PicoBlog

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A quick programming note: I am writing and recording this entry on Nov. 9, which means you’re probably reading it on Nov. 10. Nov. 10 is my sober anniversary. Hopefully, as you read this, I will have gone another 24 hours without a drink or a drug. I have an interesting post about anniversaries for next week, but I didn’t want to talk about my 14-year anniversary when I actually had 13.99 years sober. So tune in next week!

For today… I was recently talking about Step 3 with a guy I really respect, and he mentioned how important the Actor’s Scenario is in the Big Book.

I’ve read the Actor’s Scenario 50 times, maybe 100. But I never studied it. I always nodded along and cruised right through it. It made enough of an impact on me that I knew exactly what he was referring to when he said the Actor’s Scenario. But I’d never spent much extra time considering it. (Here’s a link; it begins at the bottom of page 60.)

On the surface, it’s a pretty obvious metaphor for the way we try to manage our lives, using an actor who wants to run the whole show as an example. It stays on that example for awhile, about how an actor wants to dictate every line reading, every stage direction, every viewer’s reaction, and on and on. Pretty straightforward comparison with micro-managing every aspect of your life.

But upon further inspection, holy crap, it’s much bigger than that. I should read it every day. It’s so valuable because it is a perfect description of something that trips up so many alcoholics, no matter how much sober time you have. It is presumably aimed at somebody who’s still active in addiction and framed around managing drinking.

That section, though, really applies to me… me when I was drinking, me when I had two weeks sober, two months sober, two years sober, 10 years sober. It’s ostensibly about turning your will and your life over to the care of a higher power, but upon re-reading it, I interpreted it less as pushing you to decide on a higher power and more about pushing you to realize that you are not a higher power. So it’s not about filling the void in leadership but more about establishing that there is a void in leadership because you can’t be it.

Now, most people (including me!) get hung up on the magnitude of that kind of God conversation. I get that—almost everybody would agree that they can’t be their own higher power. But it’s the next few levels of that internal dialogue that have really resonated with me. I get hung up almost every day on being the CEO of my company, the mayor of my town, the president of 12-step meetings, etc. Just think about all the times you say or think, “Oh, they’re doing x, and they should be doing y.” I do that more than I thought I did.

I’ll give you one example from a few years ago. I used to attend a meeting that had an annual anniversary party for itself—basically, the meeting celebrated being 20 years old, 21 years old and so on. In the month before the anniversary party, the chairperson would pass the basket at the actual meeting to collect money for the Seventh Tradition (which states that every meeting ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions). But for the month leading up to the anniversary celebration, they’d pass the basket a second time.

I was bothered by that and started an anti-celebration campaign for the following year. I thought you shouldn’t pass the basket twice, that if you want to have an anniversary party, awesome, vote on it at the monthly business meeting but only if you had extra funds and the group approved. One thing I love about 12-step programs is that, in my experience, they don’t push very hard for money, and they use the funds appropriately for rent, books and other essential things. Anything left over usually gets kicked up to area, district and world groups. This felt like we were bilking people.

I went to that first year’s anniversary, and it was very fun. I even volunteered to pick up the food and deliver it to the meeting. There were so many success stories that day, and I began to see how important this meeting had been over the years.

However… I still thought we shouldn’t pass the basket a second time the following year. So I advocated on behalf of not passing the basket around a second time, and that if we didn’t have any extra money, we didn’t do any special party requiring a bunch of funds we didn’t have.

I got trounced at the business meeting. Nobody agreed. The vote was like 15-1 with a few abstentions. The group wanted the party, and they didn’t object to rounding up funds. I took defeat about as badly as I usually do, which is not well.

But somebody grabbed me afterward and said they thought I had made an admirable, principled stand that many people in recovery would probably agree with… but the group conscience was different than my conscience and I needed to accept that.

I haggled a little bit and he eventually put his hand on my shoulder, gently, and said, “Hey, last I checked, nobody had voted you president of sobriety, right?”

I had to laugh. He was right. Was I president of sobriety? Nope.

Should I be? Hmm, yes, probably.

Was I the actor trying to manage every millimeter of the show? Yes, I was. Lesson learned… though like I said, I should probably read the Actor Scenario once a day!

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

You’re probably an alcoholic if you think spilling beer is alcohol abuse.

(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, Dave S. from Ithaca, New York)

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