Ouch...'thread gone south' alert? :-)
I consider myself a contributing member of SR, and am mostly drawn to this section Secular Connections. I am drinking again. [Disclaimer, so those who consider an active drinker to be 'not in their right mind' can ignore this post].
My felt responses on this latter part of the thread are this, in no particular order:
- I've had and still have enormous problems with reconciling the both / and approach to AVRT / AA. This has caused me significant inner turmoil, many many times, including right now, today. When I've been sober for long periods AND when returning to drinking. To me, and for me, this dissonance speaks to me of something else going on, in me. Nothingl to do as such with 'isms', 'not-isms', This Way or That Way to achieving what for me might look and feel like 'sobriety'.
- The points made about our different experiences are valid, and they are indeed made that bit harder to fathom when we're trying to use written language somewhat divorced from our ordinary face to face observations of others' daily life.
- Our daily lives, whether drunk (for a short time or long time), sober (for a short time or long time) are going on amidst a host of other internalised forces, influences, simple circumstances, memory-driven background and personal / social histories. It's indeed difficult to distill our responses to this particular issue - in our case, ways of getting and staying sober - without actually a felt knowing of ALL those other factors. The best we can achieve, in a forum such as SR - or even in f2f groups / meetings/ social situations - is a well-intended, yet always incomplete, simulacrum.
- Sometimes, the forensic examination of different ways TO LIVE which in SR includes necessarily ways to Get and Stay Sober / Clean / Free of Addiction and Torment, can in itself be somewhat torturous. By this I mean: many of us who have / had addictions as a force in our lives are prone to a great deal of inner torture. We easily get entangled in seeking The Solution. Once we think we have IT, The Solution, we can readily
want others to know what IT is. That's entirely human.
- 'And? So?' I hear you good readers say. Well, all I can say for now is: for me, it's in that very space of doubting, uncertainty, questioning...where there may be no set menu, as it were, for each individual...that a strange kind of growth continues.