After reading yet another AA meeting testimonial at the Times Proof blog, I decided to get the opinion of Brandi and Guinness, a couple of my barfly friends, on the whole alcohol and religion thing. (Guinness -- real name Glinda, and if you call her that she’ll hit you -- has to make a dinner reservation for three whenever she goes out with someone -- one for her, one for her dinner date, and one for the chip on her shoulder. Brandi –- real name Anne Brandui -- makes Pollyanna look like a manic depressive suicide case, and has been cited in the Journal of American Medicine as the major cause of diabetic shock in the tri-state area.) So a couple of nights ago I met them at the upstairs bar of The Naughty Pine, handed them a printout of the column, and let them go at it.
Guinness: This is crap.
Brandi: Be nice.
Guinness: I am being nice; if I wasn’t being nice, I would say it was fucking crap. Alcoholics finding God is just one addiction replacing another. It’s not a cure; it’s a redirection. They used to drink whiskey; now they drink scripture. It used to be Jack; now it’s Jesus. Alcoholics becoming Religioholics.
Brandi: But if it helps them, how can it be crap?
Guinness: Because it’s trading across. Trading across is not a cure. It’s a substitute.
Brandi: And what they’re substituting is something good for something evil. And the stronger the evil is, the deeper they need to go into the good for strength.
Guinness: Like a higher power.
Brandi: If that’s what you want to call it.
Guinness: Because they have a disease.
Brandi: Exactly.
Guinness: So if this is a personal disease, then why are they always trying to cure the rest of the world of it? Do I have the disease? No. But that doesn’t stop them from trying to shove the cure down my throat.
Brandi: They’re not really trying to do that.
Guinness: They say “It’s me, it’s a disease in me.” And when you walk up to them and say “Well, I drink and I’m fine, so it’s not me,” they go crazy and say “No, no, no –- you’re lying to yourself -– it’s you too. It’s everyone.” Which is the worst kind of religious bigotry -- you’re only telling the truth when you say what they want to hear.
Brandi: It’s not truth; it’s a belief.
Guinness: Exactly! And you don’t tell other people what to believe.
Brandi: But if it’s potentially damaging, and it’s damaged you, and you’ve found a way to undo the damage, don’t you have an obligation to say “Look what happened to me; and here’s what I did to make it better?”
Guinness: Of course! But what you don’t have the right to say is, “If this never happened to you and you don’t do this , then you’re a self-deluded lush.”
Brandi: Which is just an opinion.
Guinness: Exactly.
Brandi: The opinion of people you have no intention of listening to.
Guinness: Exactly!
Brandi: So why are you so angry? Why do you care about the opinion of people you don’t care about?
Guinness: Because charlatans shouldn’t be treated like experts!
Brandi: How are they charlatans? If it works for them, where’s the deception?
Guinness: The deception is in their religious zeal to convert the entire world to their beliefs. It’s like Freud saying “I just got a hard-on thinking about killing my father and sleeping with my mother; therefore every man in the world must want to be Oedipus.”
Brandi: And do you believe in Freud?
Guinness: Hell no.
Brandi: Then don’t believe in the religious sobers.
Guinness: It won’t stop them from preaching at me.
Brandi: Then preach the joys of drinking right back at them. Another round?
Guinness: I can’t.
Brandi: Oh come on.
Guinness: No, really.
Brandi: How about we split one?
Guinness: You are so bad.
1 comment:
heh
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