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Before entering rehab and being introduced to AA and the 12 steps, I had the answer on how to succeed in life. I already knew the cold reality of how the world works. I already knew god does not answer prayers. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how much you need god; you will be left on your own when you pray. 

I had this knowledge by early grade school. My family and the kids in the neighborhood were all very eager to teach me these lessons and I was a quick study.

Before I had made it to junior high, I understood a lot more about how the world works. Perhaps much more than a 13 year old should know. I already knew being a good person didn’t mean shit to the rest of the world. The strong and the vicious ruled and were given respect. The more vicious, the more violent, the more appealing to the girls a guy would be.

If you were cursed with being naturally a good person, the best thing you can do is hide it. Having a good heart or a good soul, even to family or friends, wasn’t a replacement for being a tough guy.

In this world, all but your closest friends do not care about you. If you have money and power, the world will like you. No one cares how you get there.  In short, the world does not give a shit. There is only success. The rest are losers and complainers.

Now, mind you, I wasn’t executing my plan to success perfectly to this cold law of the land. But it was the yardstick I used. As best as my good heart (or soft insides depending on who you asked) would allow, I did my best to move about the world with the winning attitude that no one had the package of street smarts and intelligence I had.

This last rule is the best rule I learned. I am always right and I am always making the right moves. To succeed in this world, or even to do ok in this world, you MUST have absolute confidence in yourself. Every move you make is the right one and the rest of the world doesn’t know shit. When you hear someone saying “You are wrong” then they are either lying or not as smart as you.

Now AA’s twelve step program offers a very different way to view life and how to live it. I gave the 12 step way of living a full try and it was more than 12 years before I ever seriously questioning the program.

From the first year of sobriety to maybe 2 or 3 years ago, I was one of the AA Faithful. I believed in and tried to live the principles of the 12 step program in “all of my affairs”.
No matter WHAT happened to me, I held on to the comfort of knowing I was acting with good intentions. I was seeking god’s guidance in evening prayers. I discussed things going on in my life both with the group and with my sponsors. (I’ve had three sponsors, serially, not concurrently).

The results these two difference ways to live life?

The draconian original harry accomplished many things. It’s something of a blue collar hero story. I went LITERALLY from being the fat kid going to the special education school in the short bus – including many beatings from the normal kids in the neighborhood when I got home- up to becoming a “straight A’s” junior high kid who sold the best dime bags of pot and could pop, snort and hit with the roughest of the metal shop boys. And then onto top 5 percent of my graduating class of 660 seniors with scholarship money to go to a major southern California university and graduating with a degree in Computer Science. I got hired by an international corporation my junior year and held that job for seven years.

At the end of that part of my life, I was living in an apartment a block off the ocean with a gorgeous view in LA, with hot babes staying over and hundreds if not thousands of dollars in my pocket on any given night. Mean while the kids that use to make fun of the retard and beat the shit out of him were freezing their asses off pumping gas or stocking shelves.

Sure it ended with a fairly bad year of heavy drug addiction. But even with all of that horror included, it’s not a bad life’s story for a guy 28 years old.

The results for Sober Harry? The last 16 years in sobriety have been, to put it mildly, a fucking disaster. The anti-AA story of all time. Years and years worth of examples where no good deed went unpunished. Where acting with God in mind never failed to put me in last place. AND ALL THE WHILE, my fellow AA’s were secretly not living the steps and thus enjoying life.

I know, I know, you want details, actual specifics on what happened these last 16 years. Well it’s a lot to tell and it will take more posts to tell it. And in the mean time, I get to read yet more hate mail from the faithful. That’s ok. THEY get to be featured in the next posting.

Til the next time.
Harry A.