Originally Posted by
desypete 
were are they ?
out there living their lives, desypete.
nor did i say ( in reference to gottalife's response) that they simply spontaneously recovered.
i'm saying there are ways to recover other than following steps or sponsor's suggestions. there were people, of course there were, recovering long before AA.
yes, i would think most of them took actions. made changes. worked at it. may even have talked to others.
people have been getting sober since there was first booze. but most certainly not all of them had others' suggestions or sought others out.
to simply suggest that they therefore weren't or aren't 'real' alcoholics is disingenuous and simply a closed self-referencing loop.
and if the OP hadn't been in this general 'alcoholism' section,. i wouldn't have posted in the thread. i assumed Boleo put it here to invite people other than solely 12-step responders, or he would have put it in that section.