Originally Posted by paulmh
Get over the afterlife BS. It's a jerk-off waste of time. You patronise religious people when you presume that they have it easy because they believe in an afterlife. They live and dream just like you - alone.
Paul -- I assume you didn't mean to be rude here but I'm not sure what you mean by it.
Paperdolls
I was responding to this -
I really don’t think there is an afterlife…so I’ve been feeling lately that it doesn’t matter what I do at all...like life is one huge exercise in futility. This is dangerous thinking, but I don’t know how to turn it around into something positive.
This is a huge reason why relapsing has been on my mind.
My bold.
Yeah, probably a bit brusque. Sorry about that. I just wouldn't like to see someone drinking over something that can't be known. Is there an afterlife? I don't know. Will the existence of an afterlife, or its absence cause me to drink? No. Why not? Because It's very much in the category of "things I cannot change". It seems a shame that someone should be on the verge of a relapse because their mind is occupied with something that they can't really do anything with - which I suppose for me means it falls in the category of "********".
Bamboozle, sorry if I came off wrong - once again! I was tempted initially to respond to you about existentialism, since the question you express is at the heart of that particular school. But then I thought, actually that question is at the root of much philsophical enquiry - and existentialism can be pretty bleak. Funnily enough, much existentialist thought and recovery thought overlaps - the idea being that people, if they're lucky, have a moment of clarity (or awful clarity) about their precise state (breaking though denial and inauthenticity), and realise that they are solely responsible for the life they build. That responsibility is awful, immense - and reflects how we actually are in the universe, rather than a comfortable self-delusion. Reflecting the AA process of disengaging from self and with "the other" - or Higher Power.
I found this -
Group Psychotherapy with Addicted ... - Google Book Search
when looking for links between AA and existentialism - you'll have to excuse me, I use the terms "AA" and "recovery" as synonyms
- I hope it provides a bit of useful insight.