the truth, unslanted and maximally unironic: irony-free zone
The thing is it has to be the truth to really go over, here. It can’t be a calculated crowd-pleaser, and it has to be the truth unslanted, unfortified. And maximally unironic. An ironist in a Boston AA meeting is a witch in church. Irony-free zone.
Context
The epistemology of the podium, and the theme's account of why recovery is hostile to the very sophistication its members used to survive. The only transmissible signal in the room is unfortified truth; irony, "sly disingenuous manipulative pseudo-sincerity," and any self-presenting performance are detected instantly and punished, because these are precisely the fortifications an addict built "under the ceaseless neon bottle." The witch-in-church line is exact: the ironic distance that once protected the drinking self is anathema in the one place designed to dismantle it. Recovery requires surrendering the armor of knowingness.