Is this a crazy idea? Need reality check - 12 Step Discussion

[NoelleR]

"...I guess the truth is I really can't have even one or it'll lead to more. Even if I would have had one I would have said "oh, I just had one the other day so I can go to the store and do it again" - invariably to only end up with a whole bottle I'd drink and maybe more..."

WTG Katie...!!! It takes some folks years (well, maybe just months; it just seems like years) to get this (what you wrote here). Goodonya!

I know you don't like AA, with its religousness/spiritualness, etc., and especially regarding that 1st step's use of the word 'powerless' and most AAer's thoughts regarding powerlessness (their own and that of others), but for me AA's 1st step was just what you wrote.....I realized that I couldn't drink, not even one; I WAS powerless over alcohol when I put it in my body, but NOT no moah....My first step was my realization (both admitting and accepting) that I couldn't drink like so many others (normies...?), and I had to quit "for good 'n all."

In fact, for me, in my recovery journey, I truly didn't like most of what a lot of the AA steps had to say (as an atheist I figured I was doomed), but I found that Father Martin's approach to the first three steps worked for me.....it's real simple (just the way I like things).............:

1) There's a problem;
2) There's a solution; and
3) I get to choose which one I want for my life.....the problem or the solution.

From then on my recovery journey took many twists and turns, but I found that with a good foundation (those first three steps), I could do it; I could turn my life around and have a truly good/great life.

I just wanted to pop in here, Katie, and give you a slap (a light tap, actually) on the the back, and wish you well in whatever program (design for living) you choose...............


All the Best 2u,
NoelleR

[Katie09]

Originally Posted by ANGELINA243

Why can't you do inpatient? Just curious. I am not going to give any advice on the BF acting as sobriety police....just don't see how/why that would work. I do think there may be some codepenency issues though...I kinda went through a similar experience years ago. My BF couldn't keep me from drinking. We are no longer together. I kept on drinking until I was ready to quit for me --not anyone else.

Let me ask you this--if he left for another reason.....would you still want to be sober?

Yup, I sure would. Actually, it was meeting a psycho guy off the Internet and having the cops called by my neighbors that pushed me into rehab - mostly the cops coming to my house and my having zero recollection of it. I hadn't seen my BF for a year before this. I called him at the lowest point in my life (right before the first rehab and right before the second rehab). He came over and we got back together. I am doing this as I don't want to die from alcohol. Thanks for your post and question.

[Katie09]

Originally Posted by NoelleR

WTG Katie...!!! It takes some folks years (well, maybe just months; it just seems like years) to get this (what you wrote here). Goodonya!

I just wanted to pop in here, Katie, and give you a slap (a light tap, actually) on the the back, and wish you well in whatever program (design for living) you choose...............


All the Best 2u,
NoelleR

Thanks so much NoelleR! I am a slow learner but it's finally sunk in.

[Alera]

I don't normally do this, but I thought there was some great ESH in these posts so I moved them from the regular Secular Connections thread over here to Secular 12 - Steps.

[ananda]

but for me AA's 1st step was just what you wrote.....I realized that I couldn't drink, not even one; I WAS powerless over alcohol when I put it in my body, but NOT no moah....My first step was my realization (both admitting and accepting) that I couldn't drink like so many others (normies...?), and I had to quit "for good 'n all."

Thanks noelle, and thanks alera for moving this here...

I am currently reviewing my steps...cause i've been pretty confused lately....

Although i want to understand in a more deep way about my exact relationship to the world around me and my place in it....which FOR ME is one of the benifits of this step and looking at my power..it's limits and its effects...It also is important i destiquish how it applys directly to my alchoholism...

I won't go on and on at the moment but this was a particularly good post for me to come upon right now in the middle of the night when i can't sleep due to ....ah well that would be a whole nother thread and probably belongs in the womens section

[Dee74]

i want to understand in a more deep way about my exact relationship to the world around me and my place in it.

Remember that poets and philosophers have tried to do this for millenia, Nands - don't be too hard on yourself or tie yourself into too many knots...

I think questions like that really do take a lifetime to answer....cos, if you're living life right, your relationship to the world and your place in it should always be changing and growing...

Sometime we have to be satisfied with a brief snapshot of understanding, I think. Faith that it'll all work out somehow goes a long way....and I mean that in a Karmic, non theistic sense

that's my 2c anyway
D

[stone]

Thanks Noelle, that is all step 1 is....realising, accepting that you cannot drink.

I have just gone back to AA, I decided I was done with it all, all the "mental gymnastics" of trying to make the program personal to me as a "non-intervening god" type person.

Then after I drank I found myself going back to meetings, I needed the company mostly, F2F as they say. I am not averse to spirituality though I still have problems with the "G word" and big book fundamentalism.

I am "keeping it simple", lol, going to meetings and using the clichés, one day at a time etc. Listening to what people say, trying to stay open-minded, using the bits that make sense to me and trying not to get put off by the bits that don't resonate with me.

Also, started listening/reading some Buddhism and AA stuff again, I don't really know all the details of Buddhism though jsut the general thrust of it. I suppose I will have to learn...but I am so lazy it is hard. So I just try to do a bit each day.