Personal Responsibility
 

So in your opinion where does it begin especially if you believe this is a "disease"? At what point do we stop being understanding and put the proverbial foot in someones ass? I know that I drank hard for 25 years. Sometimes I would stop for maybe a week then when the hangover was gone, I felt good....I would give in....BAM off to the races again!!
It is a sneaky little ******* and if quitting were easy nobody would drink themselves to death, I get that. Having said that nobody poured it down my throat. I'm not gonna call myself vile names or put myself beneath anybody. I have just come to the point of accepting responsibility for my drinking. Once I did that I was able to put it down.

For how long?

I only had to do two things to stop for good....And you can do that too...

1. I had to listen to things I didn't want to hear...
2. I had to do things I didn't want to do.....

It was that easy...

Two years in June. I still get tempted but it's not as often as it use to be. I agree a lifestyle change is also in order. I have to be busy pretty much from dawn to dusk.

The time for personal responsibility came when I was told, and finally realized that after coming to AA and seeing people who were sober that I had a choice. I could stay with AA or go back out and dig my hole deeper. The key word here is CHOICE!! People who don't want to take responsibility continue to blame alcohol or being an alcoholic for continueing to slip and slide in and out of AA. That's when alcohol and/or the disease become a copout.:headbange

Congrats and I agree, staying busy and improving my skills has been a great help.

I see my alcoholism as a disorder rather than a disease, just like my anxiety issues. There is no doctor that can cure it for me, I have to do it for myself.
(I chose the help of a HP, but I alone truly keep myself sober as I go through my days.)

Yea I think that even if you consider it a disease there is still choice. If you are diagnosed with diabetes, you can follow your doctors orders or not follow them. If you keep eating sugar and sitting on your ass then whose fault is it when the **** hits the fan?

As I usually say, it's kind of a complicated issue. However we are entirely responsible for our actions. And it's not just that other people have a right to hold us responsible. Rather, others ought to hold us responsible. For that is what we are.

The thing is, the problem runs much deeper than just personal responsibility. Ordinarily, with such issues it is sufficient to threaten a variety of concrete consequences to enforce tending to one's responsibilities. So for instance we have social conventions in place to shun persons who practice malicious deception, and usually this is sufficient to keep people from maliciously deceiving each other. But such concrete consequences tend not to have the same motivational impact on alcoholics.

What this means is that friends and family, and anyone else who happens to be interested in breaking an alcoholic out of his compulsion trap, needs to think carefully about how to motivate them. Frankly, I don't know that there is any generally successful method for doing this. Perhaps none such exists.

Additionally, alcoholics genuinely flip-flop from moment to moment about their desire to stop drinking, which is not typically true of those who habitually commit secular "sins" such as lying, cheating, etc. So for example, a person who makes his living as a conartist probably doesn't feel much remorse for the harm he inflicts on other people. An alcoholic, in contrast, though he has bouts of selfishness, may genuinely regret his behavior after the fact.

Since as a society we want to reward genuine remorse, this means the remorseful alcoholic ought to be viewed at least slightly less badly than the nonremorseful conartist. But notice that this does not involve giving him a pass on responsibility. On the contrary, we still hold the alcoholic personally responsible. We simply take remorse into account when regarding him.

So anyway, there are some rough-and-ready thoughts on how responsibility relates to alcoholics.

Good for you...Big Birthday coming up...1 year for me July first...Looking forward to both of them...

Well yes and no. We talk a lot about "bottoms" where the consequences become so great an alcoholic has to take action so consequences do motivate many. Then again many drunks drink themselves into an unmarked, early grave.

That's funny..This was our topic in this morning's meeting...We do a big breakfast after it the first sunday of each month...One of our readings today was "There is a Solution"...Which we don't read all the time...And a friend brought up this line..

we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help.

Another long timer friend...28 years...He said... this a gift we've been given..I don't know why some people keep it...And some give it back...But if you got it...You better hang onto it....I liked that...

quote from BB first edition.

I was responsible in so many ways, but when it came to alcohol, I couldn't do this alone. I tried so many times. For me, I needed something different and I found this in the steps of AA and with support from those who have been there, in person, here, and on other sites. Today, I am responsible for choosing not to pick up that first drink. I wasn't able to do this by myself. For me, it was more than just accepting personal responsibility, although today I am doing what I need to stay stopped, including cleaning up my past. :)

I'm not responsible for being alcoholic. I truly believe, based upon my very first encounters with alcohol (and any other mind/mood altering substance) that I was born with an abnormal reaction to it. I am, however, responsible for anything I do under the influence, and, most definitely, I'm responsible for my recovery. I can't recover alone, but no one else can make me willing. Not even my HP.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

He sure can lend a hand..

Agreed. However, you know that one about the drowning man who gets the weather report, the boat, the helicopter, and then finally drowns, asking God when he gets to heaven, "Why did you let me drown?"

Same kind of thing. That whole free will thing kept me from seeing the help until I was ready to accept it.

Peace & Love,
Sugah