When one alcoholic/addict shares with another alcoholic/addict

[MajestyJo]

Alkiespeak - Book - Quote

We're all here because we're not all there.- Fr Joe M.

In a way this is very true, because every time I picked up a drink or a drug, I gave away a piece of me. It just sounds hurtful, and although I liked to think I had thick skin, things like this bothered me.

Have heard that line many times over the years, and yet it is part of the saying we hear in the room that I find abusive. When we are new in recovery, we need affirmations and made to feel worthy.

One of the things that really got me going was calling sponsees pigeons. It might have been because there was an issue with them in my building, but I think they are the dirtiest of the dirty, and that is how I felt when I came in and I didn't like having it affirmed by someone trying to be cute.

I brought it up at a meeting once and was told, it was good for Bill and Dr. Bob so it is good enough for me. Well life changes, we have new awareness, and I don't think they realized in the 1930s that it was abusive. It is like the old saying, "Putting someone down to make you feel good.

In 1930, I don't think that there was any thought of young people coming into the program, and there were not many women, and all the alcoholics were good old boys.

Don't know where that all came from, but guess it needed to be said.

Wrote this in 2013 on another site.

Things are not so open and truthful in today. I am grateful that I was brought up with those long-timers. I still don't like the word 'pigeon' and that is me. When I think of pigeon, I think of stool pigeon which in Scottish, I was told was a clipe, or a tattle tale.

Maybe that is what I am, because what I heard and applied to my life are words that I heard in the rooms of recovery or on sites on line.