Alien
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The third tradition In AA states That to become a member Of the AA club You have to have a desire To stop drinking But I already stopped Drinking a long time ago So now what? I've done the steps Admitted that my life had become Unmanageable That alcohol and its various other Mind altering forms Pills and powders and liquids Had me beat But I've started to co-facilitate A mostly homeless drug war survivor group Every other week And there's no Third tradition At the drug war survivor meeting That limits membership No superstition That you have to admit Complete defeat Pray and meditate Clean house And work with others If you want to be a successful Example of the program in action There's no definition of success We're just happy to see you And we've got clean rigs And new crack pipes For anyone who needs them For anyone who might be able to get them To those that do Even though it's against the law In this city to distribute them Against the law In this city that seems to be sending The message That it would rather see drug users Hitting the rock bottom of death Clogging up the hospitals Turned out of the shelters For drug use or possession Having no safe harbor For their immoral obsession As if seat belts Encourage drivers To drive dangerously As if toothbrushes Make people suck on candy As if HIV and hepatitis-C Will somehow make it easier To make all the changes Required to go from apparently being dirty To becoming so-called clean And I began to squirm In my seat The two or three Times a week That I still sat in AA meetings Watching people celebrate Milestones-years and years of sobriety And thanking their Higher Power for Their willingness and ability To surrender to AA's twelve rather-obscure But God-given steps As if doing a moral inventory Was as clear as shaving every morning And if you didn't do it Or didn't do it right That's the reason you might Drink again Then you'll have to go back to square one Deeply and more-fully admit How powerless you are How much you are running on little but selfish Self-will and egotism Admit that you ended up here Because you're not all there Defective from birth Missing some critical component That makes you ill-equipped to deal with conflict That makes it a matter of life or death That you accept what you can't change Have courage to change the things you can And rely only on transmissions Of God's wisdom To know the difference And as a way To constantly cop to our powerlessness In AA meetings we identify ourselves As alcoholics Bodily and mentally different From our fellows But the third tradition only says We have to have a desire to stop drinking Not a willingness to identify as an alien So instead of saying I was an alcoholic While I couldn't really say I had a desire to stop drinking Because I wasn't drinking I started saying Simply, like Bartleby the Scrivener That I'd prefer not To drink Which seemed to make everyone stop And think About whether that hit close enough to the mark For AA membership But they still let me attend and talk At least for now Even if some of the older-timers Took me aside And asked if what I was doing Was really necessary It might be confusing To those who needed a clearer message About what we're all about Alcoholism-the life-threatening Progressive, incurable, terminal disease Not some simple preferential inclination And then I had to wonder Did I truly have this requisite preference or desire Was I telling the truth Was I a liar Just towing the line So I wouldn't become a social pariah? And if I wasn't telling the truth Then what was the truth I was trying to avoid Could I even say Maybe it was too complex For the imprecision of words Maybe I'd prefer not to say what I preferred Until I knew for sure If I ever did Which I was beginning to doubt I ever would I took my seventeenth AA sobriety chip and cake Noting out loud the quote printed on the chip "To thine own self be true" So that is what I was going to do But the looks on some people's faces While I was being true Made me wonder If this was the right place to do It For me, for them Even though I was still quoting from the Big Book Written in 1935 or something When I said, "Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism Agree there is no such thing As making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic Science may one day accomplish this But it hasn't done so yet" Maybe it had by now, I said Or maybe science had at least made some progress In that direction And what is an alcoholic anyway Are we all alcoholics just because we say So? I don't know And what am I saying When I say I have a desire to stop drinking Or a preference not to drink Is that a badge of honour Is that what should really qualify me To be In this room With all of you And your support Your conditional support Your questionable support Unlike in my drug war survivor meetings Where people qualify for support just by being I didn't say that last part But that is what I thought I stopped saying what I preferred And what I did not Relinquished my membership and attendance At AA meetings And a couple years later Restarted drinking
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"Alien Lyrics." Lyrics.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.lyrics.com/lyric-lf/3870760/TestTubeBaby/Alien>.
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