Free Dark Eye by William Bernhardt

their little questions, trying to get people to talk. I was willfully noncooperative. I couldn’t relate to anything anyone was saying, most of which was incredibly stupid. As a trained psychologist, I resented seeing these nudniks turn therapy into Ted Mack’s
Original Amateur Hour.
    Okay, so I was the only one in the group with a college degree. I wasn’t going to be snotty about it. I’ve never had any trouble mixing with people from all walks of life. And I remembered Dr. Coutant saying that intellectuals rarely did well in these programs. Does that mean they’re only successful with dunderheads? People who buy into anything anyone tells them? At any rate, I had a hard time relating to the travails of guys working on the loading dock making eight bucks an hour who got hooked on street drugs mostly out of boredom because it wasn’t football season and there was nothing on television. And I detested hearing people whine about their personal problems, most of which didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
    Of course, they had the AA twelve steps up on the wall. We all recited them in unison, then the group leader talked about each of them, even though the first eight or so all seemed to me to say pretty much the same thing over and over again. What is all this “admit that I am powerless” crap, anyway? Wouldn’t it be a better technique to admit that I am powerful, that I have the strength to overcome my troubles? I had a real problem with this sniveling approach to better health. I couldn’t help wondering if that was why AA and other similar programs didn’t have a better recovery rate.
    We also had this guy, Herb, a little salt-and-pepper-haired man who fancied himself a motivational speaker. He had lots of standard routines, gimmicks, anecdotes, acronyms. I thought it was just a matter of time before he tried to sell us his three-hundred-dollar award-winning series of inspirational cassette tapes. He asked us how we were, starting with me.
    “I’m fine,” I said succinctly.
    “That’s not an answer.”
    “I’m fine,” I repeated, a little louder.
    “That’s not an answer. That’s a blow-off.” He pointed to a poster on the wall next to the twelve steps. It was basically a long list of adjectives. “Pick three that describe how you are.”
    Okay. His class, we’ll play it his way. I chose three at random. “Optimistic. Determined. Reverent.”
    Herb arched an eyebrow.
    For the following hour, we were treated to this blustering rodomontade about Herb’s successful battle against demon rum. We were supposed to be inspired, but I couldn’t help thinking that if the guy had ever had one day like most of mine, he’d be back in the gutter with a dollar bottle of muscatel.
    Then, for his next act, Herb wrote PEOPLE PLACES EVENTS on the chalkboard. “You abuse substances,” he announced, “because of one of these three things. Something a person in your past did. A place that hurt you. An event that traumatized you.” He used examples from his own life, so we got to hear about how his mother threw plates at him when he was six and how his drunken daddy left when he was nine and how he got busted up in ’Nam. And oh yeah-his daughter is a sex addict, so he won’t speak to her anymore. Thanks for sharing.
    Mental note: next time I develop an addiction, sex addiction sounds a lot more fashionable, not to mention pleasurable, than substance abuse. All the major movie stars are sex addicts, right? But no one treats them like they would a wino. Alcoholism gives a girl ruddy skin and liver damage. Sex addiction adds luster.
    Anyway, this guy’s sermon opened the floodgates on what all the women in the group wanted to do anyway-blame it on their spouses. This was not remotely helpful to me, but I have to admit listening to it had a certain addictive quality, like tuning into a poorly written soap opera-just one damn thing after another. I listened to hours of the running battles between Jill and Buddy,