Secret Steps REVEALED!

What I’m about to tell you could get me into trouble. What I’m about to tell you could maybe get me killed.

When it comes to pissing off people who hold grudges, there aren’t many ways to do much worse than double-crossing a worldwide network of very dry drunks.

So what I’m about to tell you could lead to me maybe getting found dead on some Monday next, found hanging beneath a bridge on the outskirts of town, pockets full of very empty gin bottles. Just so you know…

I’m going to tell you that I’ve never used the word “alcoholic” when I talk about myself, & talk about myself I do – practically all the time, really. But “alcoholic”… That’s their word; it’s not mine. Them. The people with the Big Books.

I’m going to tell you, I’ve never used any of their code words, their buzz words, their double-super-secret signs. Not “alcoholic” or “addict,” not “twizzler” or “senton,” not “spliff winker,” “chang bang” or even “benzacot broom.” You know what I mean: Not so much as a one of those common universal & everyday terms everyone but everyone uses every time they’re talking their talk about people like me. And talk they do...  

‘Cause there’s the 12 STEPS they talk about, & then there’s the others. The rest. Yeah, the STEPS after that. On beyond zebra, as they say when they say it. They’re the ones you find out about when you’ve gone too far in to ever really come back out again. The ones that you learn when you’ve made it to a 33rd Degree Alky. Like me.

Shhh! See? Right here? This here’s my pin, & this is my lambskin apron & my secret handshake.

There’s still time to stop reading, if you want to go back to the world you knew before. Me, I can’t give you the blue pill or the red pill, for reasons I trust are sufficiently obvious by now.

SECRET STEP 13 is admitting that this whole drinking & drugging thing is a ploy to get time off work, a handy excuse for when you wake up in a drainage ditch spooning with a surprisingly sexually aggressive raccoon again. Try it for yourself: “I’m so sorry I’m late, boss, & I really had no way of knowing that was a raccoon. You see, I’m a spliff winker.”

SECRET STEP 14 is to kill somebody. It could be anybody. You get one free kill. I chose Gary Busey. In retrospect, I’ll admit this was a bit of an obvious choice, as he was sitting in the chair next to me at the rehab center at the time. & you know the old saying: It’s all fun & games until you decide to eat Gary Busey. The effect of consuming all that pure fossilized psychotropic flesh set me back in my recovery by nearly a month.

But Busey happens to the best of us, as my own dearly departed sponsor used to say.

The SECRET STEP after that – 15 for those of you still keeping score at home – is called Fondiferous Licorice Loon, & that’s the one where we admit that we’re powerless NOT to subject ourselves to what essentially amounts to (yes, you guessed it!) aggravated tequila-boarding. Oh, I know that sounds like fun, like maybe a fraternity prank or a dare, but afterwards, you’ll never want to be anywhere near tequila again. Not in a million years.

Really, most people find this to be the LEAST fun of any of the STEPS since number 8.

On the upside, you do get to meet former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. So there’s that.

By the time SECRET STEP 16 comes along, we’re ready to admit that all that stuff in STEPS 1-12 about a Higher Power to restore our sanity & remove our shortcomings? Yeah, that was all bullshit for the beginners, & we’re always on our own. 

SECRET STEP 17 helpfully defines “bullshit” as bovine excrement & acknowledges that our whole world is at least neck deep in it at all times. You & I are powerless to do anything about this precarious fecal scenario, so get used to it.

But before we all start getting too dark & existential, I really ought to tell you about SECRET STEP 18. & STEP 18 is the one which – while once again acknowledging that there IS no God, no Higher Power, no guarantee that Good will win – admits that there IS Frank the Tapeworm Demi-God, who will slide right down your esophagus & consume for you any drink or drugs that happen to accidentally fall into your mouth.

That Frank: No way he’s a Higher Power, but he’s one hell of a helpful parasite to have around on a Saturday night.

& then we come to the LOST SECRET STEPS – the ones after Frank. The ones you hear whispers of a rumor of a legend about. The ones I see as ripe for rediscovering, right here & right now, in this most addiction-prone age of all ages.

The ones where just last night, I finally got a lead. Vegas odds put SECRET STEP 19 out on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. I can’t tell you which one. It’s a STEP the Phoenicians used to use for when they got too addicted to the God-juice they’d consume during their sacred ceremonies, back in the olden days.

Rumor has it, I’ll find LOST SECRET STEP 19 there – a STEP my source tells me left a footprint 8 feet across on an atoll near the Marianas just last March.

8 feet across gets my attention. For 8 feet across, I’ll become the damn Indiana Jones of Addiction & Recovery.

If you can excuse me using the lingo I really don’t normally use, 8 feet across is the kind of STEP that could pull a twizzler back from the brink of becoming a full-blown benzacot broom.

This recovery stuff can be dangerous & complicated shit.