Originally Posted by
tiburon88 
If they identify themselves as "alcoholics" they need to be escorted out of the meeting by the 2 biggest members.
I hope you don't mean this. At the meetings I attend, I don't care how people identify themselves, just so long as they stay and get the message that they don't have to pick up ANY substance just for today. The substances we used were just our preferences. Recovery is from the disease, not from any one substance. I personally think the clarity statement (which is not NAWS approved literature) is something that can be used between sponsors and sponsees to help identify the disease and the similarities we all have. However, it can also make people feel very uncomfortable. My boyfriend was in AA for 12 years before we met. When he started going to NA meetings with me, he didn't feel comfortable to share if the meeting read the Clarity Statement. I told him it was fine to identify himself as an Alcoholic, because he is. He got his recovery in AA and considered himself sober. I said the issue is with people who "straddle the fence" and say "addict/alcoholic" because that implies two diseases. We had quite an interesting discussion. Before this, I never even thought about it, because I used NA language from the get-go.
Newcomers fresh out of treatment are taught to say "clean & sober and addict/alcoholic." I spoke at a treatment center and the moderator went around the room and asked people to identify themselves and say whether they were an addict, an alcoholic or both. When he left the room and I started my share, I began with "In NA, we focus on the disease of addiction, not on any particular substance. Even if your substance of choice is alcohol, you are welcome, because alcohol is a drug." The last thing I'd want to do is make someone feel unwelcome by how they identify themselves. If the only meeting around were an AA meeting and I needed a meeting, I'd go and want to feel that I could identify myself as an addict and be welcome.
Beyond how I identify myself, my shares focus on feelings (not drugalogs), so anyone can identify. It's when we put the emphasis on the substance rather than on recovery that we see the differences. Live, let live, and love.