Meditation for June 26th, 2016
Sobriety Date Chinese Zodiac
To continue our meditations on 12-step recovery orientated topics, we will discuss how the year you were born is also a huge tool in helping you learn what kind of sobriety you will have. We now go to the Chinese zodiac wheel for inspiration and insight.
You will have to refer to the lunar calendar to see when the Chinese New Year starts each year, for it fluxuates between January 21st and February 20th. An animal represents the year and that animal signifies what kind of recovery you will have and what to watch out for.
Years of the Rat: 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020
The rat is industrious and ambitious, but because they lack focus can be very unstable to the point of being volatile. They will be popular, but they will take that power very seriously and try to force their way on everyone else. There is only one-way to do anything, so don’t be trying anything different. The Rat is very emotional and sensitive and finds themselves being offended and hurt easily by their fellowship.
The Rat will relapse because they will date a person with a lot less time than them and then break up ceding most of the social meetings to their ex causing isolation to turn to resentment that no one loves them anymore if ever and will turn to their drug of choice for companionship.
Year of the Ox: 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, 2021
The Ox is a hard worker and is well suited for strict recovery plans for their sobriety. They don’t do well with woo woo spirituality or vague philosophical concepts. They need paperwork and clear instructions. Not the smartest of the zodiac, the Ox will always mean well, but often make stupid mistakes because Ox are dumb. They are very nice people, but dumb as hell. They spook easily and are very cautious about everything. Their slowness will be annoying.
The Ox will relapse because over the years they have been substituting food for their drug of choice. First will be the weight, then the hording and then the utter hopeless depression. Then the heart attack. Then the resentment of being sober and working a program all these years just to find out you die no matter what, so they decide to drink a couple of boxes of white wine with their KFC.
Year of the Tiger: 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010, 2022
These Tigers are the big book thumpers. They will have a leather bound big book covered in highlights, notes and tabs for easy access to certain parts. They will be the most disturbed by any thinking outside of the book. The book is the end all say all of the entire 12-step program and it is infallible. They will even be closed to all the other literature as being too liberal and untraditional. You might not see them for a few weeks to a few months after blowing up at a meeting for not being more book orientated.
The Tiger will relapse from their huge debt they occurred trying to create the perfect traditional life. They will buy a house, cars and other American dream materials that they could not afford, but they use credit, and they can never pay it back. They become ashamed of their financial plight, so they sell what they can and move to Alaska and drink themselves to death in four months while mumbling of the injustice of the progressives that they blame for all their life’s problems. Damn you, Obama.
Year of the Rabbit: 1963. 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, 2023
These rabbits are always in search of love. Love with friends, love with family, love with a romantic partner, love with strangers. They are needy and will be hard to get space from if they join your support fellowship. Rabbits are also scared of everything. They like things to be conservative and not risky. They will naysay anything fun because they are scared. Rabbits will always be in constant relationships where they are ‘in love’ immediately and then hang on as the relationship turns into a rodeo bull, and they will hang on for record-breaking months or years.
The Rabbit will relapse because they just never used or drank like all the other people. They were a lightweight compared to most of their sober colleagues, so they finally decide that maybe they aren’t alcoholics after all and end up drinking and living a lonely mediocre life that never quite gets bad, but never happy for until they die at 112 years old. They will never know if they were alcoholic or not, but life seems to suck either way.
Year of the Dragon: 1964, 1976, 1987, 2000, 2012, 2024
Ah, the Dragon. The Dragon is the only mythical creature on the Chinese zodiac, so they have a hard time with staying in reality with anything. They are hypocritical. They are the very definition of talking the talk, but not walking the walk. They will expound beautiful honest shares in 12-step meetings, but they will live miserable meaningless lives wondering why the pain is never ending. The pain is never ending because the pain is made up. The Dragon hates to ever feel like they are being controlled, so they never do the suggested 12-steps the way they were designed or shown to them, they will make up little things just to be different. They are also the ones that can’t say, “Hi. I’m ____________________, and I’m an alcoholic.” They have to say weirdo shit like, “Hi. I’m _______________________, and I’m chemically dependent”, or, “alcoholic and ___________________________ is my problem,” or, “_____________________, junky/drunk/pothead/hope to die alcoholic/meth head/ anything that will make you know that I am worse than you and you should respect me like the respect I got in prison yards.”
The Dragon will relapse due to being so removed from their recovery program that they are out with their sales buddies, because Dragons are all sleazy salespeople, and they will just order a margarita like all of their coworkers and then suddenly will be in a hotel snorting coke out of a prostitute of unclear gender’s ass.
Year of the Snake: 1965, 1977, 1988, 2001, 2013, 2025
The Snake are so bent on making sure you know how badass they used to be. The Snakes are usually more attracted to NA where you look like a junky, act like a junky, talk like a junky for years, but you just don’t use drugs. Snakes love to bring up their criminal backgrounds, their tough childhoods and violent neighborhoods, and they insist that if they wanted to, they could kill any motherfucker in the room. Snakes love to remain scary and evil. They pretend that life is so much harder for them, but really they are just garter snakes, non-poisonous and too small to do anything and scared shitless. They usually work in the drug and alcohol recovery industry and are often sighted with a Bluetooth in their ear.
The Snake will relapse from being too bent on being a bad ass instead of changing, so they decide to show some Youngblood how to handle malt liquor. They will die that night from choking on their own tongue and their body isn’t found for four months because everyone is too scared to check up on them. So alone.
Year of the Horse: 1966, 1978, 1989, 2002, 2014, 2026
No matter what the topic of the 12-step meeting is, these Horses will always bring it back to unity and fellowship. The Horse never wants the party to end, sober or not. They will always be out and about at every single social event. They will always be in the parking lot outside of the 12-step meetings talking and hanging out. They will blow their entire paycheck on hanging out supplies. The bad news for the Horse is that they are extroverted introverts, so they love hanging out, but they hold the secret of being so utterly tired inside of themselves. They need alone time, but won’t take it.
The Horse will relapse due to over using trucker speed from the convenient stores to keep up with the social goings on. They then start to feel like they must have the trucker speed until the trucker speed isn’t enough. SPUN FUN!!
Year of the Sheep: 1967, 1979, 1990, 2003, 2015, 2027
The spiritual Sheep will always be sympathetic to your problems. They will be apart of every spiritual movement in their community. They will forever be in yoga pants and top knots. They will be very attractive, but you know dating them will be forever processing feelings and going to meditation retreats. Even with all the self-help and metaphysics, the Sheep will be moody and dark at times. They will retreat into their shell and become superficial and politically aggressive. They will spend a few times in their recovery wanting to rewrite the big book without gender pronouns.
The Sheep will relapse because they fell off a cliff they were rock climbing and became very addicted to opiate painkillers. You will see this poor sheep come in and out for the next thirty years and never able to string together ninety days again.
Year of the Monkey: 1968, 1980, 1991, 2004, 2016, 2028
This is this year! The monkeys like to stay up in their trees with other Monkeys looking down at all the other animals on the jungle’s floor. The Monkeys will be cheerful and nice, but they hate you. They hate newcomers because they don’t do anything right and shouldn’t talk in meetings until they have three or more months, and they hate old timers (people with even a day more than them) as being fake, dishonest and sick. They have no qualms being passive aggressive with their advice to others. The Monkey will become very depressed after getting enough time to not get any more attention from the people trying to help only newcomers and just never gets comfortable not having the most time in the room. So they put everyone down.
The Monkey relapses due to not getting their high expectations from 12-step groups met. They never felt comfortable, but they never tried anything different, in meetings. When the pain gets great, they had snubbed all who could have helped them and find themselves in the dark drinking Steele Reserve, Hood River Distillery vodka and cleaning guns.
Year of the Cock: 1969, 1981, 1992, 2005, 2017, 2029
Cocks are always trying to garner respect for their quick-witted shares and intellect. They liken themselves Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting, genius with an emotionally estranged streak. They will greatly exaggerate their accomplishments. They are impatient with those that need more time to figure out their recovery to the extent that they will just plain dislike sick people. Which is weird because the whole point of 12-step work is to help others.
The Cock will relapse due to being so dramatic about their work and personal life that they become emotional and suffer from insomnia. They will find that they need drugs to go to sleep and after awhile the idea occurs to them that they can buy marijuana legally in their state, so they masturbate, smoke some strong-ass weed and then fell asleep and slept dreamless for 16 hours. They woke up with a hankering for a Dave Matthews Band live jam sesh and some disc golf. They never have an intelligent thought again. 4:20, brah!
Year of the Dog: 1970, 1982, 1993, 2006, 2018, 2030
Dogs are very special in recovery, for they find themselves on the firing line of life. They fall for every aspect of AA and it’s many factors. They become warriors in the trenches of service, respectable members of the fellowship and fierce and loyal sponsors. Dogs are the work animals of 12-step groups. They just don’t have any personality. They are like robots. They can recite any literature in 12-step culture, but they have no idea how they feel. They think their feelings. They think that this is a time that happiness fits or maybe they know that when someone dies they should be sad, but they have never felt a feeling ever, nor will they.
After several years being a very active member of 12-step groups and all the service opportunities they offer, the Dog will feel a sabbatical is deserved. They will show up once in awhile when they have a wild hair up their ass or on their anniversaries, but mostly meetings just start to lose their importance and soon they couldn’t tell you the last time they have been to a meeting. It starts out with trying to smoke cigarettes behind the spouses back. Hiding American Spirit blues under the BBQ or behind the Draino. Then it was the wine tasting, they spit it out, but they thought long and hard about the taste and the warm feeling they got even after not swallowing any wine, or did they? A little might have gotten down into the blood stream. They obsess about the wine. They stare for hours at the ceiling and think about the wine tasting. They try to recall what they used to do so many years ago how they kept themselves from ever drinking, but can’t. It just doesn’t come up. Then they are at a wedding and the champagne is going around for the toasts, but they could get up and walk over to the mandatory sparkling cider, but it is across the room and the toast is about to start so they grab a champagne flute and laugh and cry to the toasts as they just keep taking tiny little sips of God’s sparkling saliva. Three weeks later they are in a motel in Columbus, Ohio staring at the mirror drunk as fuck, proud that they can stare themselves in the mirror because the one thing they could remember from 12-step meetings was that people couldn’t stare themselves in the face and here they were high and drunk.
Year of the Pig: 1971, 1983, 1994, 2007, 2019, 2031
How does the Pig even stay sober? They have no ambition, they show no signs of action, they busy themselves being the clown of the party and usually pissing someone off with their off color sense of humor. Pigs are loyal and will sit patiently listening to your sob story and will forgive most mistakes, but will never forgive themselves for their own mistakes and have the hardest time asking for help. The Pig will not bend in any argument and has a hard time with other strong personalities in a room, so they usually try to find a meeting where they can be the token idiots.
The Pig can never relapse. Pigs are God’s chosen animal and God’s chosen sober children. The Pig is unclean, so cannot be eaten or drink, but because their life is spared due to their nasty sickening lifestyles, they become almost sacred. If you have a Pig in your life, you are less likely to relapse yourself.