I just finished watching a documentary on Mike Tyson. To be honest, I used to just think of that guy as a pig. After watching the documentary I see him as a tortured soul.....a guy who's made alot of mistakes and who's perception is way off kilter. He touched on his drug and alcohol abuse and how he has attempted to "fill the void he has inside" (sound familiar?) with money, women, drugs and booze, heavy weight titles and power. He plays the victim card like a master, and sadly he really appears to believe he is a victim of unscrupulous people, of jealous people, of a bad upbringing etc. He doesnt box anymore and is trying to find joy in his children. But he is still searching for the next thing to fill the void. Man, I wanted to shout at the tv screen "Its a God hole! That void is nothing more than a hole that can be filled with a power greater than yourself." Made me realize how blessed I am to have found this "design for living that works." How blessed I am to stop wandering in the dark looking for something to fill that void. Truely I dont know why I happened to find my way on this road of happy destiny and why others never make it to this road. Someone told me that grace means an unmerited gift. I have been gifted.
I've thought a bunch about how a person would be able to be part of AA or NA if they were a celebrity. I mean...what would happen if Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, or Lindsay Lohan showed up at an AA meeting. Paparazzi would be swarming and it would ruin the whole Anonymous part of the meeting. How would a famous person be able to work this program and go to meetings? It would be almost impossible. I think that is part of the reason you see things like you just described. It's sad that being famous would interfere with being able to be part of AA, but it would I'm sure.
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Celebrities in AA r any other 12 step program is really a true test of the 12 traditions. Ive heard that there are special closed meetings for celebrities. (not sure if its true). Ive had suspicions about some celebrities being in the program by the way they talk during interviews. Eminem in particular made me wonder........during an interview he used so many AA slogans that I thought he must be involved in the 12 steps in some way. Funny isnt it....there is a certain language that we use that we can recognize in others. Heard a stranger once say something about "contempt prior to investigation" .......hmmmmmm....thats out of the BB. Wondered if he was one of us.
Funny isnt it....there is a certain language that we use that we can recognize in others. Heard a stranger once say something about "contempt prior to investigation" .......hmmmmmm....thats out of the BB. Wondered if he was one of us.
Be careful because many of those sayings did not originate in the Big Book, which is full of collective wisdom.
Here in Kalamazoo MI we get/have a lot of Judges, Lawyers, Doctors, and others--you would not know they were in the program unless you were at a meeting.
Some of those are quite well hidden or they use the roving house meetings or hold their own someplace private.
Here until after he died Jim Gilmore who helped out with AJ Foyt (Indy Car Racer) all those years--he was at times sort of a dry drunk--but yet now a Center is named after him. He was trying but in some cases it is/was the lifestyle he lead. At/for his funeral so many big Racing names were here, they had to shut off streets 3 or more blocks around the area, plus limit air traffic. We had AJ, Mario Andretti, Richard Petty and others in the Racing World come here.
I have personally sat next to his widow at meetings at our Alano Club.
I'm always interested in AA as presented in the media. Law & Order (all three) do a good job of portraying us in a positive light while still being able to compose alcoholic or addicted characters as full humans, either "good" or "bad". On SVU Captain Cragen is a recovering alcoholic and it was made plain shortly into the first season. He was swilling chocolate milk by the quart and had a Sam's Club size jar of Red Vines in his desk drawer. He also keeps a bottle of Absolut in his office for "the rest of my detectives."
In one episode a trauma shrink asked him if the job ever made him want to drink and he said "sure it does, but not today" Tom Arnold has said that he regularly attends meetings and that AA saved his life & career.
It is very frightening for any celebs in AA. I've seen quite a few - musicians, TV presenters and many others who are very well know in their field, but anyone who's sober should just be grateful that the paps are seeing them sober, instead of falling down drunk.
When I lived in Belgium, a very famous singer was doing a european tour and he came to my homegroup meeting on his day off, and at the evening meeting there were paps outside (the guest had already gone inside) There was a knock at the door about 5 minutes before the meeting started, and the paps asked if the guy was in there, and could they come in and interview him!!!
I'm not sure if they did a feature on it, but if they DID, I hope to God they didn't QUOTE ME!!! I haven't sworn like that in years. They were arguing with me and tried to push their way in, so I called a couple of guys out from the meeting, and because we couldn't let them in they asked, 'Well if we can't come in, will you open the curtains so we can film from outside?' I gave them 5 minutes to disappear otherwise I'd have called the cops.
They did come back, and I suppose they were hoping to see the guy coming out, but we had sent him out a back way, so they didn't get the pics. The guy is still sober today and this happened around 9-10 years ago.
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Serenity is Wanting what you have, not having what you want
Always remember non-alcoholic beers are for NON-ALCOHOLICS
Stevie Ray Vaughan came to one of our meetings (of course I wasn't there that night). I did see him at the concert he was playing at the next night with Jeff Beck.
Shortly after I moved to FL one of the member of the "Eagles" came to our beach meeting, but nobody was following either of them.
