The idea of being “too smart for AA” immediately resonated with the part of me that sometimes found its truisms too reductive or its narratives too simple. But I was also aware that being “too smart for AA” could become its own siren call to the ego: considering yourself the exception to the common story, exempt from every aphorism—with a consciousness too complicated to have much in common with anyone else. I was even aware that my rejection of that ego trip was, in its way, also a revision of it: I was proud that I didn’t feel too smart for AA, as if I deserved a gold star for resisting that
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