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Old 04-24-2012, 07:53 AM
  # 3 (permalink)  
Windblown
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 278
It is wrong to give medical advice without a PHD after your name. But I have found that the worst offenders are those with years of sobriety. The ones I look up to. There are people with gambling addictions and food addictions. I can sympathize with them but I can not empathize with them because I have never personally experienced this. I would certainly not be so bold as to give them advice on something I have no professional or personal experience with. It just floors me how some A.A.ers who know what it is like to have a disease with a stigma can be so dogmatic about other mental illness with an equally strong stigma. 60 pct. of those with bipolar/depression/schizophrenia have substance abuse problems. So that is over half! My current sponsor has less than two years and has been dxed. with depression and given a script for an anti-depressant. But she won't fill it because her boyfriend with 25 years sober tells her not too! This guy is nearly homeless, has no medical degree...but seems to know that she can treat it with herbs, or a better 4th step.. Now he has her trying different meetings as a solution. She told me to maybe try and go off my meds when I got more stable after a time in A.A. because of what He is telling her. It makes me frustrated!

I will talk to her about this...perhaps sure in a meeting...maybe even start a meeting.

My husband is also bipolar....dxed. 20 years ago and is a recovering addict. Some sponsors in Atlanta told him he wasn't really sober if he was taking any meds and to go off them. So he did and wound up trying to direct traffic on a 6 lane highway with a tennis racket...wound up in a horrible state facility for two weeks and refuses to go to A.A. But thank God, he goes to N.A. where they are much more accepting.
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