LOCKDOWNERS ANONYMOUS — The Twelve-Step Recovery Program
(the original 1939 Alcoholics Anonymous program — updated for lockdown addicts in 2020)
1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step One — admitting that the addict has an addiction and can not control their lockdown compulsion — is a toughie but it is essential to recovery. The addict has to accept the fact that their way of doing things (shutting down the economy, stifling human interaction, suspending civil liberties and killing people) simply isn’t working in dealing with an unexceptionable pathogen. Help must be sought to recover from the addiction (Steps 2 and 3).
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity; and
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
These two steps are all about hope and, rather than being resigned to a hellish downward spiral of forever lockdown, the addict comes to understand that recovery is possible. In this secular age, the Higher Power that can offer this hope could be common sense, rationality, science (not to be confused with ‘The Science’), a Lockdown Sceptics website, electoral viability, even — at a stretch — a conscience. Perhaps a dash of shame, as well. Some humility, certainly. It doesn’t matter, as long as it gets the job of addiction recovery done.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves;
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs;
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character; and
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
In these Steps, the lockdown addict eliminates opportunities for denial of their addiction through honest self-reflection. Only by acknowledging their public policy faults (of the intellect, of leadership, of political principle) will it be possible for the lockdown architects to correct them — mea culpa’s are mighty good for the soul. Letting go of those lockdown behaviours and attitudes that had been holding the addict back from sane policy-making is difficult because lockdown ways (tiers, circuit-breakers, etc.) have been the only ways that the addict has ever known. True recovery, however, means relearning a whole new way to interact with the world (like ‘Getting Brexit Done!’ in the days Before Corona).
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
This is about recognizing the wreckage that the lockdown addict has left in their wake whilst they were addicted. Enumerating everyone harmed by their addiction, however, would take a month of Sundays, so it is best, for efficiency, to group the victims into the following categories:
a. The millions made unemployed and the businesses gone bankrupt because of lockdown.
b. Those fated to suffer or die prematurely from medical conditions neglected during the monomania about COVID.
c. The suicides and other casualties of the diseases of despair arising from the economic and social carnage of lockdown.
d. The students who have been set back, possibly irreversibly, in their life’s prospects and denied the social environment and intellectual stimulation of one’s peak learning years.
e. All those harassed, arrested, assaulted, fined, infantilised, caricatured, ignored and censored for daring to challenge COVID hysteria.
f. Everybody denied the fun, theatre, travel, the beach, the pub, the restaurant, the sports, Christmas, weddings, family celebrations, etc. pointlessly sacrificed to the voodoo gods of ‘Social Distancing’.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
For all those harmed by lockdown, this means financial reparations for jobs lost and for wage reductions under furlough, restitution of lost business income, annulment of fines, damages for the value of lives lost to lockdown, compensation for the increased taxes and government austerity that is to come to pay for the astronomical financial cost of lockdown. Pricey, indeed, but the bill must be paid ….. and not via more ‘funny money’.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it;
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out; and
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The addict must unburden themselves of the weight of their lockdown past. Truly ‘fess up to the monumental awfulness of their addiction. Resolve to help other unfortunate addicts (Matt, Angela, Emmanuel, Sleepy Joe, et al). ‘Continue’ is the key verb in these steps. We are all familiar with the alcoholic who says, “I’ve been sober for three weeks, so I can afford to have a glass, just one glass, as a reward”. Conducting a constant personal and political inventory prevents such rationalisation for relapse, so that ‘Oh my gosh, there have been two new positive tests in the Midlands’ doesn’t trigger the old, destructive lockdown addiction.
“Hello, I’m Boris and I’m a lockdown addict …..”: wouldn’t we love to hear that said at a Lockdowners Anonymous meeting sometime soon.