Category: Short Shares
CHARACTER EQUITY
We use some business analogies in AA. We have our personal, moral inventory; we call our positive traits assets and our negative ones liabilities; we refer to bankruptcy and a “rapacious creditor.” We read lines like: “A continuous look at our assets […]
ANOTHER TWO-STEP DANCE
Step meetings are usually weekly meetings where a chapter about a Step is read from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and then folks talk about what was read. Next week, next Step (two weeks for Twelve, usually), then back to the start. […]
MIND OVER MATTER
Oh, yeah, do I love me some magical thinking. I’m over the edge in zero time, once I put on my lucky hat watchin the game. Or when I know if the next car down the street is red, I’m buyin a […]
RULES OF WHICH GAME?
Once I was around my homegroup long enough, the free ride was over! You better get into Service, buddy. It don’t matter if it’s Ashtrays, Brooms, and Coffee, or Assemblies, Boards, and Committees, but you gotta learn your ABCs. Now, I’d heard […]
GET IN THE CAR
An oldtimer, well-known in the neighborhood, tells this story where he’d called his sponsor just before he left the city. (These were the days before cell phones.) He wanted to drink. Sponsor talks him out of it. He gets on the train […]
THE M-D-R
If y’buy almost any packaged food in America, by law it comes with a label like a chemistry exam cheat-sheet. “Nutrition Facts.” Nowadays, the label includes a list called the Daily Value Percent, tellin you how much of certain vitamins, minerals and […]
HOPE IS DOPE
Funny word, dope. When I was a kid, old folks meant glue, like for a model airplane. Sometimes they meant information, like news. We all used it to mean someone silly or stupid. After I was older, it meant drugs you couldn’t […]
HAPPY, JOYOUS, AND FREE…YOU’RE SURE?
If you spend much time around AA, you’re pretty sure to hear the three adjectives together, in that order: happy, joyous, and free. Golly, who wouldn’t want that? It’s an insider code, too, like, “are you a friend of Bill’s?” Of course, […]
GOT PLANS?
Gotta plan? Good for you. Not me. Avoid em. My sponsor asked me once, and only once, about my goals. “Goals?” I said. “I don’t have any goals. I got schemes, and I got fantasies. I don’t know nothin bout goals.” Maybe […]
One of the personal stories in the book Alcoholics Anonymous became more well-known than most. Its title was “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict,” and lotsa folks in AA would drop a page number from that story like it was the combination to a bank […]