happens in AA.
June 8, 2009 at 11:16 pm
So sorry to hear about your completely bizarre experience that no one has ever heard of happening in a meeting before! But, do you really think you are the most powerful thing in the universe? When was the last time you made the sun rise?
(OK, I’m scaring myself. 😉 )
June 9, 2009 at 7:13 pm
The earth’s rotation (which is what makes the sun “rise”) doesn’t keep me sober – my decision to not drink does. Acknowledging the existence of impersonal higher powers has little to do with drinking in my experience. But of course that’s not “keeping it simple stupid” :P.
June 9, 2009 at 3:28 pm
The word “definition” is glaringly absent from use by the AA co-founders. They refer to the AA two-fold concept as a “descrption” – not a “difinition.” That is no tby coincidence – as they realized that their are manydifferent “kinds” of problem drinker or alcoholic and were really not in a position to creat the definition of alcoholc.
In fact they give five different ‘types’ of problem drinker and four different ‘categories’ of alcoholic. They are numbered and described in each instance. I have shown these in the Big Book when I do BB workshops and when taking an individual through through the Steps and so far I have NEVER run into anyone who already knew about this – IN THEIR OWN BIG BOOK!
It’s astounding. No wonder people come it, do not recover and then run away saying AA does not work. Their are folks who “attend”AA meetings and never even TRIED AA! But claim they have – just because they “went to meetin’s”.
Ask your average AA meeting goer – even those with “time” as self proclaimed “oldtimers” and you will hardly find ANYONE who is even aware of this. And then you will find a few othewrs who say they coulnt operate in teh flloship withou tthe awarness. Go figure.
And yes, I agree with much of the hypocarcy tyhat you also have witnessed in AA. Many of us in the Felloship have had it up to our eyeballs as we watch a speirual felloship become overrun with rehab interlopers sen their out of the quest for the might dollar.
Peace,
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
June 9, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Danny: I agree that they don’t use the word definition, rather describe the behavior of an alcoholic, descriptions by the way, that I related to almost completely. I’m the “real alcoholic” as described on page 23. The Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hide alcoholic that resembles himself little when drinking and is seldom midly intoxicated – I’m sure you are familiar with it.
My point was that it doesn’t matter in principle in AA how much you drank, how you drank or anything. What matters most is that you agree with the program – that we were “beyond human aid.” So anyone who claims that they could get sober without divine intervention or a “power greater than himself,” must not be an alcoholic – which is as close to a “definition” as AA will come. To be fair, some members will qualify it with, “alcoholic of my type.”
As per whether AA works or not, depends on what the goal is. I assume by AA working you mean that it works in it’s goal of alcoholics becoming “recovered” or as best I can define that: someone who took the steps and in doing so has grown spiritually and no longer has any compulsion to drink. I’m not sure. That would be hard to measure, since anyone who doesn’t “recover” is assumed to have made an insufficient attempt at working the steps properly.
I can say that in my experience I worked the steps rigorously hoping that I’d emerge as described by other members and the book itself. I even, for a while, suspected that there may be a god who would show up at some point – only to be disappointed in that. I found some steps helpful – making amends usually is for example. I found steps 6 and 7 to be pretty worthless. Any improvements in my defects of character, as it were, have usually come by my own efforts. So it is was a mixed bag as to whether it worked at least for me. The steps certainly weren’t the best way I found to achieve positive change in my life. Also in my experience, despite what most hardcore members share in public or at the meeting level, when you get to know them you’ll invariably find out that they rarely make much progress on those “defects of character” using the steps. And as per reacting “sanely to alcohol, that it ceases to be a problem for us,” well that just usually comes with time no matter how you get the time.
I will say for me that the fellowship of non-drinking peers and practical advice that you hear (focussing on not drinking today for example) was much more helpful to my early sobriety then any of the steps. I appreciate AA for that, however, you wouldn’t need religious nonsense in order to achieve that.
June 10, 2009 at 5:01 am
Danny ~
Good God man, those can’t all be typos, are you drunk?
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Whenever I post anything on an AA site that questions AA dogma I am always accused of being drunk. That’s always the first insult.
So, you can’t type a simple declarative sentence, even of 3 words without making a hash of it; that’s ok, I can parse it for the most part and get your meaning. Though I do have 2 words for you: spell check (works wonders). There is one bit that I can’t unravel (it’s like a game!) this from an earlier post: “in the absence of education oneselfe it’ll do. ” I can’t interpret.
Anyway, as to the part of the Big Book where the types of drinkers are described (and yes, defined) by Bill W in his strange authorial cross-dressing exercise called “To Wives” where he pretends to be a woman married to an alcohol abusing man and speaks (down) to women who are stuck married to men who abuse alcohol. The four “types” that he describes are in fact nothing but different versions of himself at different stages of his life; so are, by his definition, ALL descriptions of what you would call “a real alcoholic.”
Anyway, what I can’t understand is what AA rock you have been living under. In my years of AA I read that moronic chapter in “book study” over and over again. I have in fact never conversed with a truly immersed AA that hasn’t at some time or other spouted that numbered set of definitions or flipped through the heavily highlighted pages of his book to find it and point it out. AAs like stuff with numbers and lists and such like. What the fuck are you talking about?
June 9, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Do you honestly believe that we’re here passing our time hating on your fellowship?>>
Some seem that way. Not all do. I don’t ‘get’ the motivation. Would you say that the motivation behind a site like this is a “noble” one?
It seem like, “AA didn’t work for me so it won’t work for you either – and I am going to expend my efforts to prove that to somebody.”
Is this like a “I am going to save the world by exposing the truth” kind of phenomenon?
Am I even close?
Peace,
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
June 9, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hi, Danny.
No, you aren’t close. I try not to spend my time trying to speak rationally to, or debating with those who have been brainwashed by the AA scriptures, because arguing religion is fruitless. I will answer this question, because it is simple.
AA is not a benign organization. AA harms many, many people – both alcoholics and their families. AA wrecks people’s lives. AA did not fail me, although I have seen it fail so many others; and, not just fail, but cause them irreparable, permanent harm. It also causes society a great amount of harm. We just want to create some awareness. That’s it.
You either don’t understand this or you won’t admit to it because you are brainwashed by this cult. You really aren’t the audience we are playing to here, although we welcome your input. We are really gearing this to those who been harmed by AA, and those who are considering AA. Judging from the number of hits, and the feedback we have received, it seems to be working well with our target audience.
June 9, 2009 at 7:11 pm
[…] Quote of the Week: McGowdog […]
June 9, 2009 at 7:21 pm
ftg & ma,
“You guys have a whole past-time, cottage industry going here based upon hatting our fellowship.”
while you guys may make claims to the contrary, i do in fact see it as my mission in life (and, by extension, the mission of this blog) to “hat” on the fellowship of AA.
the cult of haberdashery & AA have been in a blood struggle with one another since the publication of the BB. while the 12X12 remains in practice anywhere in the world, god’s ancient covenant with hatmakers & the world market remains in peril.
petasus aeturnus,
speedy
speedy
June 10, 2009 at 1:28 am
hating the fellowship?
get a grip mister. You are giving the fellowship and yourself too much credit.
Why are you here? slumming?
June 10, 2009 at 5:14 am
Maybe Danny was trying that “our hats are off to you” experimental drinking thing?
June 11, 2009 at 12:15 am
Somehow I doubt that. I think that Danny needed to stop.
June 11, 2009 at 12:09 pm
[…] “My name is Richard, and I’m an alcoholic. Oh, I’m also a convicted rapist and murderer” Posted on June 11, 2009 by M A So many AAs have an amazing inability to introspect. We see it both here on this blog, and with real life AAs. Sometimes that comes out as comically ironic, as with an Angry AA who verbally tries to beat us into submission of the idea that we could have the same serenity he has (read: Tipsy McStaggar). Sometimes it comes out as pure hypocrisy, as with those who preach a program of brutal honesty, but teach manipulative, bait and switch recruiting tactics. […]