A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [104]
You think about our conversation yesterday?
No.
Why?
Because I’m not going to change my mind and I’m not going to bother thinking about changing my mind.
James, you are an incredibly Addicted Person. You have been told by qualified Doctors that any drug or alcohol use is going to kill you. In all of my experience, I have never seen anyone stay sober and survive in the long term using anything but AA and the Twelve Steps. They may last a week or a month or in the best cases a year, but without the necessary support, all of them start using again and most of them die. Is that really what you want?
I’d rather have that than spend my life sitting in Church basements listening to People whine and bitch and complain. That’s not productivity to me, nor is it progress. It is the replacement of one addiction with another, and if I’m gonna be Addicted to something, it’s gonna be something I like.
AA is not a replacement addiction. It is a support group based around the Twelve Steps.
You can look at it however you want, but when someone stops doing one thing every day and starts doing another thing every day, that seems like a replacement addiction to me.
She takes a deep frustrated breath.
Would you rather be Addicted to something that makes you a better person and makes you healthier every day, or something that’s going to kill you?
You can try whatever tricks you want, taking my position or reverse psychology or whatever else you got in your bag, but I’m not gonna believe in AA or the Twelve Steps. The whole thing is based on belief in God. I don’t have that, and I never will.
It is based on a belief in a Higher Power, not God.
Same thing.
God, in our Society, is a man with a long flowing beard who sits on a chair in Heaven. You don’t have to believe in that. A Higher Power can be anything you would like it to be or anything that gets you through the day. It could be the Sky, it could be Buddha. It could be the Force from Star Wars. AA does not try to push any one Higher Power or Religion or particular belief on you.
Let’s get something straight before we talk about this anymore.
What?
Whether you’re saying Higher Power or you’re saying God, you’re saying the same thing.
I think that’s too general a statement. It discounts the diversity of the World’s Spiritual Thought.
From where I sit, all Religion and Spiritual Thought are the same thing. They exist to make People feel better about living, to give them some kind of moral code, and to help them feel better about dying by promising something better when their life ends, provided they follow all of God’s Rules.
Is something wrong with that purpose?
I think it’s bullshit. I don’t need something that doesn’t exist to tell me how to live.
How can you be so sure that something Greater than ourselves doesn’t exist?
How can you be so sure it does?
Because I have faith in it.
I don’t.
She pauses, takes a deep breath, speaks.
What do you think faith is?
I think for a moment. I speak.
Faith is the belief in something that can’t be proven to exist.
Have you ever considered it?
Yes.
And why don’t you have it?
I think God is something that People use to avoid reality. I think faith allows People to reject what is right in front of our eyes, which is that this thing, this life, this existence, this consciousness, or whatever word you want to use for it, is all we have, and all we’ll ever have. I think People have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard and depressing and brutal if you don’t.
You may be right, but what about accepting the idea that faith can make your life better. I know my faith makes my life better, and whether what I believe in exists or not, because I have faith in it, I get the benefits of that faith.
I’m not going to ever have faith in God or anything like God.
Do you have faith in love?