Originally Posted by
micealc 
I found from my experience that no Drug ,drink,or anything else that sedates the Body and Mind can be of any help in the final recovery.
I've numbed my feelings for many years,for survival reasons........ie... prevented myself from going Mad,first with denial,then Alcohol,then drugs............all I gained was another lesson,which is good in itself when looked on that way.
It has to be Spiritual...............Awareness/Enlightment is the way to the Spirit.
How do I get IT.
If I do Nothing I wont get it............
If I keep doing the same old things I wont get it either............
I need to get honest with..............HP
I found that I must Clean House...........even if I have to go back to the Begining.
Self will run riot,is not an easy thing to change unless I get Spiritual Help.
I know most people dont want to hear this,I would like an easier way myself ,but there is no other way.............believe me.
Shalom.
I will just respond to you with one quote from the Big Book and a short explanation of why that quote
Now about health: A body badly burned by alcohol does not often recover overnight, nor do twisted thinking and depression vanish in a twinkling. We are convinced that a spiritual mode of living is a most powerful health restorative. We, who have recovered from serious drinking are miracles of health. But we have seen remarkable transformations in our bodies. Hardly one of our crowd now shows any mark of dissipation.
But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures. God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons. Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist. Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and following his case afterwards.
Telling someone that they do not need medications to treat mental health issues is quite counterproductive to the AA concept. AA is a treatment for the recovery of alcoholism, not a treatment for mental health disorders. It can and often does help relieve some forms of minor situational depression and anxiety caused by the situations that alcoholics wind up in by changing the how we react to situations around us. Who wouldn't be depressed when they are in financial disaster, their family life is ruined, their friends have abandoned them, they have lost or are losing their jobs, all because of the disease of alcoholism? Of course the program of AA helps to teach us how to repair the damage done by our disease and in that repair our situational depression and anxiety tend to dissipate.
But many people also suffer from serious mental health issues which do require intervention by professionals and many times medications to help treat those problems. It is detrimental and can be quite dangerous to take a stand that the only path to sobriety is one where a person does not take any medications to relieve their mental health conditions. I know although I have been sober 10 years now through the program of AA that without treating my mental health conditions the amount of sobriety would not really matter because I would be dead from suicide. I utilize AA for my sobriety and treat my mental health conditions with qualified mental health providers and the medications that are required to treat my conditions.