Bucky Sinister - Get Up: A 12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks, and Weirdos

Every single person should own Bucky Sinister's 12-Step book. Addict or not. It is an incredibly funny and interesting guide on how to successfully unpack one's mind when it's over-packed. Simply put, this book should replace every magazine in every plastic surgeon's office and every bible in every motel.

Amber Tamblyn, Emmy and Golden Globenominated actress and poet

This book is rad.

Michelle Tea, author of Rent Girl and Valencia

I have been sober for more than 21 years, and this is the first time I have seen anyone take on the challenges of staying with a 12-Step program with such frankness. This is one of the best recovery books I have read, a whole new approach written with intelligence and honesty. Bucky's way of addressing the Higher Power concept will serve to help the millions of people out there who struggle with it every day.

Tom Callan, president of Board of Directors of Changing Echos, a drug and alcohol treatment center

A must-have for the freakshow of life.... Sober-rific.

Dannyboy S., tattoo installer

Finally! Help getting clean from ONE OF US! The inimitable Bucky Sinister has won over audiences at readings in every bar in San Francisco for almost 20 years and now he has some sound advice for the newly sober on how to walk into them without a relapse.

Eric Lyle, author of On the Lower Frequencies, A Secret History of the City

King of the Roadkills

Whiskey and Robots

All Blacked & Nowhere to Go

Comedy CD: What Happens in Narnia, Stays in Narnia

Chapbooks:

12 Bowls of Glass

Asphalt Rivers

A Friend and a Killer

Symphony of the Damned

NASCAR

Blackout Poems for Drunk Readers

Tragedy and Bourbon

Fever Dreams

Angels We Have Heard While High

First published in 2008 by Conari Press,

an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2008 by Bucky Sinister. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-366-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover Illustration and chapter titles Chuck Sperry

Text design by Donna Linden

Typeset in Adobe Caslon and Impact

Cover photograph Raina Bird

Printed in Canada

TCP

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

There were some people who were really important to my recovery who have since relapsed and are back in the throes of addiction. Of course, I'm not mentioning them by name. You know where I am, where you should be. It's time to come home.
This book is dedicated to the addict who still suffers.

The information in this book was gathered in my mind after many late night milkshakes, over the pain of tattoo ink applied to me, from rides home after meetings, and over-caffeinated ramblings of the recovering minds. It's late night phone calls, desperate instant messages, and overtyped emails. There's no one person who helped me more than the others, from MFA holders to ex-cons on parole. CEOs and reformed gangbangers alike have contributed to the mishmash of knowledge I now share with you.

Thanks to Maggie for putting up with me during the entire process of this book, listening to my thoughts, reading my work, and giving me a sounding board for every idea in here.

Thanks most of all to Amber, my editor, for convincing me to write the book in the first place. There should be many more freakout anxiety calls coming your way; thanks for always talking me down.

This is a recovery book written by a guy who never thought he'd read one all the way through. I never liked any of the self-help or spirituality books I saw. I thought they were trite, or pandered to the perpetually wounded soul. Many of them recycled the same self-affirmations that were in other books. Frankly, a lot of them I thought were total bullshit.

I'm a strict atheist. I'm a cynic. I'm a freak, a weirdo, a misfit. I've spent as much time growing up in fundamentalist circles as I did in the punk scene. I'm also an alcoholic and drug addict who hasn't picked up a drink or a drug since 2002. I went into 12-Step recovery with as much reluctance as I could muster while still giving it a try. Now I love the program's steps and traditions, and I look forward to the meeting I run every week and the ones I go to for fun.

You read that right... for fun. Yes, the meetings are fun. They are as fun as a revival or a really good punk show. My favorite aspects of going out to barsnamely the camaraderie, the BS sessions, and the new people to meetare all much better at meetings. Some of my friends ask me if I still go to meetings after all this time sober, and it stuns me that they don't realize that I like to go. But it wasn't always fun for me.

I knew I had to quit drinking, but I didn't want to go to meetings. What I wanted was to go to some really nice celebrity rehab center, the kind where Ben Affleck or Danny Bonaduce gets to go, where I could sit around in a thick bathrobe and Ray-Bans while networking my next book-to-movie deal with my feet in the pool. That didn't work out. I had negative money, no health insurance, and no chance at getting in any place like that. 12-Step meetings were my only option, but I was still reluctant.

The 12-Step groups are free. There are no dues or fees. People will pick you up and give you a ride if that's an issue. I didn't want to go, but I couldn't beat the price, and it was imperative that I did something.

The last place I wanted to be was in a church basement. I've been in more church basements than shitty green paint. I've eaten many lifetimes' worth of tuna casserole and Frito pie at potlucks in these basements. But I'll be damned if that isn't where most 12-Step meetings are.

The meetings being my only option, I had to suck it up and go. My way had damn near killed me. I needed other ideas, outside help, and the only people who would do it for free were a bunch of people who had been in my same situation.

I struggled with each aspect of the program. For a long time, I just practiced Step 1 over and over. That's the step where you decide to not drink or use anymore, because it's fucking up your life. My first meeting, I wasn't sure that I was powerless over alcohol, but I knew without a doubt that my life was unmanageable, like it says in Step 1. Still, I struggled, keeping my own pace.

The last place I wanted to be was in a church basement. I've been in more church basements than shitty green paint.

It took me longer to get through the steps than anyone else I've met who hasn't relapsed. I stayed on a step for months or years if necessary. I didn't even say the full Serenity Prayer for the first three years I was in, because it had the word God at the beginning of it. It was like there were two of me, one dragging the other one through the program.