I have some AA questions...
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: New England
Posts: 5,285
Interesting thread.
Robbie's post resonated most with me. I can only see myself going back to drinking if I decide I want to kill myself. As long as I work on the quality of my life I don't see that happening
Robbie's post resonated most with me. I can only see myself going back to drinking if I decide I want to kill myself. As long as I work on the quality of my life I don't see that happening
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Between Meetings
Posts: 8,997
I guess Laurie....And Congrats on 30 and a half years...If I am asking for knowledge of My God's will and strength to carry that out...Living God's will...Not mine...To the best of my ability...What other result could you have?
Adventures In SpaceTime
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 5,827
Originally Posted by Terminally Unique 
Of those people that did so, did they go back to drinking because they stopped working the program, or did they stop working the program because they went back to drinking?
I drank for whatever drunken benefits goes with it. I sobered up because the sober benefits are way more cool. Simply worded, and kinda childish at that, but really, if sobriety was lousy to live, I wouldn't care enough to keep at it. For me that would have cost me my life I'm sure. I didn't know what sobriety was until I was able to truly live it, really have that psychic change, really have my alcoholism arrested, really change out that alcoholic mind.
I have experienced working the program and getting no amazing results. At first in my journey I simply didn't want to be drunk again, even though I still wanted to drink. I didn't want sobriety at first. As my program moved on, I became open to what sobriety was offering, and from that point I could begin to understand I needed to be somebody different than who I was, which was a drunkard. If I didn't change up how I worked those steps after getting no great results, I would have gotten drunk. I have also experienced being so sober that working the program is like so easy it hardly seems like work at all.
To answer your question:
Without changes, without that essential psyche re-invention and revolution, I would be drunk no matter how much I "worked the program"
So it really depends on asking if someone can work the program and not have that pyschic change. I think yes, people can work like hell and still not really be living the AA program of recovery.
Living the program is the key requirement into experiencing that "Aha!" moment of discovery which ensures AA sobriety. Anything else is just half-measures and amounts to merely stopping between drunks, and relapsing is not recovery, relapsing is untreated alcoholism.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Chicago
Posts: 166
If you really work the program then you shouldn't drink. Because if you really work the program your life becomes all about the recovery process and you have a plan of action that should be used before you pick up that first drink. Like coming clean and picking up the phone if the temptation ever arises. Unfortunately people make mistakes and won't work the program 100% all the time. I guess what I am saying is that if you follow AA by the book then you shouldn't drink anymore. It depends on how bad you want it. My guess is that the folks who tried it and then went back out just weren't ready. Because when you are ready to sober up you are willing to try anything. Like they say at the meetings, you become willing to take certain steps.
Having said that, AA isn't the only way to stay sober. It works for me and millions of other folks. I remember hearing that the people that are most likely to stay sober seek counseling from professionals, use a support group and take medicine like SSRI's if their doctor tells them too. But, in order for people to be willing to comply to all of those things they may have to get kicked in the teeth by alcohol many, many times.
Lucky for me I was able to reach out to AA before I had any major losses like jobs, marriages or other relationships. But, when I walked into AA I was finally willing to try what seemed to work for others.
Today my sobriety is made up of several things, some of it is AA, some is church, some is following a psychiatrists orders, some of it is taking meds, some of it is the books I choose to read and the TV I choose to watch.
Lots of people quit and never go back to drinking without the help of AA. But, for many people they need the guidance from other folks that have already been down that road.
If someone does try AA many times and it just doesn't seem to work for them then try something else. Heck, you can try five things at the same time and fine tune your recovery program until it works just right for you...
Having said that, AA isn't the only way to stay sober. It works for me and millions of other folks. I remember hearing that the people that are most likely to stay sober seek counseling from professionals, use a support group and take medicine like SSRI's if their doctor tells them too. But, in order for people to be willing to comply to all of those things they may have to get kicked in the teeth by alcohol many, many times.
Lucky for me I was able to reach out to AA before I had any major losses like jobs, marriages or other relationships. But, when I walked into AA I was finally willing to try what seemed to work for others.
Today my sobriety is made up of several things, some of it is AA, some is church, some is following a psychiatrists orders, some of it is taking meds, some of it is the books I choose to read and the TV I choose to watch.
Lots of people quit and never go back to drinking without the help of AA. But, for many people they need the guidance from other folks that have already been down that road.
If someone does try AA many times and it just doesn't seem to work for them then try something else. Heck, you can try five things at the same time and fine tune your recovery program until it works just right for you...
Member
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 3,095
Originally Posted by AA4life
Because if you really work the program your life becomes all about the recovery process and you have a plan of action that should be used before you pick up that first drink. Like coming clean and picking up the phone if the temptation ever arises.
My life is not all about the recovery process. I have no plan of action for when I'm tempted, because I don't get tempted. The AA program is about freedom from alcohol. Freedom. Not just a better way to manage my not drinking.
Not drinking is just a way of controlling my drinking, and my Step 1 experience showed me that I can't control my drinking. Nowhere in the program of AA (the 12 Steps) are we directed to make a plan of action or call someone before picking up the first drink. Those things can be useful if one hasn't experienced the change necessary, but they are not core to the AA program.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: God's Grace
Posts: 2,464
EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY
"I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.
Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.
Since AA began, Iīve taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover, finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round.
How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living. Well, thatīs not only the neuroticīs problem, itīs the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all of our affairs.
Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. Thatīs the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And itīs a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious, from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream, be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden ‘Mr. Hyde' becomes our main task.
Iīve recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones, folks like you and me, commencing to get results. Last autumn, depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief Iīve had with depressions, it wasnīt a bright prospect.
I kept asking myself "Why canīt the twelve steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer ... "itīs better to comfort than to be comforted." Here was the formula, all right, but why didnīt it work?
Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence, on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasnīt a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.
Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any act of circumstance whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as Francis did. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself to Godīs love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldnīt possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.
For my dependence meant demand, a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.
While those words "absolute dependence" may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me.
This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of Godīs creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current canīt flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.
If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand. Let us, with Godīs help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love: we may then be able to gain emotional sobriety.
Of course, I havenīt offered you a really new idea --- only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own hexesī at depth. Nowadays, my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine."
Source: Bill Wilson - Grapevine January, 1953
"I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.
Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.
Since AA began, Iīve taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover, finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round.
How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living. Well, thatīs not only the neuroticīs problem, itīs the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all of our affairs.
Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. Thatīs the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And itīs a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious, from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream, be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden ‘Mr. Hyde' becomes our main task.
Iīve recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones, folks like you and me, commencing to get results. Last autumn, depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief Iīve had with depressions, it wasnīt a bright prospect.
I kept asking myself "Why canīt the twelve steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer ... "itīs better to comfort than to be comforted." Here was the formula, all right, but why didnīt it work?
Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence, on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasnīt a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.
Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any act of circumstance whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as Francis did. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself to Godīs love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldnīt possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.
For my dependence meant demand, a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.
While those words "absolute dependence" may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me.
This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of Godīs creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current canīt flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.
If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand. Let us, with Godīs help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love: we may then be able to gain emotional sobriety.
Of course, I havenīt offered you a really new idea --- only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own hexesī at depth. Nowadays, my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine."
Source: Bill Wilson - Grapevine January, 1953
Member of SMART Recovery
Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 1,722
Originally Posted by Sapling
These are the one's I'm looking for...If there are a lot of them...Where are they? I haven't heard from one yet...
I was in AA for nine years, left the program in 2007, and still sober ... actually quite a bit more comfortable than during my time in AA.
But the reality is that most people who leave AA and don't relapse won't be found on any recovery website. They are out living their lives.
Ethanol Intolerant
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Cascadia
Posts: 665
Sadly, I don't think I have ever been to a meeting where the topic of "emotional sobriety" is brought up where someone on the 10,000 meetings in 10,000 days plan, doesn't try to blow the conversation up. Even sadder is that they are usually successful. Fear based recovery is rampant in AA. Long term, that is a miserable way to live, and it drives a lot of people away from AA.
It sure is nice to hear from some people in the program that have moved beyond that. Thank you.
It sure is nice to hear from some people in the program that have moved beyond that. Thank you.
Re-Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Posts: 7,583
Sapling,
Good question but perhaps I am unique, just like everyone else here. I credit AA with being a major part of my recovery and I am recovered. That statement alone will make some folks uneasy from what I have seen. Here is another one. I went to AA for three months then stopped and am still sober a year later. I am not sure I would have made it those three months without AA and SR.
I am not religious and do not believe in them, but do believe in a higher power. AA worked for what I needed.
I did not get a sponsor. AA worked for what I needed.
I did not work the steps as prescribed because I pretty much lived them and was getting rid of alcohol any way I could as it became the only thing in my life threatening to make me not be consistent in the other areas of my life. AA worked for what I needed.
I went to only two meetings a week, Sundays and most Tuesdays not 90 in 90. AA worked for what I needed.
I believed that I was powerless over alcohol. However I have found that I do have power over sobriety. That is the flip side of being powerless over alcohol dontcha think? I am under the influence literally with alcohol in my system thus not sober. But I can, when sober, choose never to drink again. Ever. That isn't being powerful over alcohol, I am powerless there. But the point is moot as sober, I have the power to stay sober. AA worked for what I needed.
My group accepts me now as I am, a great bunch of folks. They ask that I stop in every month but I do every two. They are checking that I am OK and still sober. It makes them feel good to know one of their success stories is out there, because they know they had what I needed and I took it when offered.
That is why rule 62 fellow AArs. If you lose sight of the goal, sobriety, with the dogma, then you violated rule 62.
Others can take more from AA than I did. Some may not need them at all, And I call all statistics about alcoholics utter nonsense. I agree that we when recovered don't obsess over it, argue semantics, try to say our way is better, or the ludicrous claim that another way to try to get sober is harmful.
I have been sober one year and almost three months next week. NO poll has approached me. I have not been required to fill out papers, and my docs don't count because they were all shocked when I told then I was drinking 30 units a day! Everybody else was lying to them! So since I have no been approached and will not answer any poll on anything online, or in the mail where does my statistic get recorded? I don't want to hear about credentials and books folks. I simply asked that anybody that bandies about statistics to disprove another recovery method or prove their own tell me how they got my data point recorded. :rotfxko
I would repeat the old axiom to believe nothing that you read and only half of what you see.
For them I would remind them that if someone got sober using or being exposed to one method or another, and it was found they did not do the program exactly right, didn't do steps or hear voices or whatever the requirements are, that they are still sober. Should we send them back to start over?
So what exactly do you want to know? If sobriety is possible after AA? SMART? AVRT? SR? Religious beliefs? I have the answer for me. All and none. It all for me depended on my doing the obvious to me. Deciding to quit for good. So I went to all I found and took what I could use from each and left the rest.
Does that make me better than another? Nope, heretic to some but not better in my book. I am simply sober. And a non drinker. I started out needing SR and AA and Docs and friends for support in my recovery. In my personal life the subject almost never comes up. When it does I have no problem with answering questions in the appropriate setting and only from one needing help, not a busy body and gossip is a cottage industry here in the South. I don't care if they know I am a recovered alkie either. Good news doesn't make for good grist for a gossip mill. Now the stories if I was drinking, hey they travel far and wide. No one but other alcoholics in need are even remotely interested in my recovery. I don't even think about alcohol or have cravings at all anymore. I had a rough ride with Paws, and am still dealing with some permanent damage, sober. Not heroically, I am not dying here.
That is the point. I like to come by and spend time here paying back a little of what SR gave me. I am cured unless I drink again. But I am a non-drinker why would I drink? I just don't like alcohol and no apologies for that, no passion, no back story, just my preference now.
I am sorry for the long response but AA gave me real world face to face help, but more importantly hope. In person. I joined AA and just being able to talk without covering up exactly what I was and had done with others that accepted me for what I will be, not what I had been was simply amazing. But I don't need that anymore, as a result of having it when I did.
Good question but perhaps I am unique, just like everyone else here. I credit AA with being a major part of my recovery and I am recovered. That statement alone will make some folks uneasy from what I have seen. Here is another one. I went to AA for three months then stopped and am still sober a year later. I am not sure I would have made it those three months without AA and SR.
I am not religious and do not believe in them, but do believe in a higher power. AA worked for what I needed.
I did not get a sponsor. AA worked for what I needed.
I did not work the steps as prescribed because I pretty much lived them and was getting rid of alcohol any way I could as it became the only thing in my life threatening to make me not be consistent in the other areas of my life. AA worked for what I needed.
I went to only two meetings a week, Sundays and most Tuesdays not 90 in 90. AA worked for what I needed.
I believed that I was powerless over alcohol. However I have found that I do have power over sobriety. That is the flip side of being powerless over alcohol dontcha think? I am under the influence literally with alcohol in my system thus not sober. But I can, when sober, choose never to drink again. Ever. That isn't being powerful over alcohol, I am powerless there. But the point is moot as sober, I have the power to stay sober. AA worked for what I needed.
My group accepts me now as I am, a great bunch of folks. They ask that I stop in every month but I do every two. They are checking that I am OK and still sober. It makes them feel good to know one of their success stories is out there, because they know they had what I needed and I took it when offered.
That is why rule 62 fellow AArs. If you lose sight of the goal, sobriety, with the dogma, then you violated rule 62.
Others can take more from AA than I did. Some may not need them at all, And I call all statistics about alcoholics utter nonsense. I agree that we when recovered don't obsess over it, argue semantics, try to say our way is better, or the ludicrous claim that another way to try to get sober is harmful.
I have been sober one year and almost three months next week. NO poll has approached me. I have not been required to fill out papers, and my docs don't count because they were all shocked when I told then I was drinking 30 units a day! Everybody else was lying to them! So since I have no been approached and will not answer any poll on anything online, or in the mail where does my statistic get recorded? I don't want to hear about credentials and books folks. I simply asked that anybody that bandies about statistics to disprove another recovery method or prove their own tell me how they got my data point recorded. :rotfxko
I would repeat the old axiom to believe nothing that you read and only half of what you see.
For them I would remind them that if someone got sober using or being exposed to one method or another, and it was found they did not do the program exactly right, didn't do steps or hear voices or whatever the requirements are, that they are still sober. Should we send them back to start over?
So what exactly do you want to know? If sobriety is possible after AA? SMART? AVRT? SR? Religious beliefs? I have the answer for me. All and none. It all for me depended on my doing the obvious to me. Deciding to quit for good. So I went to all I found and took what I could use from each and left the rest.
Does that make me better than another? Nope, heretic to some but not better in my book. I am simply sober. And a non drinker. I started out needing SR and AA and Docs and friends for support in my recovery. In my personal life the subject almost never comes up. When it does I have no problem with answering questions in the appropriate setting and only from one needing help, not a busy body and gossip is a cottage industry here in the South. I don't care if they know I am a recovered alkie either. Good news doesn't make for good grist for a gossip mill. Now the stories if I was drinking, hey they travel far and wide. No one but other alcoholics in need are even remotely interested in my recovery. I don't even think about alcohol or have cravings at all anymore. I had a rough ride with Paws, and am still dealing with some permanent damage, sober. Not heroically, I am not dying here.
That is the point. I like to come by and spend time here paying back a little of what SR gave me. I am cured unless I drink again. But I am a non-drinker why would I drink? I just don't like alcohol and no apologies for that, no passion, no back story, just my preference now.
I am sorry for the long response but AA gave me real world face to face help, but more importantly hope. In person. I joined AA and just being able to talk without covering up exactly what I was and had done with others that accepted me for what I will be, not what I had been was simply amazing. But I don't need that anymore, as a result of having it when I did.
Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 163
Originally Posted by Sapling
My questions are these.....How many of you that are using the AA program have come into AA...Took the twevle steps, went to meetings...Practiced steps 10-12 daily and relapsed...And if you did...How long were you sober and why did you relapse?
The reason I ask...Is because I see so many people that say they have been in and out of AA for years....Relapse after relapse. And I think the main reason this is...Is they simply don't work the steps. They don't take the action that this simple program requires to work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The reason I ask...Is because I see so many people that say they have been in and out of AA for years....Relapse after relapse. And I think the main reason this is...Is they simply don't work the steps. They don't take the action that this simple program requires to work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Between Meetings
Posts: 8,997
Originally Posted by keithj
As kindly as I can say it, No no no. See Robby's post. Working the program is about having that psychic change/spiritual awakening and maintaining that growing relationship with a higher power.
My life is not all about the recovery process. I have no plan of action for when I'm tempted, because I don't get tempted. The AA program is about freedom from alcohol. Freedom. Not just a better way to manage my not drinking.
Not drinking is just a way of controlling my drinking, and my Step 1 experience showed me that I can't control my drinking. Nowhere in the program of AA (the 12 Steps) are we directed to make a plan of action or call someone before picking up the first drink. Those things can be useful if one hasn't experienced the change necessary, but they are not core to the AA program.
My life is not all about the recovery process. I have no plan of action for when I'm tempted, because I don't get tempted. The AA program is about freedom from alcohol. Freedom. Not just a better way to manage my not drinking.
Not drinking is just a way of controlling my drinking, and my Step 1 experience showed me that I can't control my drinking. Nowhere in the program of AA (the 12 Steps) are we directed to make a plan of action or call someone before picking up the first drink. Those things can be useful if one hasn't experienced the change necessary, but they are not core to the AA program.
Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 1,146
Sorry Sapling, I'm not what you're looking for either. Someone who took the steps and drank again, that is.
I've ran into a few that did the steps and backed off and drank again, so they're out there. I sponsored 2 guys who said they had taken the steps earlier but found they couldn't make it past feeling cured at the 7 1/2yr hurdle and drank again. They redid the steps (perhaps with a bit more intensity) and are both over 14 yrs now.
Probably one who can answer your question affimatively will show up eventually, if you leave your question up long enough. It does say 'rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path', after all. That implies that there are bound to be a few, somewhere.
But I wouldn't hold your breath waiting.
I've ran into a few that did the steps and backed off and drank again, so they're out there. I sponsored 2 guys who said they had taken the steps earlier but found they couldn't make it past feeling cured at the 7 1/2yr hurdle and drank again. They redid the steps (perhaps with a bit more intensity) and are both over 14 yrs now.
Probably one who can answer your question affimatively will show up eventually, if you leave your question up long enough. It does say 'rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path', after all. That implies that there are bound to be a few, somewhere.
But I wouldn't hold your breath waiting.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: NC
Posts: 1
I have seen many people able to live happy sober lives after AA but even after 16 years I still need meetings. As others have said, almost every person I have seen relapse and come back stopped going to meetings. I hear in meetings all the time and I agree for myself that the most important step that you must take 100% is step one. As someone else said here they don't get urges... Neither do I really. It is only because every single day I wake up I know and accept my disease and know drinking just isn't an option for me. Life still sucks sometimes, but today I choose to face problems and deal with life on life's terms with a clear mind and have no desire whatsoever to drink.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Between Meetings
Posts: 8,997
Originally Posted by Heelsfan93
I have seen many people able to live happy sober lives after AA but even after 16 years I still need meetings. As others have said, almost every person I have seen relapse and come back stopped going to meetings. I hear in meetings all the time and I agree for myself that the most important step that you must take 100% is step one. As someone else said here they don't get urges... Neither do I really. It is only because every single day I wake up I know and accept my disease and know drinking just isn't an option for me. Life still sucks sometimes, but today I choose to face problems and deal with life on life's terms with a clear mind and have no desire whatsoever to drink.
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