sobersanity

I will do that Paul thanks, I find this whole thing fascinating. Maybe people should be looking back to that model and qualifying who genuinely wants/needs the help aa offers. I guarantee if this went on success rates would be closer to the 80% bill speaks about.

I mean honestly I know your not supposed to do this but I've sat in meetings with people who were no more alcoholics than the pope. In for a nose or in for the social aspect but alcoholic? A genuine compulsion and addiction to alcohol? I think not.

And before I get attacked again by people saying "who are you to judge who's alcoholic" I'm sure a lot of people have had that very thought about some of the "alcoholics" that wander in and out.

tomsteve

"in those days, they took each others inventory firmly and often." ( its in one of the personal stories from one of the 1st 100).

something also over looked in the BB, it is in a vision for you:
So, you see, there were three alcoholics in that town, who now felt they had to give to others what they had found, or be sunk. After several failures to find others, a fourth turned up.......
They were willing, by day or night, to place a new man in the hospital and visit him afterward. They grew in numbers. They experienced a few distressing failures....
A year and six months later these three had succeeded with seven more...
so, 10 people sobered up in 18 months. i wonder just how many were worked with.


4 months is a long time. for me, thats when the fog started lifting and i really had to start lookin at myself.

pipparina

I honestly don't understand why you are all trying to convince sobersanity of the benefits of AA. It clearly isn't his thing. I consider myself blessed that I found AA and it worked for me, and have maintained nearly 15 years of sobriety.

But I'm not sure why it is productive to try to convince someone else why it works if they can't see it. This is a program of attraction, not promotion.

sobersanity

Pippa I am not trying to be convinced.

I am keeping an open mind.

I am not either trying to promote or detract from the good or bad parts of the program.

How do you know if its my thing or not ? I have yet to take the very vital and in my mind serious steps 4 & 5. Until I can find someone I trust to do that with, I will continue to attend meetings (altho not as many as I was) continue to read these and other forums and continue to ask questions and have discussion with others in AA.

Maybe I will find the answers, maybe AA will work for me, maybe it wont. I have yet to find that out yet.

You are not one to judge whether it is for me or not, nor is anyone else.

Each to their own. If you dont want to read my posts click the ignore button.

I dont see why you are so offended (like the others)

Thank you

pipparina

I am not offended by your posts. I find them quite amusing

sobersanity

And I find the defensive ones quite confusing.

Yet intriguing as to why they are so.

Fandy

As long as you are comfortable in your sobriety,reasonably sane and happy,who cares about others opinions?
I think that everyone needs to find their own path. Intheir own time. And i have heard others like Pipp say attraction not promotion.
Lots of screecher preachers arent helpful to people who are confused about aa.

Sapling

Are you a member of AA Fandy? I've never heard that term...Screecher preacher.

sobersanity

Are you turning on fandy for saying that now?

Woe betide anyone with a sense of humour or that uses a description or phrase you dont approve of. Jesus lighten up what does it matter if shes in aa or not

muvinon

I did not like AA when I first arrived. I did not like my life, either. If I'd had a choice, I'd have not pushed through some of my own frustrations.

I really didn't have a choice. I'd tried it my way, and I absolutely knew that I didn't have any answers to the real question, which is how do I live sober and clean up this mess I've made here.

If you have all the answers, my hat is off to you. I can give you only some honest feedback.


Really, the bottom line is that you can't handle disagreeing with one fella in AA, who happened to have the label, Sponsor. Wanna know how I handle it when I don't agree with my sponsor about advice?

I say....."Interesting idea...." And then I make my own choices. This is my life, my consequences. And I'm not going to be so immature as to honestly put someone in AA in charge of that. How ridiculous!

She passes AA principles to me, explained to me how to work the steps, and clears up a host of questions I have about matters within AA. Her advice on a car problem I had didn't make sense, so I didn't follow it.

All this amounts to is a resentment. And look how far you've gotten from that simple truth.

And you doubt you need help?

Really?

sobersanity

Do you mean I doubt I need help ? When did I say that ?

I know I need to stop drinking thats about as much as I know at the minute.

How best to do that I have yet to decide. But thats a decision I will make, based on my analysis. Maybe with AA maybe not. But thank you all for your contributions.

But regarding your resentment comment. That is a word I hear often here.

A person posted on this forum about wanting to drink after 15 months of being sober and going to AA.

The first two comments were:

"My ego likes to rebuild itself"

AND

"A festering resentment" ?

Goodness gracious. Lord help us. Maybe the man is an alcoholic and the man wants a drink. He might be wondering why God hasnt worked his magic yet to rid him of his disease

Dont think a resentment or his rebuilding itself ego has anything to do with it TBH.

Fandy

for clarity...that term "SP" was quoted to me by a VERY active member of AA who has 12 years sobriety. He is also a sponsor for many new AA people and a great friend both online and in person.

I am not member of AA, but I have an open mind and use what works for me. I'm not a big time counter (it makes me anxious), but I haven't drank since before my mother died which was April 2011. before that I was back and forth with a month or two sobriety, controlled drinking, slipping, etc.

bbthumper

It is hard to get a good representation of AA without doing AA. Especially on an online forum where a lot of opinions are going to get thrown in with experience. Im sure if you get out there and do it, your questions and concerns will be addressed.

sobersanity

The reasons I ask questions here is because they dont get answered in and around the rooms but maybe thats just me.

bbthumper

You will likely get the same mixed answers in the rooms. IMO your best bet is to have your own personal experience with the program of action. Dont let other people's experience determine what your's can or will be like.

Junebugapril

I think I get what you are saying. Part of being human is a strong sense of black and white, right and wrong. We humans have actually killed other people because our religion is right and theirs is wrong.

So some of the AA folks have become rigid cultlike people who insist on everything being a certain way. It turns a good many of us like me away from AA, when it really could be a good thing for me. I am not one who likes endlessly repeated dogma.

But I do think there may be some good stuff for me in AA so I am giving it a try. I can always stop going if it doesn't work for me.

justanothrdrunk

I see flaws in my AA experience, but only in so much as some people who are in AA are flawed.

I see some in AA who like to give opinions, theories, and/or advice and most of that isn't helpful for me.

My sponsor works only with his experience. As in, this is what I did and it helped or it didn't. These are the mistakes I made. Etc... And when I wasn't willing/able to do what worked for him, we talked about it. Turned out that, more often than not, what worked for him also worked for me. I just didn't want to do this or that because I was afraid or because it seemed too hard. Most of the time, but not always.

Boleo

I agree 100%. Just as faith without works is dead, for a drunk like me, faith without results is deadly. I did not like much of anything about AA till I started getting results. I did not get results till I started "doing AA".

TSDD

AA doesn't send people invitations, nor hold prisoners. People are welcome to attend and leave at their own choosing. There is nobody who can deny anyones membership and the member himself and cut ties when he or she likes.

If someone stumbles into a meeting and stops drinking and stays stopped it's a win for them and a win for society as a whole. If someone shows up and decides they can stay sober some other way, it's still a win win. If someone shows up and decides that it's not for them and return to drinking, they're not much worse off then when they first arrived so it's not a big negative in the grand scheme of things. I find it tragic when some cult-leader type bullies someone out of their comfort zone and out the door, but really it's not up to me to police anyone else. All I can do is take care of myself and pass along my own experience. Whether or not that works for you, if it's my own experience it's the truth.


You make some very valid observations about AA and ask some very valid questions IMO. Please keep in mind you're not dealing with the Council on Foreign Relations.... you're dealing with a buch of misfits who wore out their welcome at low-life bar rooms and crack houses. Some people in attendence at AA meetings are very ill, and many of them are even alcoholics.

Tradition 3 maintains that AA must not compel it's members to do anything, say anything, believe anything, pay anything, or conform to anything. Throw that in the face of people trying to push you outside your comfort level. In theory AA is big enough for you to find your own answers there. It sounds like people in your area (and many people on here) treat it like a sort of religion or cult. I personally find it best to ignore those people because that frame of mind does not appeal to me.

Personally I came to AA to quit drinking and stay quit. I have done that *mission accomplished!* and quite happy with the man that I am when I'm not drinking. I too am very leary of people who are eager to "fix" me, tell me to start finding new things wrong with me, or try to tell my how to run my life. Tell me what YOUR experience is and I may listen, tell me what I have to do and you can go **** in your hat. My experience is you meet a lot of narcisists in AA/NA (read up a little on that personality disorder and let me know if you recognize that at your local groups)

TSDD

I would like to propose my own set of questions for you for the sake of discussion:

1. How long have you been sober?

2. How long had you been able to stay sober by yourself before attending AA?