Old 12-01-2018, 05:07 AM
  # 5 (permalink)  
DriGuy
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Join Date: Nov 2018
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Smart or AA, I would tell everyone a meeting each day at the beginning. Later as many as you need and none if you don't need any at all. This is obviously not very precise, and I suspect making the determination is fraught with miscalculations and misjudgments often motivated by personality factors of self interest or desire to risk, or even cheat.

If you are committed to sobriety, there is less chance of miscalculations or lame excuses for whatever schedule you decide is appropriate. Personally, I erred on the side of safety, I'm quite sure way more than I needed to. But I never would have attempted being away from meetings unless I was absolutely confident in my ability to go it alone in sobriety. How do you know when you are ready to go it alone, or just cut back? Who knows?

All I can say about myself is that I just knew, which was kind of odd in retrospect, because I usually question myself and my beliefs more that others, but his was something I just believed with a higher than usual level of confidence.

Obviously, if you start to feel tempted, you should get yourself back to meetings pronto. After a couple of years, I can't remember being tempted to drink. I was no longer afraid of slipping. I was confident that it would never happen.

Toward the end, I spend periods of a year away form meetings, as I was sailing around the Pacific, and always ending up in new places. Once I sought out meetings just for human contact, not to protect my sobriety. I would never have attempted such an adventure that put me out of touch if I wasn't sure about my sobriety.

Eventually, I had enough. My meetings were AA, and a secular individual needs a certain about of tolerance to listen to the philosophy constantly presented in AA. After I got back to shore and became land based again, I started up meetings just to meet new friends in a new place. I knew that I had lost interest in meetings, and I remember the night at a meeting when I decided I just wasn't going to listen any longer to things I simply couldn't believe to be true, let alone be anyway connected to my own well being. I made no such announcement to the group. I just fell off the map. My tolerance had run out, but it didn't happen until long after I gained confidence in myself, and was sure of my sobriety. I could have quit meetings years earlier. I just chose not to.
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