Old 06-29-2011, 02:31 PM
  # 4 (permalink)  
Fenris
Came to Believe
 
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Montgomery AL
Posts: 507
Uncomfortable, the first thing I would suggest is that you get a sponsor, someone who will help you work the steps, will answer all your questions, will be there whenever you need them. The things I looked for when I was looking for a sponsor are 1. Someone with more than a year of sobriety; 2. Someone that goes to meetings pretty regularly and has a sponsor themselves; 3. Someone who has worked all of the Steps and is still working them. I didn't necessarily look for someone that I liked or could be friends with (I got lucky though), but mostly I looked for someone who knew what they were talking about. There is a lot of tough love in AA...rigorous honesty (with everyone, including ourselves) is required to get sober and stay sober. A good sponsor won't be any different (someone once jokingly told me that if you still like your sponsor after six weeks, you've got the wrong sponsor), because a sponsor's job is to get all the BS out of you so that you can start living honestly.

If you don't like the way you're treated at one AA group, try another one. Hell, try ALL of them in your area until you find one you're comfortable with. I can understand that you're sensitive and that you feel like you're still on the outside looking in -- like it or not, AA is still made up of people, and people like to form cliques, but keep going. Just seeing your face over and over will be enough for some of them to eventually come up and start including you.

I hate that that's been your experience with AA so far and I hope I've said something here that might help you. Congratulations on being sober for 67 days.

--Fenris.
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