Originally Posted by
Tomas 
Bugs..Angelina Jolie, in a leather halter.. asked the questions...and I answered to the best of my ability..in my 35 years of sobriety..to defend the integrity of AA as I have experienced and observed....Is that a sufficient answer to assuage your first casual coffee reading material.
To be honest..I don't think many got the point to this thread...it's about what's on U=tube and Google on AA success rate...That was made clear...more than once...It was a defense against that rubbish..and how it affects our image..which is important..because obviously too many are not getting the message...VITALLY important to our PRIMARY PURPOSE
No one even went their to satisfy their curiorosity..to U=tube or Google
The earlier messages were riddled with narcissism..
The Hocu Pocus was stated in the orignal post.. Me summing up all the rinky dink programs...mostly by scemers trying to make a buck off alcoholism
and then the direction changed...the thread turned personal,and became a peeing match between an atheist and whatever..
I'm sorry, but this is the last post I shall waste my time on this site..The attention span to facts and informed debate is Zero
Tomas
Signing off
Sorry that my attention span is so short. I barely finished high school, you know.
I would guess that those stats are probably fairly close to accurate, but it is not the fault of treatment centers, drug addicts in AA, or anyone else. It is OUR fault that the AA message doesn't get carried in AA.
Most of us are too worried about offending someone and hurting someone's sensitive little feelings to stand for anything. And if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. But, let someone who actually cares more about whether an alcoholic lives or dies say anything to the contrary and he or she gets called a "Big Book Nazi," or "rigid and intolerant," or worse.
And what we've fallen for is a watered down mess of something that gets called AA in most places. A message that in part has been sold to us by people who claim to be our friends and in many places is really the message of Narcotics Anonymous. Just read the NA basic text, you will see many of the phrases you hear in AA meetings, stuff like "ninety in ninety," "I'm a liar and a cheat and thief," and so on. The meeting based recovery and the idea of a drug is a drug and picking a date and keeping it and choosing not to use or drink all originally came to us from NA, filtered through treatment center counselors. And of course these counselors are required to teach stuff like relapse prevention and other therapies. Not their fault, they are just doing their job.
I'm not bashing our friends in NA, but try taking the AA message into an NA meeting and see what happens. Yet we sit by and pretend we are tolerant when really we are afraid of what happens when we make a stand for our message.
As for Joe & Charlie, I kinda like 'em. Joe McQ wrote a book called "Carry This Message." What message? The message of hope contained in the book called Alcoholics Anonymous. Time to start carrying the AA message/
Let the name calling begin.
Jim