You know, I admire your tenacity in posting the results of your Google expertise as you try to get an intellectual grasp on the AA program, and I won't bother getting in my story that I have hashed out in other sub-forums about my first brush with AA more than 15 years ago and how I how I exhaustively explored recovery methods ad nauseum.
I relished books that criticized AA (check out Rational Recovery) and plunked down hundreds of dollars on addiction textbooks (like $75 a pop back in 2000; check out Ellis and Valant) and tried to wrap my head around addiction in a detached, unbiased, investigative way. Besides, AA was filled with Big Book Thumpers who chained smoked and lived in their mother's basement and they certainly couldn't teach me.
But what I never did was detach my fascination and intrigue in the subject from my ego, the belief that I could beat addiction simply by gaining an intellectual understanding of it. If I knew what the experts said then I certainly would be able to apply that knowledge to my own behavior.
Hell, I even took on a debate in a public forum with the director of addiction medicine for the Tulane School of Medicine over the disease model of addiction and was convinced I won! (I didn't think it was a disease, of course).
But what I didn't do was stay sober. That didn't happen until Oct. 15, 2010.
AANoob, you've professed you're not a low-bottom drunk. In 2000, I wasn't either. But I wish you would look around you at some of those bottom feeders in your next AA meeting and picture that guy coming here to SR, lonely late at night, looking for some like-minded people battling early recovery. After they scroll through a few Newcomer threads they land on a sub-forum that has their label on it -- Alcoholism -- and get sucked into one of your threads. DO you really think what you post would help them?
I get that debate is part of the learning process, but sometimes the tone of your posts just aren't that supportive, they just don't have that ring of tolerance and seeking and sharing that so embodies what SR is all about. Heck, you even told RobbyRobot to get therapy! I mean, the guy has a few decades of sobriety under his belt, and is probably one of the most versed dudes here when it comes to recovery methods and from my recollection he's more than dipped his toe in studying them.
I'm glad you are immersing yourself in the subject of recovery, even your reading about the history of AA. But the posts just come off as baiting for an argument when what folks come here for is to share their questions, battles, stumbles and successes.
If you want to debate AA, why not take it to the Alcoholism 12 Step sub-forum where folks who actually work the AA program can give you feedback?
You know, maybe the reason some of your posts spark ire is because many respondees have been exactly where you are right now: a few months into sobriety trying to think their way out of a problem and using good-old deductive reasoning to find the right and wrong way to recover and with that fledgling knowledge feeling more than capable -- no, in fact, obligated -- to point out the faults and benefits of AA or any other program.
You know, many of those bottom feeders in AA meetings had to be totally humiliated by drinking and drugging in order to find some open-mindedness (gleaned through desperation) to find a shred of humility that led them into the doors of AA.
And now this brings me to Dee, who has been on these boards for more than seven years I think, and is probably one of most dedicated moderators of any online forum, who've you already accused of having an Internet addiction and who has probably been positively involved in the recovery of several thousand SR users. When it comes to SoberREcovery, Dee has seen it all. And when even Dee posits that this thread may be headed for closing like others, your duty-bound to argue with him.
I've only taken the time to write this because I recognize myself in you. I was you 15 years ago, and I had a shred of critical thinking left in me back then. I was sober for like a grand total of 30 days when I first started digging in addiction literature and recovery methods and since my habit consisted of smoking a doobie or two at night as I sipped on my expensive craft beer I could see every hole there was in AA. I wasn't a pass-out, ****-your-pants, DUI homless drunk, so I could beat this!
This business we are in is a beguilingly progressive one, my friend, and I played the game you're playing and I gotta tell you, I became one of those bottom of the cess pond types sitting in an AA meeting next to you, something I never would've imagined 15 years ago as I set out to to find the right or wrongs in recovery. I really wish I would have been able to set my discerning, deductive reasoning behind back them, garnered some humility, listened to old-timers even though I thought they were quacks, and displayed tolerance and open-mindedness.
I gotta go now. It's time to take RobbyRobot to his therapy session and then hack Dee's router because, man, that' Aussie needs a break from the Internet.