Ken33xx

I don't believe I will ever be cured or fully recovered.

It's an ongoing process. Just one day at a time.

Ken33xx

In the example I gave this individual stopped attending meetings after he decide there wasn't enough socializing to be had.

Years back there was an older fellow who attended a Sunday night open speaker meeting religiously. Never said a word or talked with anyone after the meeting. The gossip was he was there because it gave him something to do on a Sunday night. One of the regulars was annoyed and perhaps confronted the man because he suddenly stopped attending.

uncle holmes

One way I look at it is say someone breaks their arm. The doctor sets it and puts a cast on it. After 8 weeks or so the cast comes off and physical therapy is done to re-strengthen the arm.

During that phase they are recovering from their broken arm. After the arm is healed they are recovered.

They may go to the gym and/or do strengthening exercises on their own as a maintenance program to keep their arm and body strengthened. But they still have recovered from their previous injury.

CousinA

^^^

I don't remember where I heard this maybe here, at a meeting or some fellowship at a diner after.....

"I can recover from being shot. It doesn't make me bulletproof".

-allan

january161992

saints

tomsteve

What gripes your behind about AA meetings?
in all honesty there is only 1 thing that gripes me about AA meetings:
my expectations.
i like a little bit from one of the stories in the big book- alittle part from,"acceptance was the answer"

Then, one day in A.A., I was told that I had the
lenses in my glasses backwards; “the courage to
change” in the Serenity Prayer meant not that I
should change my marriage, but rather that I should
change myself and learn to accept my spouse as she
was. A.A. has given me a new pair of glasses. I can
again focus on my wife’s good qualities and watch
them grow and grow and grow.
I can do the same thing with an A.A. meeting. The
more I focus my mind on its defects—late start, long
drunkalogs, cigarette smoke—the worse the meeting
becomes. But when I try to see what I can add to the
meeting, rather than what I can get out of it, and when
I focus my mind on what’s good about it, rather than
what’s wrong with it, the meeting keeps getting better
and better. When I focus on what’s good today, I have
a good day, and when I focus on what’s bad, I have a
bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases;
if I focus on the answer, the answer increases.

DayTrader

Agreed Tom.


Interesting isn't it? The most active thread in here in a while is one on justified resentments / areas of our lives we won't work the 12 steps on.

tomsteve

and amazing when i have no expectations walking into a meeting,
i feel im the one that gained the most out of it.
not only that, i can accept when the meeting gets a little crazy.
like walking into a meeting and a barfight broke out.
that was crazy, but i didnt get all jacked up over it.

DayTrader

I hear ya. Truthfully, I tend to walk in probably 50% of the time with some sort of expectation.

tomsteve

me,too.
its my lie and ill tell it how i want!
prolly more like 75%.

Dave42001

expectations, gripes about meetings = me, me, me, Selfishness-self-centerednes, aka, my EGO.

I'm guilty of pre judging meetings too sometimes.. I'm back on the beam after a moment of silence!!

Haha.. progress not perfection..

Isober12

L

uncle holmes

Some AA gripes: Meeting not starting on time. If it's a 10 am meeting and its already a few minutes past 10 and people are talking and the leader doesn't open up, that bugs me.

miamifella

I think that the flaw in this analogy is that a broken arm is an injury. It is caused by a external event. Most addicts will tell you that it was not some external event that turned them into an addict but rather something internal that was present long before they started drinking or drugging.

Addiction is a condition that is more like dysthymia or type 1 diabetes, meaning it is something that can be controlled by ongoing treatment, but that will never just disappear like a healed injury. While not every alcoholic needs AA, they do need to attend to their physical or mental health or they are in danger of relapse. There are many conditions like this. I know that if I do not get enough sleep and do not stretch my sciatica will return. It has not come back in many years, but I cannot just say "I am recovered" from sciatica. My recovery depends on ongoing awareness.

Of course none of this was in the Big Book because they were just starting to understand addiction. They hoped alcoholism was something that could be cured and forgotten. But the experience of AA as well as scientific investigation show this is not how it works.

Saying "recovering" rather than "recovered" was appealing to many of us joining the program because it showed realistic rather than magical thinking.

uncle holmes

I'm kind of leaning on being both a recovered and recovering alcoholic. I don't think one has to pick one or the other.

I'm recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body.

But I'm also recovering spiritually one day at a time. What I really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition.

Redmayne

This is by way of being not so much a gripe as an observation. I attended meetings in and around the Greater Manchester area for well over twenty years in and around the large urban conurbation in which I live and got nothing but a modest collection of AA literature,which I still have.

Until in late 2007 a guy I knew, aware of my struggles handed me, over a period of two meetings 10 cd's containing a recording of one of 'Joe & Charlie's: Big Book Study Meetings' recorded, from what I can gather at an unspecified date and time at a venue about 60 miles away. At the same time pointing out that these two were the best sponsors I'd ever have.

I didn't realize the truth of what he said immediately but without detailing the events of the night of the 14th/15th Feb., 2008, after which it became apparent my desire for alcohol had been removed from me, and has remained so...

I canonly repeat Charlie Parmley's observation,'It's not the meetings we make but the steps we take.'...

LaceyDallas

This problem has two subtypes:

Type A: This is just a facet of small-town AA life. Hearing the same people talk about the same things over and over again. It's going to happen. If Guy X is sharing on Step 1, and I've heard his Step 1 spiel 5 times before, it is going to get repetitive. It's not anyone's fault.

Type B: People who exploit this. The people who have to bring up certain things at every meeting, despite the topic. We all know. Some of these people need to start working steps to get to the root of these things, so they don't keep going round and round about it at every meeting.