"The non-working BB thumper would make me crazy as well."
Yup. It has been a very, very tricky situation, Coyote. At times, he has tried to serve as my other sponsor (I dip in and out of AA now) and I also started feeling pressure to up my AA meetings from my al-anon sponsor - who still attends more meetings of AA than al-anon with the bible thumper.
I had all kinds of problems - and had to really check myself. Was I a "typical" drunk who wasn't willing to work a program? Was I behaving like a dry drunk? I came up with no. I had reached a crisis point because all my adult child behaviors had gone into overdrive. I had reached a crisis point because I had spent a year with an active alcoholic. It was time to get into al-anon - and I really wish I had found it sooner.
Re: the thumper - it's very, very hard to take someone who has been sober for less time than I have telling me the finer points of the AA program when I'm now trying to step back and really look at the effects that alcoholism had on me as a child.
As for AA meetings - some are great. The step and topic meetings that are about how to live well can be fantastic. But that's hit and miss - and i feel, now, like that's what I always get in my al-anon meetings.
One of the old timers from my favorite al-anon meeting recently told me that he uses the program as mental floss so that he can live a big, full life that runs smoothly. He's not "coming back" after all these years so that the program can be his whole life - but so that he can have a "whole" life, thanks to the principles he keeps getting better at using.
I love that. That's what I want. And those are the kinds of people I've started to gravitate to in and out of the program. People with a sense of balance.
This is a great thread.
SL.