JL2014

O crap.
I just read a post right before mine. I quoted something , that was just posted prior.
See ? A newcomer
" the grouch and the brainstorm were not for us"
Brainstorm indeed. Best quote that was ......... Just posted.

fred59

rarely do I go to the forums I go to new posts and if I see a topic that catches my attention I reply to it

2muchpain

Sometimes I just get angry over my attempts to be a part of the AA community, only to be dismissed as an outsider that has not lived up to their standards. I'm so tired of some people always blaming the new person for things not working out. It's such a cop out. It's easy for veteran AA'rs to sit on their duffs and spout their words of wisdom, and think they have done a great service and did their part in reaching out to those who are suffering then go home or meet up with their AA friends for coffee. Newcomers are just that, newcomers. It's the responsibility of the people in AA to help these people feel they are an important part of the community, not the other way around. Having a golden tongue and reciting passages from the BB only serves the ego, not the suffering alcoholic. C'mon people, say hi to someone new. Shake a hand. Ask them if they want to help out with something. Build a bridge. Show your words are not just words. Show you mean what you say. Put action behind your words. Alcoholics are not stupid. They are very good at reading people and seeing who's real and who is not. My advice to people in AA is to put the BB and 12 steps away sometimes and talk to people like real people talk to each other. The rest will fall into place in time. John

Dee74

I can vouch for Fred's integrity, DT.

Let's just keep it cool.

This is a discussion, not a cage match

Dee
Moderator
SR

ru12

2much, at my first meeting a guy came up to me, shook my hand, looked me in the eye and told me I never had to feel like this again. I teared up. So some people still reach out to the newcomers.

2muchpain

Thanks. Yeah, I know it happens, cauze many people here share similar stories like yours. I guess I get a little frustrated sometimes not being able to find it where I live. I still think AA has a lot to offer and has helped many people. John

Gottalife

Going to the original title question, does drinking erase progress, it is easy to get the impression that it does not. This is what you might call misinformation.

By reading a few days worth of posts you can get the idea that it is common for alcoholics to go out and drink for a while, then come back sick and tired and willing to recover, then go out again. It's been called a revolving door. It gives the dangerous impression that you can always come back when the opposite is true.

You can't always get back. There never was a guarantee. No one knows which will be the fatal first drink, the next one maybe?

My friend Zac went out after 10 years continuous sobriety. Nice guy, regular at meetings, friendly but a little distant. Did not sponsor, was a reliable secretary for years. When I heard, I thought his AA experience would help him. I couldn't have been more wrong. It had been totally erased, he was dead in three months.

So yes, a relapse can occur which will totally erase progress, or maybe it would indicate there was never much progress in the first place.

Andante

This isn't the "Drinking = erase progress?" thread, but I hope you'll move or copy your post there, because it's a really powerful post in the context of that discussion and deserves to be there.

breath

I get those AA surveys in the mailbox all the time; I throw 'em away.

I'm too busy heading off to my AA meeting, I keep going back because they work!

. . . uh, just kidding about the surveys

Gottalife

Bugger. I blame oldtimer's disease. Will act on your suggestion.

fini

http://hindsfoot.org/recout01.pdf

Gottalife

Thank you Fini. That was very interesting. It has the ring of truth about it as I line up what is written with what I have observed and experienced over the years.

CAPTAINZING2000

A little interesting page on failures

https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/OnFailingG.html


The only failure is to stop trying

dsmaxis10

Those who go there for them self beyond human aid. God could and would if he were sought. Yes I believe the number. But those who have a sponsor who completed 1-9 all amends have the Vital Six Sense like it says on page 85 of the BB. Were it says miracle. Look Doctor Bob struggled with the mental obsession for 2.5 years recovered why because he completed step one when taken without reservation you never have to go threw it again page 72 of the 1212 is were it says that. So those brainwashed by treatment centers is what wrong because they say your powerless forever were powerless past tense. New power and direction step two new power flow in step three being convinced next we launched we have been rocketed into the fourth dimension. Power to stay sober power to make friends power to get threw any given day. You get power that's not your power the Vital Inner Resource . But me I'm powerless but I want what they got no I want what the big book and 1212 say that's my quest that's my destination I want to end up in that's why I go to AA for what has happened to so many all I have is a daily reprieve.

Designforliving

AA's failure rate is so high because no one is working the steps anymore. The Big Book has become an outside issue.
If you go back to the beginning when AA was first created, the first 100 recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body, and 95 of them kept with it because maintained their newfound spirituality (steps 10,11, and 12). That's because they did the process as outlined in the book.
Now we have posters on the wall with the 12 steps and literature for sale, but no one is working it. It used for late night reading.. maybe some people will read the stories at the end of the book. The program of AA is laid out in the first 103 pages.

So we have a disease here : the mental obsession, the phenomenon of craving, and a spiritual malady. We have to cure the spiritual sickness. The mental obsession as well as the phenomenon of craving are relieved through handling our spiritual condition (4th step)!. That is the miracle of it.

However, now we are just told to go to meetings and we use slogans like "Meeting maker make it." Things like "Call your sponsor every night to check in," but are they really working the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? Sobriety is not enough. We have to straighten out mentally and physically.

The steps work has become so much of an outside issue that we had create separate meetings called Big Book Step Study group, It uses Hyannis format so that we can treat the underlying conditions of the Alcoholic illness. What you see in the rooms of AA is a lot of untreated Alcoholism. People who are sober, but they still have all the "isms" of someone who is still showing all the same behavior as someone who is still an active alcoholic. Usually they are angry, irritable, and discontent.

For me, the only time I go into the rooms of AA is spread the message, and when I am looking for someone to sponsor. The message is very diluted and is difficult to listen to. As a sponsor I'll take them through the step work as directly outlined in the Big Book. I do not give life advice, all I am doing is helping them build a relationship with God that will resolve their life problems and their alcoholic condition.

tomsteve

good stuff the, designforliving.

the only "it" meeting makers make is meetings.
meeting makers that work the program recover from the seemingly hopeless state of body and mind.

Designforliving

ahh yes I forgot the "seemingly" hopeless state of mind and body..

Glad to hear you're not a UPER.. hehe

awuh1

Designforliving, I think that saying "AA's failure rate is so high because no one is working the steps anymore", and that "The Big Book has become an outside issue" involves more than a little hyperbole.

First, it assumes that "AA's failure rate is so high". I don't think the failure rate is 'so high'. High compared to what? There's all sorts of problems with making a statement like that. Problems that involve research design and things like defining what is meant by "success" (sober a month, 1 year, 5, 25?). Assuming that the failure rate in AA is "so high" sells AA short.

You mention the first 100 got sober "because they did the process as outlined in the book". Actually that's not exactly true. The 12 steps were not completed until Bill wrote them out while lying in bed on a December night in 1938 (just six months before the big book went to the press). Prior to that night there were only 6 steps, and about 80 AA members had used only those 6 and had gotten and stayed sober, many of them for years. I'm not saying that the 6 were preferable to 12, just that the first ~80 got sober without the 12 steps as outlined in the book.

There seems to me to be some black and white thinking in your post above. There's a degree of negativity which I don't believe is generally helpful. Perhaps people in AA are not doing or saying what you might like, but isn't there a solution for that?

Gottalife

I am somewhere in the middle on this. I don't think AAs failure rate is high at all. Fini posted some very convincing material on that subject above. The key thing is the definition of what constitutes an alcholic, and what constitutes trying AA.

We don't qualify people as alcoholics in the way they used to. Similarly, many of us put huge effort into trying to talk some people who are not ready, into getting sober. We cab sometimes forget what beyond human aid means.

A lot of the time these days we don't look for the alcholic who still suffers, we wait for him to come to us.

Apparently in the early AA group, there were 40 recovered members who had been medically diagnosed as hopeless cases. There is the first starting point, a common definition. They all took the steps as they then were and in ways that were then practiced. They probably did not get into a meeting until they were thoroughly indoctrinated in the way of the program. There you have it, a bunch of hopeless cases took some fairly specific action and recovered.

Apply those same parameters today and the 50% plus result will come through. i.e. a hopeless alcoholic willing to do anything.

It is fair to say the majority of those that come to AA don't stay, but that has always been the case. Bill picked that number at up to 60% who don't like the prescription and don't try the medicine. But that is not the fault of AA, except perhaps if we are not that good at explaining what the medicine is these days.

So I remain optimistic, based on what I see. Hopeless cases like me who go to any lengths have a better than even chance of making it. But they are a minority in AA today.

On 12 steps verses the six steps, the important issue is the principles which are the same for both sets of steps. Here are the principles we followed which are suggested as a program of recovery could have covered either. It was still a summary of the experience of the first 100 or so.

SoberCAH

It would be interesting to see a failure rate for participants in AA.

By that, I mean people who regularly read AA literature, go to meetings, have a sponsor, use a sponsor, work the steps on a daily basis, pray the 3rd step and 7th step prayers, try to do other 12 step work (apart from sponsorship).

I distinguish AA participants from people who have, at one point in their lives, attended an AA meeting or meetings.

It would also be interesting to see recovery rates for other programs of recovery and methodologies of getting and staying sober.

As I have previously mentioned, AA has worked 100% for me.