Originally Posted by
allport 
Hi Katie, I have always known that the aa philosophy is not for me but I kept perservering with the meetings because I thought I might be able to connect with people I liked and shared similar thoughts with. Its not just the god stuff, I believe that a lot of people in the meetings i went to are paying lip service, saying what they think they should
You are preaching to the choir on this one. I used to go to this 4 p.m. meeting on the days where there were topic days. I thought, great, now we can talk about a topic like...how to handle the depression one gets when one stops drinking or....how to manage anger or....how to deal with feeling lonely or....how to recover and move on and integrate into society and meet other people...any myriad of topics. Much to my dismay, someone would pick a step to talk about.
These are the life issues, IMHO, that are not tackled in AA and that are crucial to achieving and maintaining healthy sobriety - the real life stuff, the nuts and bolts of how to make it through the day and handle real life situations that come up.
So....I went to CODA, thinking maybe there I could learn how to do some of the above. There were actually a few times I did get something out of a CODA meeting. Those meetings are very different. Whereas in my experience AAers jump in to speak, the CODA people take a minute to see who wants to go first, LOL! It's really quite cute.
Anyway, I've blabbed on long enough, but it DOES help to get this stuff out and I appreciate all of your patience with Katie on day 4. :ghug2
DISCLAIMER: Anything I say that seems to go against AA is a funtion of my desperately wanting to do this deal and not intended to hurt the feelings of any AA people. As I have said, there are wonderful people in AA.