[Magdalen] Heather Cook

[Jim Guthrie]

>And once I was told (by the canvass chair) that a reasonable pledge should
>be about the cost of a good bottle of gin a week. Where your treasure is ...

And as long as mere anecdotes inform the conversation,  I well recall a person 
in recovery berate a kindly prim and proper woman in one of the churches that 
opposes all alcohol whose yearly alcohol intake consisted of two cups of spiked 
eggnog at the annual Christmas Party as a drunk (along with anyone else who 
drank the stuff, whether they consumed alcohol otherwise. Ugly stuff, but should 
we take those anecdotes as universal truth?

I sense a lot of defensiveness here among a minority of list sibs who have 
disclosed they're in recovery.  I realize there's a distinct
psychological need for this in order to support oneself (and others) in
recovery, but it can be a bit much at times.

Some years ago, I had a broadcast engineer friend who was in AA accompany me to 
help
broadcast a church service -- turns out it was one of those testimony-athons
that some churches have. I joked that if the cops went to these things, they
could clear fifty percent of their cold cases. He said, "Heck,  I know where
they could find the other 50%."

I have the impression that in both cases there's an element of "Can You Top
This?" going on, which is important to participants to be sure, but unbecoming
in both cases if it spills out and scares the horses.

That doesn't negate the need for an alcohol policy to be sure, but it can’t work 
if the strongest advocates come off as over the top. And that would be a real 
tragedy, I think.

Cheers,
Jim