Mark75

Yea, man... get your own experience! I like that message, and it's one that hear from you, Patrick, frequently. But like Found says, perhaps the wording in the 12 and 12 allows for some folks to identify with an example, yea I get that too...

My experience?

I was dragged into rehab, almost literally, kicking and screaming... not so much because I was in denial but more because I felt like I could recover without the "benefit" of an 18,000$ treatment center experience.

But as part of the breaking down process of my self will, I constantly got the message that I was completely and totally ef'd up... and that those passages in the Hazelden readings was something I'd have to learn to identify with... I got the message that there was nothing "right" about me... that everything I ever did and thought was wrong, somehow...

Maybe that was my own perception and my own initial experience of surrender. I remember that first nite in detox... not sleeping.... I kept singing that Cheap Trick song... Surrender, Surrender, but don't give yourself away.... But for a while, I felt like I had...

So maybe I'm just over sensitive and maybe cynical....

But damn-it, there were and still are good and unbroken parts of me. I get suspicious when I read things, sometimes in the 12 and 12, always in a lot of the sentimental readings from Hazelden... I get the feeling that I'm supposed to see myself as defective, they keep me sick.

The Big Book doesn't do that. It doesn't invalidate the whole of me, it just gives me direction, it points the way to a spiritual solution to my ALCOHOLISM, period.

Get experienced

Thanx
Mark