I went to another meeting tonight, making it two in two nights. I had a thought during the meeting as I was mentally screaming at this blowhard who spent half the meeting talking about himself, that I'm not knocking this particular 12 step program. I'm sure it could come across like I think it's a load of crap, but I want to make sure that I'm clear on this. The program itself has saved my life, and I'm fairly certain that I would not be sitting here writing this if it didn't exist. The program itself is definitely not the problem.
My annoyance stems from people that are in the program, mostly where I am living now (but these types are everywhere.), as opposed to the program itself. What irritates me is people who twist the program to have a narrow minded view of how it's supposed to work, especially those who like to preach that you have to do X, Y, and Z or else you're going to be drunk before the weekend is over.
Another annoyance is the people who take the program and get all pretentious about it. I hear a lot of people raving about how such-and-such a meeting is a "good meeting", and this is usually said in such a way that's combined with the slogan "stick with the winners." A good meeting is when someone hears a message of hope and recovery, and believe it or not... this happens at meetings that some of these people wouldn't dare step foot in (and if more people weren't such fucking snobs, it might happen more often.) I see a lot of that here, but this happens everywhere.
I think you get the point, right?
I just want to make sure that people see that there is a difference between the program and what people do with it. The best advice I can give if you're in a position of attending meetings of a 12 step program, is to go to as many meetings as you can and find the ones that work for you (whatever that might be.) Don't let anyone tell you what meetings are good and what are bad, find out for yourself.
I just picked this book up last night. I hope to buzz through it fairly soon, and write up a review. I'm not really sure how to do a book review though, so we'll see how that works out. Here it is:
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