12 Step, If I Don't Believe in All the Higher Power Crap?
Thoughts on the Serenity Prayer
3 Entering: Get in Where You Fit in
Step 1: Admitting What All Your Friends Already Know
Step 3: Surrender—It's Not Just a Cool Cheap Trick Song
4 Internal Transformation: You're a Sick Puppy
Step 4: Get Over Your Old Bullshit
Step 5: You're Not a Snitch If It's About Yourself
Step 6: Nobody's Perfect, Especially Not You
Step 7: Taking Out the Emotional Trash
5 External Transformation: The World Is Big and Scary
Steps 8 and 9: Start Writing, This Is Going to Take a While
Step 10: Lather, Rinse, Repeat
6 Get Off Your Drunk Ass
Achieving Your Goals the Lee Marvin Way
Taking Good Care of Your Hustle Monkey
7 The Artist and Recovery
The Artist, the Hot Stove Toucher
8 What I Learned from Joseph Campbell
Epilogue: Live Like No One Dares
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The information in this book was gathered in my mind after many late night milkshakes, over the pain of tattoo ink applied to me, from rides home after meetings, and over-caffeinated ramblings of the recovering minds. It's late night phone calls, desperate instant messages, and overtyped emails. There's no one person who helped me more than the others, from MFA holders to ex-cons on parole. CEOs and reformed gangbangers alike have contributed to the mishmash of knowledge I now share with you.
Thanks to Maggie for putting up with me during the entire process of this book, listening to my thoughts, reading my work, and giving me a sounding board for every idea in here.
Thanks most of all to Amber, my editor, for convincing me to write the book in the first place. There should be many more freakout anxiety calls coming your way; thanks for always talking me down.
INTRODUCTION
What This Book Is
This is a recovery book written by a guy who never thought he'd read one all the way through. I never liked any of the self-help or spirituality books I saw. I thought they were trite, or pandered to the perpetually wounded soul. Many of them recycled the same self-affirmations that were in other books. Frankly, a lot of them I thought were total bullshit.
I'm a strict atheist. I'm a cynic. I'm a freak, a weirdo, a misfit. I've spent as much time growing up in fundamentalist circles as I did in the punk scene. I'm also an alcoholic and drug addict who hasn't picked up a drink or a drug since 2002. I went into 12-Step recovery with as much reluctance as I could muster while still giving it a try. Now I love the program's steps and traditions, and I look forward to the meeting I run every week and the ones I go to for fun.
You read that right . . . for fun. Yes, the meetings are fun. They are as fun as a revival or a really good punk show. My favorite aspects of going out to bars—namely the camaraderie, the BS sessions, and the new people to meet—are all much better at meetings. Some of my friends ask me if I still go to meetings after all this time sober, and it stuns me that they don't realize that I like to go. But it wasn't always fun for me.
I knew I had to quit drinking, but I didn't want to go to meetings. What I wanted was to go to some really nice celebrity rehab center, the kind where Ben Affleck or Danny Bonaduce gets to go, where I could sit around in a thick bathrobe and Ray-Bans while networking my next book-to-movie deal with my feet in the pool. That didn't work out. I had negative money, no health insurance, and no chance at getting in any place like that. 12-Step meetings were my only option, but I was still reluctant.
The 12-Step groups are free. There are no dues or fees. People will pick you up and give you a ride if that's an issue. I didn't want to go, but I couldn't beat the price, and it was imperative that I did something.
The last place I wanted to be was
