Last February, at a huge get together of mostly family and many friends in honor of my sister and brother-in-law's anniversary, my sister inadvertently blurted out (via a Karaoke system) how proud she was of me, her brother, "the recovering alcoholic."
It's moments like that that make life worth living and sisters worth killing. But I forgave her. After all, heheheheheh, she was drunk at the time.
She's beaten herself up merciless since then over that little gaffe.
The subject came up again last week, when I was spending part of the week with my sister down at the Delaware shore. I am not anonymous about being a recovering alcoholic. I am, though, anonymous about my associations and associates. And that's for a very good reason.
Let's take, for example, someone like Lindsay Lohan. Clearly this young woman needs help, as evidenced by yet another arrest for drunk driving the other night. And she needs something a little more "hard-core" in the way of recovery than the "feel-good, easier, softer" way that they obviously taught her at Promises in Malibooboo.
Can you imagine what it would have been like if, for example, she'd been elected the national Celebrity Spokesperson for Recovery from Drug and Alcohol Addiction by any of the fine 12-Step Programs out there? Said program would've been ridiculed and scorned as a massive failure based SOLELY on the unfortunate circumstances of one individual.
Which is why ALL 12-Step Programs, in their Traditions, hold fast to the rule of Public Anonymity "at the level of Press, Radio and Film" (and tv, although they don't usually mention it). This is as much to protect the progams as it is to protect the people IN the programs.
"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation" of all 12-Step Programs, so the literature says, "ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."
There isn't a friend or relative left in my life who doesn't know I'm a recovering drunk. But I rarely, if ever, mention exactly WHERE I go to get sober.
That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be.
2 comments:
You're a recovering alcoholic? Thud.
I was just pricing real estate in Davis on Craig's List. Wouldn't you just LOVE having me as a next door neighbor?
I'd take you with me to all the open meetings in town.
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