Hello Tigressa, we alcoholics very much live double lives. The AA method is spiritual based, and works in any language any faith and even for total non-believers and outright angry and defiant diehard scientific atheists, converts, retrogrades, messiahs, sinners, atmanbrahmans, aroma vibes specialists, communists, liberals and all points in between. So don't let any god talk scare you away, they are refering to their own personal concept of 'god' to which we are all in varying stages of coming to terms. Each finds his own way to heal that split between who we are and who we pretend to be in their own way and pace, with their own creator. With the company of other once deeply unhappy drinkers who are inching their way back from shame, depression, crime, wreckage, heartache, futility and exasperation, to life, peace, wonder and meaning, new power and deep purpose and appetite for a entirely new way of thinking and living that has so many happy mysteries, it soon becomes a world of adventure of the most coolest kind.
I found i had to be beaten enough of trials by my own resources, to be willing to say 'alright i'll try it'. Oh. The method is NOT comprised of "going to meetings", that is just part of the phenomenon, and a great help for us social derelicts lol!
Those founders of AA emphasized over and over we will absolutely need to see for ourselves that we have been quite unable to stop the destructive boozing in any other way before we will be willing to try the AA method with the degree of desperation required for it to take real permanent and revolutionary effect, sufficient to overcome alcoholism.
So if you think your counselor has a better plan for you, just try not to confuse the two maybe? Can I advise you bring $10 and buy a copy of AAs big book to bring home, and see for yourself what it means to you? You'll get a better idea of what they talk around at meetings, which vary as each group does its own thing.
Absolutely agree we face a ton of fears sobering up but once in the water gets more and more refreshing. Alcoholism is a merciless obsession and a downward spiral to torment and death. There is no cure. None. It is a progressive fatal malady characterized by total loss of control over the amount once started and inexplicably being unable at certain times to prevent ourselves from starting. Over any considerable period it gets worse and never better. We reach a point where the most powerful desire to stop ourselves is of absolutely no avail.
Aw shucks nonsense, i said. Watch me. Heck i can quit next week before it gets real out of hand. Lol, girlfriend, the blackouts are amusing till the bill comes due. And it does come due. Barleycorn gives nothing, absolutely nothing, away free.
I would type all night. Sigh there's no room for all my thoughts and senses on here, sorry. Talking to you e-strangers is an experiment for me. And now i'm being chastised for neglecting the real humans here...so by for now!