…Because of slogans like the one I had to suffer the other night at a meeting. By the way, I never go to meetings, but I’ve been going to a local Big Book group to support some friends of mine in their effort. At any rate, the slogan was:

     “Just bring the body.” 

     Wow. You gotta be kidding me.

     How sad it is that AA has been reduced to this. Just bring the body, but don’t worry about actually doing anything, at all, ever. What a shell of its former self, as the new, easier, softer, slogan AA weakens and dilutes the original program almost into oblivion.

    If all you do is bring the body, I can promise you with near certainty that you will fail, and you will never get to experience the spiritual solution, which requires quite a bit more than bringing your body somewhere and doing absolutely nothing.

     AA is a prescription of lifelong, non-stop, rigorous spiritual action. AA is a program that turns your entire life upside down, leveling and knocking you on your ass before it builds you back up one spiritual brick at a time. I’m pretty sure just bringing the body isn’t going to write a thorough and mind-bending 4th Step written inventory of your entire life, nor will it give you the power to face every single soul you have wronged and fearlessly make amends to them all. It will, however, make you eligible for story time and snack break.

    Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you are an alcoholic or an addict and some airhead at a local meeting tells you to just “bring the body” and “keep comin'”, don’t walk but SPRINT the other way, as this advice may well end your life when the obsession to drink or use again hits you and you go on the run of a lifetime. Sponsorship, of course, has also been reduced to near oblivion.

     Physical sobriety is not sobriety, or rather, physical sobriety has virtually nothing to do with recovery. It is but a temporary state of purgatory (selfishness) between relapses. Addicts and alcoholics are insane people with a chip missing in their brains. For us to actually be safe from relapse, we must be restored to sanity, and this can only done by climbing Mount Everest, so to speak. It can only be done after painstaking work on ourselves. It can only be done when we hurl our entire lives into this Step process and want it so bad that it becomes a mathematical certainty that God will reach out and touch us and remove our obsession to use, thus restoring us to sanity.

     So unless the only thing on your mind is going to any lengths to get better and grow spiritually, then it really doesn’t matter where you bring your body. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but I think it’s important enough to risk sounding like a dick.

God, please remind me everyday to never just bring the body…