1. Admit that you are powerless over twelve-step meetings — that your life has become unmanageable. Scream and pass out.
2. Come to believe that only Santa Claus can restore you to sanity.
3. Make a decision to give all of your problems to Santa Claus, as we understand Him.
4. Turn your will and your mind over to the care of Santa Claus. They were worthless anyway. Also stick him with those pesky problems.
5. Make a searching and fearless inventory of your garage. You won't believe the junk you will find in there.
6. Confess to everyone that you can't sing, you can't dance, your butt is too fat, and you have bad breath.
7. Make yourself entirely ready to have Santa Claus fix those defects.
8. Write a letter to Santa Claus, humbly begging him to remove all of your shortcomings.
9. Make a list of all of the people you have pissed off.
10. Go piss them off again.
11. Continue to inventory your garage, and when you find that you are hoarding some really useless junk, promptly admit it.
12. Seek, through your cell phone, to maintain constant contact with Santa Claus, as we understand Him. If you can't get Him, call a psychic hotline. Do whatever the old witch says.
13. Make twenty copies of this letter, put your name at the bottom, and send them to all of your friends.
- First off, we never have any meetings. Attending meetings would be very unUngroupistic.
- Also, Ungroupism as such ought never be organized, so it isn't. There is no national headquarters, nor any state or local offices, either. If you want to contact the President of Ungroupism, or the Board of Directors, or the Trustees, you can't, because there aren't any.
- In addition, we are so anonymous that we don't give out any of our names, first or last, or even our initials. And since we never have any meetings, there is no way you can figure out who we are.
- The only requirement for membership in Ungroupism is a desire to stop going to lunatic meetings.
- Each ungroup has but one primary purpose — to carry the message to the meeting maker who still suffers.
- Our major competitor likes to brag that their religion was founded by "a Wall Street hustler who helped an Akron rectal surgeon through his last binge." Oh yeh? Well our religion was founded by a psychopathic serial killer who ate his last victim, so our religion is much better than your religion, thank you.
- You can join our fellowship, and become a member, any time you wish, just by saying that you are a member, but we don't. We are firm believers in the wise alcoholic teachings of our patron saint, W. C. Fields, who said, "The reason I don't belong to any clubs is, I would never join a club that would have me as a member."
RARELY HAS this simple program been known to fail, except for a few unfortunates who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves while wearing a tutu.
It works, if you work it.
I particularly recommend the French Vanilla. Definitely avoid the Rum Raisin.
This simple program does not and can not ever fail, if you completely give yourself to it. RARELY HAVE we seen somebody fail this simple program, except for a few people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with their ice cream. There are such unfortunates among us. They seem to have been born that way.
So Keep Coming Back! to Baskin Robbins. It Works If You Work It! You Die If You Don't! So Work It, You're Worth It!
New Faith-Based Treatment for Alcoholism
Papa Doc Ngobo continues, "Rarely, mon, has dees seemple program been known to fail, except for a few unfortunates, mon, who are constitutionally eencapable of being honest weeth demselves, mon, while dey is having duh chicken bones shoved in dey faces."
Indeed, the patients are already enthusiastically recommending the new therapy. Said one, "This new spiritual program of treating the whole patient, mind, body, and spirit, is wonderful. Just as soon as we even began to accept the Voodoo Trinity of Bon Dieu, Legba, and Damballah as our Higher Power, we commenced to get results."
Papa added, "Dee Voodoo program never fails, mon, eet eez dee eendeeveedual who fails dee Voodoo program."
Another patient remarked, "Papa Ngobo has an infallible method for ending all selfishness and self-seeking immediately. When you surrender to the Higher Powers of Bon Dieu, Legba, and Damballah, you become a mindless zombie without a shred of ego, self-will or self-centeredness remaining. It's wonderful!"
And a patient who had been an agnostic said: "That floored me. It began looking as though religious people were right after all. My ideas about miracles were dramatically revised right then."
Papa Doc commented, "Dees Voodoo program eez spiritual, not reeleegious, mon. Eef eet were reeleegious, mon, den I couldn't get all of dat Medicare and health eensurance money, mon."
Papa Doc Ngobo left us with one last piece of advice for handling cravings, "You steek dee lime in dee coconut, and dreenk eet all up. You steek dee lime in dee coconut, and call me in dee morning..."
Serenity Street is also proud to announce that they have signed an employment contract with Ms. Helga the Witch, of Devonshire, England, who will soon be bringing her own special brand of faith-based, "eye of newt, wing of bat", spiritual cures to the clinic.
Furthermore, Serenity Street is in deep negotiations with a certain famous Count who resides in Transylvania. This Count is reported to have had a compulsive drinking problem for centuries, a problem that he just recently overcame with the help of a twelve-step therapeutic program. It is hoped that the Count will soon be another insightful, helpful counselor at the center.
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They grinned, which he didn't like so much. Said one of the visitors, "We're giving you a treatment for alcoholism."
Hopelessness was written large on the man's face as he replied, "Oh, but that's no use. Nothing would fix me. I'm a goner. The last three times, I got drunk on the way home from here. I'm afraid to go out the door. I can't understand it."
Asked one of the visitors, "Can you move your right hand?"
With a puzzled look on his face, the man tried it, and discovered that he could.
Asked one of the visitors, as he offered a glass to the man, "Can you pick this up with your right hand, and put it to your mouth?"
The man tried it. "Why, yes, I can," said the man.
One of the visitors filled the glass with whiskey, and handed it to the man, and asked, "Can you use your right hand to lift this glass to your mouth, and drink all of this?"
The man discovered that he could.
One of the visitors filled the glass with whiskey again, and handed it to the man, and asked, "Can you use your left hand to lift this glass to your mouth, and drink all of this?"
The man discovered that he could do that, too.
Said one of the visitors, "That explains it. That is what is happening to you on the way home from here. At least one of your hands is lifting glasses of whiskey to your mouth, and you are drinking the whiskey. That is why you are getting drunk."
Said the man, "This is amazing. No one has ever been able to explain it to me so clearly before. I want to join your church right now."
The visitors thought they noticed something different about him already. He had begun to have a spiritual experience.
(See the Big Book, 3rd edition, page 157, paragraphs 1 to 3; page 42, paragraph 2; the last line of page 179 through the first line of page 180; and page 158, paragraph 3.)
 Bill Wilson, miraculously healing the man on the bed |
People will die for real. People will get fed a bunch of cures for alcoholism that don't actually work — a bunch of spiritual stuff and twelve step programs and meetings and all of that. People will think that the cures will work, and will count on them, and will bet their lives on them, but they won't really work.
It will be an incredibly entertaining show, because we will be able to watch the people relapse and die drunk, one by one, right on TV.
The last one left alive gets the money.
But the Bureau of Abstract Statistics reports a major discovery, finding that when survey questionnaires about continued drug and alcohol use are handed out and collected by parole officers, judges, or other officers of the court, the success rate of the drug and alcohol treatment programs suddenly jumps to 100%. Nobody reports any problems with relapses or continued use at all.
The Bureau suggests that this effect can be used as an "after-burner" to enhance the success rate of existing treatment programs. Sam Wannabe, a senior statistician with the Bureau, says, "It is obvious that we can save the taxpayers millions of dollars, just by using parole officers and judges to calculate the success rates of treatment programs. This is truly a great day in the war on drugs."
If Workaholics Anonymous people do 90 meetings in 90 days, are they still being compulsive workaholics? Shouldn't 180 meetings in 90 days fix the problem?
Alcoholism is a deadly progressive disease. And the longer you stay in A.A., the worse it gets.
I saw a T-shirt today that said, "I do what the voices in my head tell me to do." I laughed.
And then it occurred to me that if the T-shirt was being worn by a Buchmanite, or a true-believer Alcoholics Anonymous member, that it wasn't a joke.
Bill Wilson wrote that you cannot quit drinking by using your own intelligence and will power; you must have a "Higher Power" doing the quitting for you. When I asked God about that, He said, "Screw Bill Wilson. I'm not gonna quit drinking."
In a famous experiment, a therapist hypnotized 1000 alcoholics in recovery, and suggested to each of them that they had been Carry Nation, the famous ax-swinging abolitionist, in their previous lifetime. As a group, they immediately drank less, but unfortunately, it was because half of them had committed suicide.
This trust in the Twelve Steps has been abused a lot lately, to the point that people suffering from depression have been persuaded to quit taking their medications, and then they committed suicide. This has happened many times. There have also been too many other problems with sponsors telling sponsees to quit other medications, with disastrous medical consequences.
In order to prevent any more such tragedies, or abuse of the sponsor/sponsee relationship, the General Service Boards of both A.A. and N.A. are sending out the following directive: "The Magic Qualification Test".
The Magic Qualification Test is actually borrowed from Scientology. In practice, it is very simple: You walk into a room, and there isn't much in there. Just a table, and a few chairs. And an ashtray on the table. But you don't leave the room until you levitate the ashtray with your mind-powers.
A.A. and N.A. members will use the test in the following manner: Before a newcomer quits his doctor-prescribed medications, both the sponsor and the newcomer sponsee will be examined by the group, and checked to see if they can pass the Magic Qualification Test. When both have successfully passed the test, then the group will know for sure that the newcomer and his sponsor are qualified to use spiritual powers, and only spiritual powers, to treat medical ailments.
"God loves me so much that He even took away all of my self-centeredness, self-seeking, vanity, and conceit."
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God as I understand Her doesn't like the Twelve Steps at all.
And She really hates the male chauvinist pigism of the Big Book chapter, "To Wives."
When She's in a good mood, she just laughs at it all. But when She's in a bad mood, she makes some male members of A.A. relapse and die drunk.
You believe in God. I believe in God, too. But I also believe in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and The Tooth Fairy, so I am obviously more religious than you, and morally superior to you, because I believe in a lot more supernatural stuff than you do.
Next, I'm going to come to believe that the world is flat, so I can really be more religious than all of you.
I tried the Twelve Steps, and they didn't work for me. God didn't remove my desires for alcohol and tobacco.
So I tried them again, and they didn't work.
My sponsor told me to work a better program.
So I tried them again, and they didn't work.
My sponsor told me to work an even better program.
So I tried them again, and they didn't work.
Then somebody said, "If you keep on doing what you've always been doing, you're gonna get what you've always been getting. To expect anything different is insane."
So I quit A.A..
Snappy come-backs, or text for T-shirts:
I'm indulging in Bill Wilson's spiritual intoxication!"
(The Big Book, page 128.) "It's not religious, it's superstitious!"
"Turn Off,
Tune Out,
Drop Dead."
"Not Really Insane, Just Visiting."
"Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today.
Rage is the answer to all of my problems tomorrow."
Bill Wilson wrote that alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful.
(Big Book, pages 58-59.)
- How cunning? What is the I.Q. of a bottle of whiskey?
- Is a fifth of Jack Daniels more cunning than a fifth of Old Grand-Dad?
- Is a fifth of Mexican Jose Cuervo tequila more baffling than a big tankard of inscrutable Japanese Sapporo beer?
- I think I have the powerful part figured out: Obviously, Everclear at 190 proof is much more powerful than beer at four or five percent, which is only 8 or 10 proof.
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