The Library

Thanks, the Rav's words are so yesodiosdig to me, too. So thanks for reminding me how important it is for me to tell the truth to myself and everyone else today!

But there is something I want to share with you and the Rav.

At the very beginning of Ch. 5 of AA Bill wrote that the only way out of this disease is self-honesty. Period. He posits that the only reason people fail this program is that they are not honest with themselves. Period. So the Rav is saying what Bill wrote at the beginning.

But it seems to me that Bill would not have written it the way the Rav did. The phraseology the Rav chooses here implies personal victory:"I believe that if an addict commits to absolute truthfulness and adheres to this, and will not lie under any circumstances, not a white lie nor a lie of any color, he can beat the addiction."

This "beating" thing - it is not written anywhere in the "Promises" after the 9th step. Sure, it is attractive to the newbie - promises of grandeur, being in the winners circle one day... but there's gotta be a reason that it's not the attitude of the AAs I know. "Beating it" is exactly what the newbies all over GYE love to hear, but I feel it does not serve the average newly recovering addict well.

It is attractive lingo to a despondent, still-masturbating frum yid - the promise that he will finally be able to flex his bechirah-muscles again! He'll be a bit of a tzaddik - finally! Hey, and how many times have people with this problem called me a tzaddik so far? (If I had a nickel for every time...)

They do not know, or believe, that us drunks are just trying tolive, period. For the non-addict it is so much easier just to live. They need s'forim and Rabbonim's fiery shmuessin to motivate them not to just live, but to strive for higher madreigos! And it's funny how many of them see an alkie's not drinking as 'a madreigo'. I figure they just do not know what it means to be thoroughly beaten. And by the same token, it is not 'brave' for a drunk to finally, finally admit that he is a drunk - his drinking lifestyle has beaten him to a pulp and now he has no choice but to face the music! Like by giving Haman the ring, G-d did for us what we could not do for ourselves. And He does this right in the drinking. He hides right there in the bottle and starts to beat our ego right out of us right from there. A funny example of z'donos na'asim zachuyos! For our drinking itself is what ends up forcing us into recovery and is transformed into something helpful, itself!

And the addicts who keep referring to it as a "battle" and to the sober drunks as "tzaddikim" have missed the boat. And it is no wonder when they don't get sober.

The recovering addicts I know, are beaten - they do not beat. Sober no matter how many years, they are drunks - drunks who do not drink. And it is a daily reprieve by G-d, allowed by the drunk - if he recognizes that he is beaten today, too. That is the way it works for me and others I know. Of course, to a non-alcoholic/sexaholic person, that attitude does not seem to 'shtim' with self-esteem, and it is not very attractive.

To the layman, a drunk or a pervert living thirty-five years and dying a sober man is called "beating the addiction". It sure seems beaten, no? I understand that - it's really the way the scorecard reads, of course. But it seems to me that the reason the Alkies do not talk of 'winning' or 'beating' is that it re-invites the ego. And letting go of my ego was what the entire journey was all about! We may as well drink a l'Chayim to celebrate thirty-five years sober! The premature l'Chayim is the most dangerous thing I see people do, and it happens over and over. As Chuck C the alkie joked, "the only thing worse for an alkie than bad fortune, is good fortune!" Making the difficult calls to people and to G-d (that Guard referred to above) and really opening up to another, working these steps faithfully, learning to really depend on my G-d rather than just being 'religious' - they are all a diminution rather than a feeding of the ego. At least this is the program I have absorbed from my sponsor and friends.

I have not yet met a recovering member of SA who said "I used to act out." The victory feels like it is Hashem's, not mine. Sure, if I am zoche to die a sober man, it will technically be in the 'win column'. But I cannot see it as my win, at all. All I do is suffer enough to allow him into the room, as the Kotzker would have put it.

If I get there sober after 120 and they hoist me up as a victor in Shomayim, I hope and pray that I hop right off the pedestal onto the floor and just bow low to Hashem...and stay there.