Alien

The third tradition
In AA states
That to become a member
Of the AA club
You have to have a desire
To stop drinking
But I already stopped
Drinking a long time ago
So now what?

I've done the steps
Admitted that my life had become
Unmanageable
That alcohol and its various other
Mind altering forms
Pills and powders and liquids
Had me beat
But I've started to co-facilitate
A mostly homeless drug war survivor group
Every other week

And there's no
Third tradition
At the drug war survivor meeting
That limits membership
No superstition
That you have to admit
Complete defeat
Pray and meditate
Clean house
And work with others
If you want to be a successful
Example of the program in action

There's no definition of success
We're just happy to see you
And we've got clean rigs
And new crack pipes
For anyone who needs them

For anyone who might be able to get them
To those that do
Even though it's against the law
In this city to distribute them

Against the law
In this city that seems to be sending
The message
That it would rather see drug users
Hitting the rock bottom of death
Clogging up the hospitals
Turned out of the shelters
For drug use or possession
Having no safe harbor
For their immoral obsession

As if seat belts
Encourage drivers
To drive dangerously
As if toothbrushes
Make people suck on candy
As if
HIV and hepatitis-C
Will somehow make it easier
To make all the changes
Required to go from apparently being dirty
To becoming so-called clean

And I began to squirm
In my seat
The two or three
Times a week
That I still sat in AA meetings
Watching people celebrate
Milestones—years and years of sobriety
And thanking their Higher Power for
Their willingness and ability
To surrender to AA's twelve rather-obscure
But God-given steps

As if doing a moral inventory
Was as clear as shaving every morning
And if you didn't do it
Or didn't do it right
That's the reason you might
Drink again
Then you'll have to go back to square one
Deeply and more-fully admit
How powerless you are
How much you are running on little but selfish
Self-will and egotism

Admit that you ended up here
Because you're not all there
Defective from birth
Missing some critical component
That makes you ill-equipped to deal with conflict
That makes it a matter of life or death
That you accept what you can't change
Have courage to change the things you can
And rely only on transmissions
Of God's wisdom
To know the difference

And as a way
To constantly cop to our powerlessness
In AA meetings we identify ourselves
As alcoholics
Bodily and mentally different
From our fellows
But the third tradition only says
We have to have a desire to stop drinking
Not a willingness to identify as an alien

So instead of saying I was an alcoholic
While I couldn't really say I had a desire to stop drinking
Because I wasn't drinking
I started saying
Simply, like Bartleby the Scrivener
That I'd prefer not
To drink
Which seemed to make everyone stop
And think
About whether that hit close enough to the mark
For AA membership

But they still let me attend and talk
At least for now
Even if some of the older-timers
Took me aside
And asked if what I was doing
Was really necessary
It might be confusing
To those who needed a clearer message
About what we're all about
Alcoholism—the life-threatening
Progressive, incurable, terminal disease
Not some simple preferential inclination

And then I had to wonder
Did I truly have this requisite preference or desire
Was I telling the truth
Was I a liar
Just towing the line
So I wouldn't become a social pariah?

And if I wasn't telling the truth
Then what was the truth
I was trying to avoid
Could I even say
Maybe it was too complex
For the imprecision of words
Maybe I'd prefer not to say what I preferred
Until I knew for sure
If I ever did
Which I was beginning to doubt
I ever would

I took my seventeenth AA sobriety chip and cake
Noting out loud the quote printed on the chip
"To thine own self be true"
So that is what I was going to do
But the looks on some people's faces
While I was being true
Made me wonder
If this was the right place to do
It
For me, for them
Even though I was still quoting from the Big Book
Written in 1935 or something
When I said, "Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism
Agree there is no such thing
As making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic
Science may one day accomplish this
But it hasn't done so yet"

Maybe it had by now, I said
Or maybe science had at least made some progress
In that direction

And what is an alcoholic anyway
Are we all alcoholics just because we say
So?
I don't know

And what am I saying
When I say I have a desire to stop drinking
Or a preference not to drink
Is that a badge of honour
Is that what should really qualify me
To be
In this room
With all of you
And your support
Your conditional support
Your questionable support
Unlike in my drug war survivor meetings
Where people qualify for support just by being

I didn't say that last part
But that is what I thought
I stopped saying what I preferred
And what I did not
Relinquished my membership and attendance
At AA meetings
And a couple years later
Restarted drinking