What…Me Sober?

by Bill

Around the 12-step rooms we are frequently told that we should not “take another person’s inventory,” often used in the sense that we ought not criticize another person’s program. The rationale behind such statements seems to be the fear that since (presumably) that person is doing the best they can, it might be bad for their recovery to tell them to their face what we believe they are doing wrong.

While this is no doubt true (addicts and alcoholics of every stripe being less than fond of criticism), it is certainly within the purview of their sponsors — although it should be handled diplomatically and with consideration for the individual’s issues, length of sobriety and other factors. The rest of us would probably serve them best by keeping our less-informed opinions to ourselves, since speaking from ignorance can lead to grievous error. That is why we share OUR experience, strength and hope, with no cross-talk.

We need also to avoid gossip, one of the favorite pastimes of people with poor recovery skills.

However, this does not imply that we should not take inventories at all. In early recovery, especially, we are advised to “stick with the winners,” and it is difficult to decide who the winners are without taking a close look at their programs.

By “close look,” I mean more than just superficial appearances. When we are choosing the people who are going to be our close supports, it behooves us to look at the things that matter: length of sobriety, seriousness about the program, whether or not they “walk the walk” instead of just talking about it, and so forth. It’s a good idea to take a look at who they associate with, as well. Do they hang with people we’d call winners? Do they go to gender-specific meetings, tradition meetings and the like, as opposed to just open speaker meetings, where it is easy to get lost in plain sight. Do they simply repeat phrases from recovery texts, or are they able to talk about their programs in their own words? Do they seem happy? Are they living a life outside the program, or hiding from life by going to meetings? Do they seem to be hanging around to score with the opposite gender?

These are the things we need to know in order to identify those winners we’re supposed to hang with, but we need to keep our conclusions to ourselves. We don’t need to trash people’s self-esteem, we just need to be careful to make the best possible choices for our own recovery.