at the NA meeting...

[Guest guest]

dan de leon wrote [ regarding ' speaking up at NA meetings ]:

> Keep up the good work confronting the mindlessness of the NAzis. I

> wish I had the courage to take them all on at one meeting I go to, and

> perhaps one day I will. You probably won't change their minds, but you

> might encourage those with doubts to think for themselves.

I was just about to express these very sentiments. Remember that while you saw

headshaking and heard nay-saying, there was a whole roomful of other people

there, including the " quiet ones " who might be newcomers, or even old-guarders

with private moments of wondering things...like maybe:

" Why do I spend my days in these rooms talking about how much I don't want to

use drugs/alcohol any more, and then spend my nights calling my sponsor and

telling him/her that I'm yet again on the verge of relapsing? "

They may be just starting to realise, either consciously or subconsciously,

that there's one very buck naked emperor in their midst...and hearing someone

with the guts and the balls and the brains to speak from the heart (wow, that's

a serious lot of anatomical metaphors, egad!) it might be just the thing to

make those thoughts start to come out of hiding.

I'll join the applause for you, . I'm usually such a mindspeaker myself,

but sadly enough in my days when I actually went to meetings 8 years ago and

got disgusted with them, when I heard someone from Narcotics Anonymous say

" take what you want and leave the rest " I'd just stamp out of the room,

thinking to myself " OK, I'll take the 'Narcotics' then... " and made a beeline

for my dealer's house. Would have been much more productive - and victorious -

if I had stood my ground instead of letting the whole thing disgust me so much

I used it as an excuse to just do more dope.

-DM