heard a tape last night from a guy in texas who was very passionate about the spiritual experience, getting close to God, and he also talked about pink clouds. he was very intense about what was wrong with AA, how we avoid talking about God and the spiritual experience, instead focusing on "making meetings" and watching people drift away and relapse. I know this is true to some extent, although some people focus on meetings AND the steps like I did.

He emphasized that the "educational variety" is often a way to justify not working the steps thoroughly in order to have a "real" awakening. People really pressured me early on to read the Big Book and work the steps, and even talked about being "happy, joyous and free" which sounded totally insane to me!

He talked about the pink cloud as being God's grace and should be treated as such, not as some joke and that people are just going to fall off and enter the "real world". The pink cloud is what may keep people here long enought to go through the steps.

When people focused on spiritual experience, God, and the steps the success rate in AA seems to have been immensely higher. This is disputed but the bottom line what does the AA Big Book say? We recover. I am not recoverING. I have recovered, I have had a spirtual experience as a result of the steps.

If people are not real alcoholics, if they don't need the steps or God to keep them sober, that's fine, they should be careful about what they say in meetings because there are people there who are real alcoholics.

For myself I also think it is important, to remember that if someone, like friends of mine, with a few years under their belt, decide they don't need meetings anymore, then maybe that is a good thing. Maybe we don't need to hear their non-AA related message. Maybe we don't need people in AA who are not totally committed, who have not had a life-changing spiritual experience or if they have maybe don't give AA the credit. We need to help newcomers get sober and stay sober. I am not here to convince old-timers that they need AA or that AA needs them. Neither may be true.

It was a good tape, he is funny as hell. Let me know if you want more info.