OK, so these 12 Steps may not be to everyone's taste - a trifle bitter perhaps, but, hey, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down; all I can say is it works for me. As it said on Caravaggio's knife, "No Hope, No Fear" and, personally, I've found utter nihilism to be a quite liberating experience. So, for all those Non-Alcoholics over there in the NAA, if yer unhappy with yer lot, I offer up this solution... Or rather, dissolution.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the endless rationalisations of our own intellect and ultimately egoistic willpower - that our lives had become too managed, too ordered... in short, too damn dull.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than the intellect could restore us to the wild-eyed fervour we felt the first time we saw Iggy Pop live on stage, fuelled by who knows what cocktail of toxic chemicals, and fired up by the primal power of Punk Rock.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the Promethean fire of our own passions.
4. Made a searching and fearless investigation of "morality" and other such essentialist nonsenses.
5. Admitted to the bottom of a glass, to ourselves and to anybody who would listen the exact nature of our wrongs, their wrongs and the wrongs of the world in general.
6. Were entirely ready to have our own bitter nihilism render all these percieved defects of reality as absurd and meaningless as any other set of arbitrary dogma, thus causing us to laugh, to laugh long and hard like some demonic Buddha in a moment of dark satori.
7. Arrogantly defied that ancient archetypal symbol of the Ultimate Ego - the Big I Am, aka God - to deal with His own shortcomings before sticking His nose into our business. Yeah, go on. Smite me, ya bass.
8. Made a list of all the youthful passions we had lost, all the freedoms we had forsaken in the name of Security, all the time and energy we had squandered in the name of Work, as servile minions of corporate Mammon, and became fiercely committed to making up for lost time.
9. Took direct action on such passions whenever they next arose, even when to do so might well cause injury to ourselves.
10. Continued to make our brutal inquest into our own unconscious conditioning and preconceptions and, wherever we found "truths", promptly destroyed them.
11. Sought, through a sustained and systematic derangement of the senses, to improve our conscious contact with the Dionysiac spirit that lives within us all, praying only for the oblivion of our will, through the absolute dissolution of the ego, like a sugar-cube in absinthe... and, of course, for the money to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all those still addicted to the ideological opiates of superstition and sophistry whether they take the form of monotheist religion, humanist philosophy, liberal-fascist ideology or polynesian cargo-cult... and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Now, if anybody wants to bake this support group with me, you'll find me and my dear friend Madame La Fee, down at the nearest purveyor of the so-called "Green Fairy", a local hostelry which is, quite aptly, named Oblomov's.
Chin chin.-- Guy Fox, Mar 09 2003 Cult of Dionysis/us/os http://www.mystae.c...nosis/dionysos.htmlNot sure if Absinthe was involved. [DrCurry, Oct 04 2004] this is the brand I bought http://www.grandeabsente.com/ [jaksplat, May 31 2009] What absinthe is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe [jaksplat, May 31 2009] Hm. Sounds like just about anyone going through a midlife crisis who's had a few too many beers. Though you neglected to mention the all-important leather jacket and new motorcycle.-- DrCurry, Mar 09 2003 FDA! Dashed nanny state, I say. How's a fellow supposed to develop any sort of backbone with those wet-nurses holding his hand all through his life?
Anyway, [devnull], as long as dear old artemisia absintheum (wormwood is such an ugly name, don't you think?) is available for alternative medicine it would be a quite simple matter to create the absinthe required by boiling the herb in alcohol. One might, of course, want to be rather careful here as one could easily create a quite high concentration. And overdosing on thujone - the active ingredient - does have some rather unfortunate side-effects... convulsion, death, little things like that.
But then that's all part of Step 9.-- Guy Fox, Mar 09 2003 //Sounds like just about anyone going through a midlife crisis ... Though you neglected to mention the all-important leather jacket and new motorcycle.//
Dear Dog, no, [DrCurry]! Those beardy, beer-gut bikers can keep their weekend waywardness and their "20 Classic Rock Anthems Of All Time". Absintheurs Anonymous is for the truly committed (or perhaps, just recently released) wastrel, for those ready to truly face their own demons... and to buy them a drink and sit down in a deep conversation with them through the slow, slow hours of that long, dark journey into night.-- Guy Fox, Mar 09 2003 MMMmmm, Pernod! My friend makes his own absinthe with handpicked wormwood he gathers in the state of Maine. He does a vodka infusion that tastes quite nasty, but there are recipes for true absinthe on the so-called "internet."
The federal agency of which you want to beware is the ATF (bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms [great combo, eh?]). As far as I know, it's perfectly legal to make this stuff for your own consumption - it's just selling it that can get you into trouble.
Incidentally, I hereby cast my lot in with [Guy Fox] and his crew of debauched repropbates.
Croissant (hic).-- snarfyguy, Mar 09 2003 Guy Fox, you smite me.-- thumbwax, Mar 09 2003 [+] Absinthe is now legal in the U.S. I recently bought a bottle at the local liquor store.-- jaksplat, May 30 2009 It's not the same. Neither is the Guiness.-- daseva, May 30 2009 "Yeah, go on. Smite me, ya bass." Should that 'ya' be 'ye'? Anyway, whatever happened to [Guy Fox]?-- phoenix, May 31 2009 Joined Absentees Anonymous?-- jutta, May 31 2009 Someone call?-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, May 31 2009 daseva, what is Guiness supposed to taste like? It tastes like someone poured beer in my coffee to me.-- jaksplat, May 31 2009 "Excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking what they're selling.
Your self destruction doesn't hurt them.
Your chaos won't convert them.
They're so happy to rebuild it.
You'll never really kill it."
-Cake.-- ye_river_xiv, Sep 13 2011 It sounds like an angry version of Galavantalised Inconsequentialism to me, but, meh, doesn't matter.-- theleopard, Sep 13 2011 random, halfbakery