| In "Get Up," author Bucky Sinister shares the knowledge he gained on his journey from being afraid of 12-step philosophies to embracing them, motivating others to join him in their own effort to get clean.
A 12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks, and Weirdos
As an atheist with a background in fundamentalism, Bucky Sinister was skeptical of 12-step groups when the time came for him to get sober. He was afraid of losing his artistic abilities and had big problems with the higher power concept. In spite of his hesitations, he stuck with the program and it rewarded him greatly.
In Get Up, Sinister shares the knowledge he gained on his journey from being afraid of 12-step philosophies to embracing them, motivating others to join him in their own effort to get clean.
Sinister, a spoken word artist, poet, and performer, well-known on the West Coast for his grabbing, truthful, funny performances, puts out his own story, no frills, no excuses, and no holds barred. He offers a tough-love approach to recovery for anyone who would be mortified being seen reading a traditional recovery. His provocation is to admit you are powerless over alcohol (or smack or meth or whatever), to ask for help and then to rebuild your self-image as a tough guy without the whiskey drinking, dope shooting, excuse making that's gotten you to this point.
Sinister got sober in 12-step and has stayed sober in 12-step, and now leads the very group he joined on his path to recovery. In Get Up, he shares the stories and the steps that come from the "self-identified scum bags who just might save your life." He talks straight to the many (many of them younger men) about how to make it work if you can't buy into the program right away. For example, "Higher Power" can be a whole lot of things - Thor and metaphor among them. He helps readers to accept the group in spite of the differences, rather than walking away.
Get Up is the book that Sinister would have bought for himself with the advice he wanted to hear when he first ventured into recovery.
Bucky Sinister is a recovering alcoholic who says about himself as a teen, "I took to alcohol immediately, a relationship that lasted fifteen years." Then he got help and got sober in 12-step. He currently runs a meeting in San Francisco. He also is a spoken word artist who performs about 40 times a years at comedy clubs and theatres, primarily on the West Coast, but also around the country. He has published nine chapbooks and three full length collections of poetry, the most recent being All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go. His first full-length CD, What Happens in Narnia, Stays in Narnia was released in 2007. He lives in San Francisco.
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