Get Up: 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, he shares the knowledge he gained on his journey, from being afraid of AA philosophies to embracing them, motivating others to join him in their own efforts 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 all those, like him, who are turned off by traditional "recovery" books. Sinister got sober in AA and has stayed sober in AA, and now he 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-identi?ed scum bags who just might save your life." He talks straight to readers about how to make it work if they 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 their 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 ?rst ventured into recovery.

"This self-help book for the substance-abusing artistically — and atheistically — inclined is both a ringing endorsement of AA and a brilliant piece of literary performance with poetic and savagely funny insights. Spoken word artist Sinister — a self-professed 'misfit' and recovering alcoholic and addict — celebrates sobriety and provides a methodical analysis of the 12-Step program interpolated with biting commentary ('The difference between the Bible and a Magic Eightball is that 400 years ago, you would've been burned at the stake for owning a Magic Eightball') and encouragement that is, by turns, sincere (in particular a foray into why artists are so prone to addictions) and comic ('Finding Your Inner A-Team'). The book is a wild mixture of autobiography, philosophy, social criticism, pop culture and nuttiness: the consummate self-help book for those too cool for self-help books. Although the author occasionally veers uncomfortably close to glamorizing his addictions, his advice is sound, detailed and heartfelt." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Bucky Sinister, is a spoken word artist who performs about 40 times a years at comedy clubs and theaters, 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 and Nowhere to Go. His first full-length CD, What Happens in Narnia, Stays in Narnia was released in 2007.