zbear23

I think it is unavoidable that we accumulated lots of fears, doubts, iinsecurities and character defects on the journey through childhood and adolescence. So much of adult life is little more than working our way past our self-created demons.

I also think that what is not love is fear, and fear defines my ego, and every spiritual discipline, path or religion....including AA....is designed to provide us with "a way out of the fearful ego." I get to choose my own guide, my own teacher, whether that is god or the devil or something in between. The only choice I have to make is who shall I serve. What force will I choose to be part of, and then.....how do I sustain that choice.

Most people do not choose alcohol to lessen the pain, doubt and insecurities of our childhood and teenage years. Most of us do not choose drink to dispell the guilt and shame we may have inherited from our parents. I've organized my world into the actions,thoughts and beliefs that support my becoming a more loving, rather than a more fearful, person. It's black/white thinking, for sure, but then as my signature states, Truth is true, and nothing else is.

So if most people don't depend on drugs/alcohol to still ease their pain and still their fears, what DO they depend on?? As I see it, we attach ourselves to people, places,things, behaviors, legends, fantasies, etc. in order to still those demons of fear, doubt and shame. We call many of these choices "addictions," when in fact thay are "dependencies." I can dissociate from my inner fears through work, relationships, substances, food, behaviors, rigid beliefs, ad nauseum. I depend on these things to regulate my feeings....mostly of fear. I keep myself unhappy by pretending that my dependencies will provide happiness. It is an addiction/dependency if it causes negative consequences in my life or those around me, and despite my desires, I can't seem to stop. One of our major addictions is adrenaline (excitement, codependency). Until I am able to put down the drink,drug, relationship, enterprise or activity I use to "feel good" I am allowing myself to be externally regulated by the people, places and things of the world. And when these do not work for us, we become victims, complaining and blaming anything and everything for our misfortunes. This is not true for so-called "enlightened" beings who have discovered that we and we alone have the power to determine how we choose to feel and act. I think I create my universe through my beliefs and perceptions. The world didn't change when I got sober.....but I did.

Dr. Paul O. provides us this little bit of wisdom in the BB of AA....."Acceptance is the anwswer to all my problems." The Serenity Prayer tells me that the only things I can...or need to....change are me and my attitudes. The BB urges us to give up all our old ideas ABSOLUTELY, lest be become deluded by the half measures that have held us in bondage.

I think all the paths lead to the mountain top. We merely need to choose one that we find appealing, and stick with it even when it hurts. All the wise men and women throughout the ages, all the spiritual paths blazed by saints and seer, can probably be consolidated into one simple statement from Alcoholics Anonymous which advises us to "Identify, not compare."

blessings
zenbear

BackToSquareOne

In my mind motivation and having a stronger desire to quit than you do to drink are the main factors. I look at recovery programs as a tool to keep you centered in your resolve and on the right track but that's just my opinion.

Mark touched on an important point in his post, serenity, purpose, meaning, I'll call it the happiness factor is also very important. I discovered that about 2 years into my recovery. I really didn't use a specific program to quit but a combination of a lot of things. The happiness factor is a whole different ball of wax though.

I started listening to a lot of the AA speaker tapes and began to wonder if the AA crowd wasn't on to something with the whole spiritual, self improvement, call it what you will idea. I was listening to a guy named Sandy Beach and a lot of what he said really resonated with me. I realised I had tons to learn in that area and at 3.5 years probably haven't even scratched the surface. There are many ways to improve in that arena, no program has a lock on the "Happiness Factor", it's an ongoing, ever evoloving process.

Image101

I wholeheartedly support any program that keeps people sober. That said, I don't use the 12 steps per se, but I do enjoy the face to face support one gets from AA/NA meetings. As has been said many times, 'take what helps, leave the rest.'

onlythetruth

I agree with this. Motivation is absolutely central, and it's one thing I honestly believe we all share. I've never known anyone to quit drinking who did not want to quit drinking.

In my case, I wanted to quit drinking for YEARS before I actually did so. The problem wasn't that I didn't want to quit, it was that I wanted to drink MORE than I wanted to quit.

Even with motivation, it's damn hard to quit, so it helps to have tools, but...we have to be motivated in order to use them.

BackToSquareOne

I was in that awkward, middle of the road place for a very long time where I sincerely wanted to quit but couldn't figure out how to actually have some semblance of happiness with zero chemical enhancement. I wanted to have my cake and eat it to. It wasn't until the withdrawal periods and depression started to get worse and worse that I finally threw in the towel. Depression/anxiety and a sense of impending doom started to become a part of detox and those things alone were powerful motivators.

FT

It may be a simplistic analysis, but I think that anyone who truly succeeds at quitting drinking permanently does so because they have decided to BE a "non-drinker".

Without that, it is possible to continue to be a "drinker" for many years, even during long periods of abstinence. Those abstinent periods are merely drinking pauses in the life of "the drinker". Sometimes the pauses are agonizing, periods of denial, periods of longing for the return to active drinking.

Such a "paused state" requires continual external influence to remain in effect -- meetings, psychoanalysis, more meetings, more meetings. Because the person really never ceases to identify as a "drinker" (i.e., "alcoholic"? -- for the sake of discussion only, not a statement of opinion.)

Once someone truly identifies themself as a "non-drinker", there is no abstinence, there are no pauses. It is just who you are.

2granddaughters

I agree that I have to "want" to quit drinking and be sober but I didn't arrive at AA like that.
I arrived because I didn't want to die. The desire to be sober was a process that happened along the way.

I have NEVER met an AA that wanted to be there in the beginning. They were there because there was nowhere else to go, the Judge sent them, the boss was going to fire them, the wife was going to leave etc. etc.

It's easy after 22 yrs to say that I go to meetings because I WANT to go but in the beginning it was touch and go.

Bob R.

zbear23

I could hardly agree more. But in the early daze, when my motivation was to stop hurting, to drink and to die started looking awfully good. Thank god for people around me who loved me enough to put up with my wining....and still tell me the truth.

blessings
zenbear

miamifella

I think my recovery is based on pretty much the same principles that the 12-steps are supposed to lead you to. But after years in 12-step programs, scared to leave but not finding it in any way effective I finally left and started finding a path.

I needed one-on-one help and someone I could talk to about my addiction with complete candor. A book, meetings and a weekly phone call were not enough for me, so I thought that my recovery would take me far from where 12-step programs said I would go.

But I ended up (I think) in the place that I hoped for when I was in 12-step groups. But it was not till I gave up that hope that I finally found it.

zbear23

It gets curiouser and curiouser, doesnt it? So long as I"m openminded enough to leave my old ideas at the door. What I discovered for myself is that if I keep the focus on how we are all similar/the same/a unity....all of a sudden ALL the different paths are true. No one has a monopoly on Love, except God. Just another way to express my belief that we ALL are God (collectively).

blessings
zb

onehotsummer

I got sober without AA. And I had what I believe was a serious drinking problem. Although in my case, after many failed attempts to get sober, what finally forced me to do it in the end was an unplanned pregnancy. The thought of damaging an unborn child was strong enough to make me stop drinking once and for all. So I got sober just basically through willpower and using this forum. Although I don't post often, I do read it a lot And now my son is 5 months old, I am still sober, and I just cant believe how much better I feel now that I am healthy again, I still pinch myself sometimes, I cant believe how much better life is sober. So yes, I was a very heavy drinker who got sober without AA, although it was definitely my pregnancy that made me do it. I wish you the best of luck. x

raindancer11

Me too. I had to read and post until I accepted the truth. Then, it was mostly smooth sailing. I have about 7 months. I've made it this far before but never was at peace with it like this time.

onlythetruth

As the famous AA slogan goes, a successful recovery requires that we be Honest, Open-Minded, and Willing.

I agree with this, but perhaps not in the sense that AAs use it. Honesty and willingness are indeed critical....but open-mindedness means considering approaches other than AA.

When I quit drinking, the very same people who were telling me that I needed to be open-minded were themselves very closed-minded when it came to any approach other than 12 step, and those people actively denigrated my attempts to find a more comfortable path.

What I like about this particular thread is that people here really ARE open minded....to the possibility that AA is right for them...and to the possibility that it isn't.

Terminally Unique

Anyone who tells you that you need to be "open-minded" wants you to let your guard down so that they can more easily fill your head with their own ideas. I don't know about others, but whenever someone tells me to be open-minded, my critical faculties instinctively go on high alert.

BASEjumper

I agree, when someone says that to me, what I hear is 'you need to listen and accept what I'm telling you'

Mark75

Hmm...

Open Minded is not always equal to letting one's guard down. You know, some of this recovery stuff is counter-intuitive. It is important to consider a different perspective, lest justification and rationalization rule the day.... Open mindedness doesn't mean we leave our common sense behind.

I've heard things at AA meetings, I have heard them here... Some of it I disregard.

TheJungianThing

I write code for a living. I debug code for a living too. Often I need to find an issue. Sometimes I closed minded conclude that "Well it can't be that ...". This causes hours of chasing down rabbit holes until - ultimately - I return to look that that first item I excluded from the beginning. It's been my experience that it has been the item I excluded in the beginning that was in fact the problem. While I try not to do that on the job, it happens, I am not alone either. I fall asleep on the simple process of not drawing a conclusion until the facts point me to one.

That's what the notion of keeping an "open mind" means to me. However, my mind is closed to buying a bridge in Brooklyn, NY, surrendering my bank account information so someone can deposit $50,000 into my bank for a few days and allowing me to keep $5,000 when they're done, etc.. etc..

onlythetruth

Well, I think that the term "open mind" is misused. All too often, TU is right, a person who tells you to keep an open mind is trying to get you to believe something ridiculous. As a result, one often hears that you should "keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."

Seriously, when I speak of an open mind, I am thinking of intelligent inquiry into all reasonable possibilities, not rejecting any because of unreasonable bias, and not blindly accepting any, either.

Also, to me, the concept of an open mind does not mean that you can't reject something after investigating it.

2granddaughters

Our finest thinking and reasoning got us here and it takes a while for some to "see the light" and have the willingness AND ability to make sane choices.
I had to trust the oldtimers to get me to a place where I became able to make rational decisions. YMMV

Bob

2granddaughters

If I used AA to get me dried out and on the road to quality sobriety to the point where I could just tip my hat and say "Thanks, Dudes, I'm good to go and outta here", that would be the height of selfishness.
They were there for me and saved my life, I will try to be there for the next suffering alcoholic and try to help save theirs.
That's why I attend my Home Group regularly and post here as honestly as possible.