Gaming the System: Signing Slips and Missing the Point of AA – Brian P.
About This Speaker Tape
Brian P. from Union shares his story as a man who came to AA after six years in federal prison, got court-ordered to outpatient treatment, figured out nobody was really in charge of AA, and started signing his own attendance slips. He drank through the entire treatment program, mocking it with his buddies afterward, then went back to prison. That cycle was all he knew.
Brian grew up in a family of drinkers whose hobby was collecting old beer cans through an organization called Beer Can Collectors of America. His whole living room was full of them. He loved the environment of bars, cigarette smoke, and poker games from the time he was the youngest kid staying up past midnight at his parents' parties. When he started drinking himself, it made him feel like he fit in for the first time — a short kid who had always felt inferior finally felt equal.
The tape carries a powerful message about the gap between knowing you are alcoholic and being willing to do anything about it. Brian went through intensive outpatient, did excellent written first steps, then drove home drunk on parole. He did not understand that his disease was devastating not just his life but his entire family's. It was Al-Anon, he says, that turned out to be the most profound thing that ever happened to him — a surprising admission from a man who spent most of his twenties in prison.
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