Alcoholics only
 

The most important thing is one alcoholic identifying with another alcoholic. Hard to do when your at an aa meeting and all the talk is about drugs. I can't identify with them attacks they are everywhere ruining aa. I'm the alcoholic type hopeless beyond human aid actually a 100% percent hopeless apart from divine help. I know this I have eleven days first meeting in eleven days and all there is to try to relate to are drug attacks I don't want what you got and I'm going nowhere to get it. Has aa died ?

:stirpot :question:

You didn't mention if the meeting in question was a closed meeting.
At are meetings we do address this at the start of the meetings to keep the topic Alcohol related.

Maybe check out a different meeting?

I've been to many,many meetings in many,many different cities of Michigan. I have yet to see what you talk about. Talk of drugs? Yup, I hear it sometimes. Meetings being all about drugs. Hasn't happened yet.
However, you say first mgetting in eleven days. Is your opinion based on one meeting? Maybe even the possibility that ya truly weren't hearing everything being said?

This is part of the chaiperson's guidelines for our meetings. We emphasize it twice because we get alot of court-appointed attendance, family members, and rehab candidates. It's the prerogative of the chairperson to explain what these statements mean if so inclined.

Personally, drugs/alcohol are part of my addiction because I will try ANYTHING to feel different than I feel. Women, ice cream, Skittles, pills, etc. My single greatest addiction is ME. I want what I want when I want it--except when I don't.

if the talk is all about drugs, or if the talk were all about alcohol, there is no solution-talking.
find a meeting where they talk about the solution and the substance takes a tiny backseat.

I have to disagree, regardless of the "drug." -- to a point.

Identification isn't all that important to me anymore but I believe it is for the new person. I already know we're more alike than he/she can imagine.

"Our drinking was but a symptom." - I believe that line and know it to be true for me. If it was a drinking problem then identification with others who have a drinking problem would be important. Then again, if it was a drinking problem, not drinking would be my solution and that's sure not the solution offered in AA - thank God (well, it's not the solution in a "good" meeting).

fini writes>>> the substance takes a tiny backseat.<<<

Yes, a big yes! The substance is the symptom which just scratches the surface of recovery, abstinence will take care of substance. The problem is what recovery is all about, and the problem was me, still is...

Topic expanded.....For 50 years I've been attending AA meetings in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Europe and never heard of such a thing as described in the opening post.

I've been to meetings where I didn't agree with the format due to it not following the suggested AA Traditions. I shared my disagreement including telling them they can structure their meeting anyway they want, that each AA meeting is autonomous and I then left the meeting.

Many years ago I was a AA GSR, so I know AA's 12 Traditions and 12 Concepts.

For anyone (SR member or lurker) that might view the rest of my post as being off topic it's not. It's in the context of me being helpful in understanding AA meeting structure re: autonomy. Due to my understanding and me not agreeing with particular AA formats, I've started AA meetings with formats that I felt were more conducive to recovery.

There's no such thing as AA approved literature, including the basic textbook Alcoholics Anonymous. Each autonomous meeting can read anything the group conscious decides. Also, The General Service Board (GSO), NYC, NY has no authority over any AA meeting, as I've shared each meeting is autonomous. The issue is, that a lot of AA groups aren't aware of this, so they allow the GSO to dictate. Also, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., NYC, NY (AAWS) is only a publishing company, a clearing house for AA literature that they sell at a profit.

Therefore, with that said, it might surprise some AA members on this board that a newcomer can start an AA meeting, that anyone can that has the desire to stop drinking.

I correspond via email with an newcomer to recovery, an Englishman that I met on line. He's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but he wanted to enhance his recovery beyond Alcoholics Anonymous by attending Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings (ACoA), but the meetings in his area of England were not only easily accessible due to distance. So he started an ACoA meeting in his town which keeps growing in membership.

It was a closed meeting hell man can't I talk to people who have a real problem not a self made problem. I was born alcoholic since my first drunk I drank until I puked my friends didn't puked then drank more. I had four years sober in AA before and at this meeting it's over ran by drug attacks.

:)

DS with all due respect are you looking for an answer or an argument?

P

I just had to scroll up to check and make sure we're in 12-step support rather than "alcoholism" or newcomers or something like that... I pull less punches here.

DS, identification (as it's stated in the book) is to help convince the new man he's alcoholic, if he in fact is. You just said you were when you were born so you have no more need for identification. Sure, you may want it..... but it won't help. It's not part of our solution anyway once you've made the call about your own condition.

So meetings aren't going the way you want. I live in Mich too (West Bloomfield now, got sober in Macomb) and I don't like a lot of the meetings I go to. What I did and do is go out and find new meetings that I DO like....... or another and better alternative is to get moving on recovery so you don't HAVE to depend upon meetings so much. Sure, meetings are important.....at first. Get out into some real recovery and how meetings go won't matter to much to you. You'll be there to carry a message to someone who needs help rather then going for yourself, so you can identify, so you can get better.

I decided to go to a meeting cause I was board. After listening to Bob Darrel saying AA recovery rate1,2or3 percent which is lower then spontaneous remission I knew AA was worse then doing nothing. Went to visit friends.

Hey DS

Just about every time you relapse I notice you always start talking about Bob Darrell and stop going to AA.

Find another meeting. Don't give up your recovery over things people say,
Be vigilant.

This is your life, man.

D

I guess that I am a 1%'er, at least in AA.

Glad to know that.

I hope you come back, listen and participate, DS.

There is no point in changing your sobriety date.

I looked who Bob Darrell was and I see he is one of those semi celebrity professional circuit speakers who have managed to make a name for themselves in an anonymous outfit.

Why don't you find a meeting you like with some people who have some good sobriety going and lead a content life and take your lead from them?
You know, folks who will know you as an individual.
People who might not have some well rehearsed shares and might even stumble a bit when they chair a meeting (after all it's neither their ego nor their wallets talking) but are real and will extend an helping hand to you.

Nobody's bashed AA more then me and nobody needed it more then me.

bashing the solution is insane

In the final analysis if we are willing to do what we need to do regardless of the obstacles we will find recovery

Suggestions. Take em, or leave em:

- Find Step and Bigbook meetings. Go to them.
- Pick up the book Living Sober. It can be found at most meetings or on Amazon for pennies.
- Read the book and follow as many of the simple suggestions as you possibly can.
- Continue going to meetings.
- Start focusing on the things people are saying that might benefit you, as opposed to the things that bother you.
- Make statistics work in your favor. They're pretty much all BS anyhow. When I was told the grim statistics of sobriety (forget even AA), I became determined to be on the winning side of those statistics. They were nothing more to me than motivation.
- Pray. If you don't believe in any HP, make your higher self your HP and pray to that.

Getting a sponsor, getting involved in the steps, reading the Bigbook and Step Book along with not picking up no matter what, are real helpful too, but the above is IMO the simple plan at the start that will work. I myself wouldn't however still be sober without this here latter part. And I'm part of that 1, 2, 16 or whatever % is popular today that's stayed sober for decades. With the help of AA.