I got clean and sober at Christmas 2000 and with the help of the 12 steps I have been able to build a wonderful life. I have had many ups and downs but by following what I believed to be God’s will for me I have ended up with a life I am very grateful for.
There were tough times in my recovery and I considered the advice of other members and that was, “don’t trust your thinking”, “run important decisions past your sponsor.” I considered this and thought fuck that. I have done the 12 steps, had a spiritual awakening and been restored to sanity, what the fuck was all that for if I can’t trust my thinking now? Are the 12 steps so shit that you need to spend the rest of your life as a mental midget and run all your ideas past someone else. What about my intuition? What if I can’t get hold of someone else on the phone? I decided if I couldn’t use my God given intelligence and intuition then life really wasn’t worth living. I made the decision to use my recovery peers and sponsor as support, but my higher power and myself were in charge of me. I would make the decisions around here.
I am so glad I made that decision, the people who gave me that advice stayed clean, but their lives are so boring, they never take risks and seem miserable whenever I see them. My life is far from mainstream and I have broken and continue to break societies rules and customs. I have my own businesses and only work a few hours a day, and only on the days I want. I chose not to be involved in long-term monogamy, and I chose not to have a fixed address and travel the world and have a growing number of friends that do the same – digital nomads.
In my opinion I am happier than all my friends that have been in recovery as long as me, and while they shake their head in judgement at my lifestyle, I can see how secretly jealous they are. I am not looking to convert people, if a conservative, civilisation rule abiding culture is what you want, go for it. But if you too want to live life like a black sheep and challenge the culture we live in, and the way that affects your 12 step recovery, then you might find some of my stories interesting.
I choose to live by biological and empirical truths, not cultural truths, which is a misnomer because they could just as easily be called cultural lies. Take marriage for example, completely fictional, yet treated like a cornerstone truth of society, corporations, hand shakes, table manners, the list is endless, they are all fictional. I’m not rejecting all culture, I just want to explore not following that which doesn’t suit me.
Collectively these cultural rules have made us the dominant species on the planet – perhaps so successfully we will extinct ourselves with our overpopulation – but successful none the less. We were able to kill off the Neanderthals, who were stronger and estimated to have the same intelligence as us because of our “culture”. Homosapiens had one powerful attribute over the Neanderthals and that was imagination, we were able to invent stories that could bring us together as a united group. While the Neanderthals could only organise themselves into maximum groups of about 150 people, through the invention of religion and culture, Homosapiens were able to unite into groups of thousands.
So while this fantasy might be useful in caveman days and perhaps for civilisation at large, it doesn’t do much for me and I am going to challenge it and document it here. NA and AA takes on these societal myths and has created some of their own. I want to challenge everything with reason and evidence and live a life outside the herd, yes life outside the herd is more risky, but it’s also more fun.
Finally there is the question of long term sobriety, it seems a disproportionate amount of AA and NA members with long term sobriety get cancer and commit suicide. I propose it is possible that living under these lies and having to repress your true feelings and desires may be a cause of cancer, depression and other mental illness. It’s probably not great for non-alcoholics, but for anyone that has worked the 12 steps from the AA big book will know, alcoholics and addicts need to be much more aware of how things affect their instincts, feelings and desires.
I propose that for some alcoholics trying to be “good” and live by societies laws and customs is contrary to their own truths. Foundational to the 12 steps is to do a humble and moral inventory, these are both synonyms for truth. To work the steps and then try to live up to the expectations of un-truths of societies culture can bring denial and repression.
This is a journey, a work in progress and I certainly don’t have all the answers, nor even all the questions. I hope you enjoy the journey with me.
Red Pill Recovery 