Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 150 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT We Are The Table
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 13 | Aired on 2008.09.08
I told you before that I have a lack of faith in conventional addiction therapies, because there are as many ways to get out of hell as there are to get in. Pretty rehab didn't work, for Celia, and ugly rehab didn't work, because she's too smart for either. What happens to Celia in the revolution is her rehab, just like this is Nancy's. But that doesn't mean the Steps are wrong, or don't make sense. They're just different ways out of hell: the same truth told twelve different ways, in a certain sequence. Admitting your powerlessness is the first step towards admitting that you're not the table.
I think the God thing throws people off because it looks like the point, because normally when God comes up the person's trying to tell you that it's the point. But the God thing is just another way of telling you that you're not the table. Addicts don't have to believe in a higher power because they need to dwell on His strength: addicts have to believe in a higher power because they've convinced themselves that they're God. Their needs are the only ones that exist, their perspective is the only rational one, everyone else is a tool to feed the bear. They are the table. And on it they spread the world, and eat it bit by bit, until there's nothing left.
Somebody like Celia is going to see Amends as a step toward making everybody like you again: that it's about getting forgiveness from somebody else. That somebody else gives you permission to be a worthless shit, and they "forgive" you, and it's all about them, it's a game you can play. To apologize until people shut up about their grudges, because if they don't say it, you don't have to think about it. An addict is going to see this as the nicest step, because it takes all your problems away. Just like drugs used to.