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I was at a meeting recently where we read a section from the first 164 pages of the Big Book, and the word “licked” was used a bunch of times. As in, “I thought I had this alcohol thing licked.”
In this instance, they’re using the word “licked” to mean that you beat/overcame something. I still hear that word sometimes in 2023 but not often. And it’s usually from a 78-year-old sports coach. I can’t think of a single time in my life I have ever said that out loud or even considered using it. In fact, it’s quite odd to imagine a setting where I would drop that in. I’m trying to think what it would have been like at rehab or at one of my first meetings if I raised my hand and announced, “I really need some sober people to help me lick this thing.” I’m guessing I’d have gotten some wide eyes.
That got me thinking about how awesome our sober literature is… but once in a while you can find the creakiness of being written 80 years ago by people who were born in the early 1900s.
Here are a couple of my favorites:
Real corker: This term pops up a few times in recovery literature, specifically around alcoholism. I won’t be using this term, but it’s obvious what it means and I like hearing it when we read it. It’s one of those phrases where it is obvious what it means: A real corker really likes to uncork a lot of brewed or malted beverages. And I have to say, I was a real corker. Now I am… what? An unreal corker? A real uncorker?
Whoopee party: To the best of my knowledge, there’s only two uses of this word, one coming on page 101 of the Big Book, in the chapter “Working with others.” The passage goes like this:
So our rule is not to avoid a place where there is drinking, if we have a legitimate reason for being there. That includes bars, nightclubs, dances, receptions, weddings, even plain ordinary whoopee parties.
There’s also a mention of it on page 149, where it says “a casual or whoopee” drinker.
These make me laugh every time, because I have never heard anybody use the word “whoopee” in that way. I have heard of whoopee pies, which I love, and I also think I spent too much time as a kid watching The Newlywed Game, because they always used the word whoopee as a stand-in for sex. So when I first heard our sobriety founding fathers and mothers say they were at whoopee parties, my immediate thought was that they were doing some wild orgy s**t. That apparently is not the case. But I always laugh when I read those sections of the book.
Last but not least… John Barleycorn. This pops up quite a bit in older sobriety literature as a reference to the lure of alcohol. So you will hear people say, “I had a month sober, but then old John Barleycorn came calling.” It’s apparently a famous book titled John Barleycorn by Jack London, which is inspired by a British folk song. I never read the book or heard the song, so I had to poke around to understand its full context. This seems like a term that if you said it in 1945, every single person at a meeting would nod their head. But if you say it in 2023, people are like, “Uh, John who?” That was my first reaction when I heard it. I still don’t know if I’m quite using it right.
So there are funny terms from a bygone era, using bygone language… but it’s also remarkable that I just spent a whole newsletter on this topic and only came up with a handful. I’ve actually found recovery literature to be among the most amazing, forward-thinking things I have ever read. How many other things do you read from 1940 that hold up as well as recovery stuff? Not very many in my experience. So I can live with a John Barleycorn or whoopee party reference.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
AFTER JOINING AA, I gained quite a bit of weight. A friend told me it was because I didn't get as much exercise as I used to. "But I never exercised while I was drinking," I protested.
"Sure you did," he countered. "The exercise program you were on had a number of routines:
Hitting the bottle. Bending the rules. Stretching the truth. Running into trouble. Jumping to conclusions. Stepping on toes. Dodging responsibility. Pushing your luck. Carrying a grudge. Throwing fits. Picking up the pieces."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2004, by Don A. of Lakeview, Arkansas)
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