Step Up by Michael Graubart

Author:Michael Graubart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hazelden Publishing

Q.

Who Were the “Three Doctors” Who Influenced the Program?

A. If you’ve never listened to “The Big Book Comes Alive,” the Joe and Charlie program on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, you’re missing something great. When I got sober, I had to order the cassettes, and then put them on my Walkman.X That was a long time ago. Today, you can find their show online for free in a variety of places. So give up Facebook for a few hours and tune in to Joe and Charlie.

If I could change one thing about Twelve Step recovery,XI I would ban smartphones from the rooms. Not just their use during the meeting—and I confess that sometimes when I’m really bored or antsy, I will check out something on my own phone—but before and after the meeting as well. It used to be that you came into a meeting room and everybody was talking.

There were little conversation clumps here and there. Big meetings offered the same friendly, expectant buzz you heard when you entered a good bar.

Today, by contrast, because of smartphones, stepping into a Twelve Step meeting room is like stepping into the public library. Nobody’s talking. Everybody’s just sitting there, atomized, spacing out on their smartphones, getting the dopamine high that an ongoing flow of fresh information provides.

It’s antisocial. It’s no fun. There’s no exchange of ideas, no flirting, none of the socializing that the fellowship traditionally offered. Alcoholics and addicts need to know how to hold conversations with other people. We know how to get over on people. We know how to connive. We know how to beg for sex without making it look like we’re begging for sex. But the art of conversation is rapidly becoming a lost art for folks like us, because people sit down, take out their phones, and punch away. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear people were staring at their own genitals, because most people tend to keep the phone right over their private parts, like the fig leaf in a medieval painting. If I could change one thing about Twelve Step recovery, it would be to ban phones from meeting rooms.

It’s not just banter and the development of essential social skills that’s lost. It’s much harder to identify a newcomer. When you’ve got five members talking over here, and three members talking over there, and one guy standing there with a cup of coffee and a deeply uncomfortable look, it’s easy to spot the newcomer, whether it’s your home group or not. There he is—the guy I need to go over and talk to.

What do you say to a potential newcomer? Ask him how his day is going. Ask if this is his home group. Ask if he’s been in the program a long time. Get his phone number. Give him yours. The presence of smartphones in the halls diminishes the ability of members to carry on Twelve Step work, because newcomers are just as buried in their smartphones as are the old-timers.

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