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This blog grew out of a conversation between two of us about sponsorship in late recovery. As we were talking we both realized that the kind of thing we were discussing went way beyond the scope of a normal AA meeting. In fact, neither of us was aware of any forum for discussing such basic topics of recovery in depth.
Certainly meetings are not the right place. The amount of time ('Please limit your shares to 3 minutes or less.') alloted per speaker and the ban on crosstalk, while essential to the proper functioning of a meeting, make serious dialogue on basic topics impossible. Beyond that, virtually all the meetings either of us have attended are characterized by a soft tyranny of the majority, pressuring the individual to conform to what is expected at that meeting.
In our experience, there are some things that people think about at a meeting but hesitate to say out loud because of this pressure to conform. In meetings this pressure is actually a good thing. It helps create the spirit of the meeting, making each meeting unique, and it helps prevent meetings disintegrating into dry-drunk brawls.
And yet we feel the need for a place where thoughts that go unspoken can be entertained out in the open, where issues like varying approaches to the Steps, views of Higher Powers, the role of humility in recovery, the relationship between the spirituality of AA and other spiritual traditions, and a thousand other topics can be hammered on, not just lightly referred to in passing. This is not a sterile, academic curiosity; it is a necessary deepening of our spirituality, which is the backbone of our recovery.
As the blog header says, we need to go deeper than “Just don't drink”, “Meeting makers make it”, “Just suit up and show up” and all the other slogans we use. These slogans have their place and can be extremely useful in that place, but we doubt many would claim that an assembly of those slogans would constitute a solid basis for recovery, not to mention a coherent spirituality.
The fact that the AA program is basically one of action has in many cases lead to slogan based recovery. While we do not dispute the fact that a 'just try it' approach can work and is very often the most appropriate approach for a newcomer, if we limit ourselves to that, if we give in to the anti-intellectual shadow that hovers over many meetings, we run the danger of becoming a cult. It may be true, as we so, so often hear in meetings that “Figure it out is not one of our slogans”; it is undoubtedly true that the unexamined recovery is dangerously fragile.
So, here we are, a small group of recovering alcoholics aiming to discuss the principles and practices through which we are recovering. Please join us. We need all the help we can get.
