Originally Posted by
hail 
Are you destined to fail if you don’t work the steps?
I'm an AA guy, I'll start with that.
Does everyone need to work the steps? no, of course not.
Do I need to? - well.... kinda. I suppose it's possible that I could stay sober for the rest of my life even if I never worked the steps again but my reality has been that the steps and the AA recovery program have helped me in just about every area of life so I can't think of a reason I'd NOT want to keep on doing them.
I've been that "dry drunk" several times and in my experience, it was at least as bad as but probably worse than drinking was. At least when I was drinking I had a culprit to blame - the drinking. When you're dry and exhibiting every single bad habit you had when drinking but now what you thought was "the" cause of it isn't a part of your life because you're not drinking......well.......then ya figure out that the problem all along was "me." Tough pill to swallow, for sure. As painful as it was, those spells of "dry drunkenness" have been my best teachers. It was only because of them that I really picked my game up and got progressively more serious about and more involved in my own recovery.
Would your life / recovery be improved by engaging in AA? I'd say yes, and possibly no. Most people who I've seen come to AA over the past 13 years try part of the steps, parts of them, or maybe just parts of all of them but not many do the whole deal. My personal experience when I did that sees to match up with just about everyone else's experience who I've watched first-hand do this - that it doesn't work and that AA sucks.
It's kinda funny that way... doing 1/3 or 1/2 doesn't get ya 1/3 or half... it seems to get ya zero with a bunch of what looks like wasted time and effort along the way.
I've yet to find anything.....and I've looked hard.... that produces better results for me. So would I recommend it, of course. Is it right for you? That's up to you to answer for yourself.