I was accused of such on this blog today by some members of AA. Bleeding Deacon is defined here. It is actually a misquote and is actually Bleating Deacon according to this article which is interesting. The person who accused me of this did so because I do not believe that the Big Book should be changed. I do not believe that how the GSO pushed through the changes to the Service Manual in order to change the Big Book is wrong. I do not believe that To The Wives should be taken out of the book. I do not believe that just because the Big Book was written in 1939 by some “rich white men” that it should be “modernized”. I do not believe that alcoholism has changed since Noah got so drunk that he passed out under a tree with his ass hanging out. Therefore, because I express this point of view, this whippersnapper called me a Bleeding Deacon.
I heard recently from a past delegate friend of mine that the GSO has now come up with a new term for us white drunks – we are now being accused of having “unearned privilege” because we are white. Well, now I am a white Bleeding Deacon so please don’t consider anything I have to say, because what do I know of true suffering and what could I possibly have to say – i should just shut up.
I could say that I have unearned privilege because I am still ALIVE – and I have recovered from alcoholism. That would be the positive spin on this. We all, all members of AA, have that unearned privilege.
The negative spin means that I am different from a brown alcoholic because a brown alcoholic had even more trauma than I did. Personally, I stick with the 3rd Tradition – because the only thing I need to have in common with you is that I have a physical allergy once I start drinking and a strange mental twist that keeps me going back for more. And as an old alcoholic, I have every right as I had when I was a young alcoholic to say what I have to say in AA – period.
My path however is a whole other story. My white alcoholic boyfriend has unearned privilege because he doesn’t have to work the program as hard as I do and he skips through life with no consequences really for his actions after having recovered. All our blood is red – is what I tell the women I work with. Some of them have much more horrific stories than I do and some have less horrific stories – but we try to stick with what we have in common – not our differences.
I think the men and women who want to accuse me of being a bleeding deacon do so because they don’t want us long-timers to have a voice anymore because we might understand the traditions whereby they are too dumbed down by their Prussian education and their smart phones and they don’t have the perseverance to bear down on the Traditions until they build the neuropathways to “get” them, so to get me to shut up – they call me a Bleeding Deacon.
Think what you want. I am going to keep on talking and writing about what I see going on in AA, and hopefully it will help someone. I am one of the sicker alcoholics I have met. I have both the family disease of alcoholism and my own alcoholism. I have to do trauma work to recover from the family portion, these days. When AA was in tact, the service work kept me out of needing to do that work – but AA is pretty much dead thanks to the materialistic society which is separating us from our soul and the skam-demic which really put a dent in AA, so AA is just meetings now. There is no more fellowship or service – that I can see. We are like a gill-net and drunks swim in and get stuck. But we don’t have much to offer them anymore.
I guess they are calling me a Bleeding Deacon because I am not saying – hey when Life gives me lemons I make a whiskey sour! I am venting here. Yup and that is my right. We have something called Freedom of Speech -this is my inalienable right which is supported by the Constitution of the USA. And therefore I will speak up. That is the benefit of the AA recovery program is that I have been given the Power to Stand Up for Principle! If you don’t like it – don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. It’s better to give a resentment than to get one!
Anonymous Alcoholics 