miamifella

I spent over 7 years in 12-step recovery. so I know there is support in working the steps etc. But I think people need support more when they are struggling with their addiction.

People struggling are told to either pray or drink some more till they are ready. To me that is asking people to get through their cravings with only their higher power is the same thing as asking them do on their own.

It is understandable that there is danger of the struggling person triggering others in the program. However, I know that when I left the program and started getting help from people when I was having the most difficulty staying clean and sober---then I was able to do it.

This is not meant as bashing but if we really are powerless over our addiction, then it should be okay to help people when they are sinking. Sure it may be dangerous to help because we are powerless---but the person in trouble is also powerless and cannot do it himself! Leaving him to rely only on prayer seems cruel. And telling them to give up and use/drink seems even crueler.

I do not mean this as a bash, but I have a very different view of this than AA.

Boleo

Sounds to me like you were only attending back-slapper club style meetings. That's why I ended up attending literature based meetings.

wiscsober

Jeez why are you sick of AA? Have you 12th stepped someone? Man you are going to hell because you don't feel different? Come on get real...you are going to going to blame AA?

miamifella

I attended many different meetings in a few different towns over the years. I cannot say that the program differed much in different types of meetings. Not sure what you mean by "back-slapper"--that term makes it sound a lot more fun than any meetings I ever went too!

In literature meetings as in discussion meetings, the program was always based on getting help from a higher power and sharing solutions rather than problems.

My disagreement is that I believe that often it is important to share problems so one can get help from other people (which is contrary to the program's positive focus which was consistent in all groups and meetings I attended over the years).

I understand that the focus is on spiritual help rather than human help, but I know I needed the help of other people--and was glad to get it when I left the program. So I feel bad when people in AA say go out and drink more--rather than saying, hey you need a kind of help that we don't do here--go find it somewhere else.

RobbyRobot

No worries, Kathleen, I'm not calling you stupid. Really okay? Absolutely no need for me to do so in a dumb attempt to get my point across, lol. I'm smart enough to know its okay for people to have different opinions. I have no problem you said what you said - its just not what I say. We have different experiences is all.

The idea I'm getting across is when quitting how drinking is stupid, and since I was trying to quit in my example, I was already "stupid enough" - all stocked up - didn't need more.

I'm glad you're cool with my disagreement. I also hope my explanation has helped clear things up for you, Kathleen.

Gottalife

It seems to me the OP has not yet fully taken the first step, and in my experience, any sobriety so shakily based, is not gonna be that great.

"The delusion that we are like other people. OR PRESENTLY MAY BE" has not been smashed at all. It is still alive and well.

Once finding myself in the same boat, I did what the book suggests and tried some controlled drinking. The result? One smashed delusion! I was then able to attempt the AA way of life without reservation.

I very much doubt I would have been sufficiently motivated without this experience and the knowledge it brought me of my condition.

RobbyRobot

Looking back on my early recovery, and my first experience with AA, I too can give myself 20/20 vision and backfill my story into a nice little package based on my real experiences - and since I never took another drink after my first AA meeting, my story is one of celebration. A few days after my first AA I had my first ever supervised detox starting off my 90 day rehab. I graduated both from my rehab and my AA in October 1981 sober since July 1981 - in those three months I journeyed from drunk into recovery into being recovered everlasting.

I was one of those hardened guys who refused all kinds of previous attempts to help me, and so I refused to openly admit and agree that I needed any such kind of outside help with my drinking. Before my final quit, deep down I knew I was gonna die drunk if I didn't quit but drink I did nonetheless. Some past drinking friends of mine had tried AA and failed to keep sober - one friend and I shared an apartment in the East end. We also worked together in the bicycle shop. He would often talk about his big book with me. The book was total nonsense to me at the time - the whole deal looked like AA wanted its members to believe in delusions of power to stay sober. Forget it. I was a total agnostic when I drank.

Most people who are finally successful with AA also have experience with a return to drinking followed by a return to AA once or twice or more, followed by success. Same with supervised detox and rehab - most guys are not successful with unbroken sobriety from their first try. For me, I'm one of those who went from chronic alcoholism along with severe mental illness right into an everlasting recovered life - unusual by most standards - and my message of recovery is also unusual of course - makes sense that it would be a bit different I suppose. I'm not surprised at all one I come across with a different experience of what most people find strength and community if their story matches up nice and neatly with others in AA.

I was so very messed up when I quit, and my recovery was not expected by most people, including most AA people and most rehab guys too. If you perhaps think my message today is out there and different, you should have heard me in my first weeks of recovery hahaha. Totally crazy. Off the planet. Schizophrenia and alcoholism in the same psyche really results in the most surreal experiences to share let me tell you, both for the sufferer and for anybody else around taking it in- I was a complete write off by most standards because I was also a cripple too (polio from age 1 year - a whole other story) and most people out of pity agreed I had a real justified reason to stay drunk and man could I play the cripple card - talk about using rhetoric hahaha to convince whoever of my justifications - and I as well had a built in example of how God if he loved me wouldn't leave me so messed up. Man could I talk crap!

Many well intentioned people really believed I needed to drink more to discover my true bottom because they supposed I had not had enough because my words against being sober were so obvious - to their ears and mind-set - and how would I ever get sober talking the way I was?

They judged me based on their experience and on what they understood from their readings of the big book. They also judged me wrong as it so obviously has turned out - how ironic I didn't believe them when I went asking for help - my disbelief actually saved me - their considered advice would have surely killed me - drinking more would have twisted me even more and worse - I would have experienced that I was now drinking on their advice and this alone would have likely sealed my doom because I doubt I would have ever asked for their help again - as it was it had already taken me 6 years of failing at quitting to even consider asking anybody for help with quitting. Yeah, if I would have agreed with their expertise, I would have died drunk.

So.

Yeah.

Some drunks have gone down a very dark road and these drunks don't often ask for directions because in their experience, all roads lead to hell anyways, so why pretend things will ever be different in the asking? When these guys get advice to continue their drinking from the same people they are asking for help to quit... well, I don't need to spell it out... none of us are stupid, yeah?

I like AA. I live by its program. I liked rehab. I like having worked in the field. I like SR. I like giving back. I like being helped too. In my 30+ years of success with sober living I've learned that a lot of good people give advice that since it worked for them and their friends, and they read it in some book of authority ie the Big Book and the Bible - they really believe spooning it out as directed will work wonders for those who feed off their words and advice. Trouble is with all that - most of the real hardened drunks fail at staying sober anyways so it "looks like" the advice is correct because, yeah, see, the guy went back to drinking so obviously he or she wasn't ready.

Yeah, well, not so fast. I know my journey into alcoholic hell was darker and deeper then most. I also know my sober living is likely to continue to outlast most alcoholics of my kind - most of my kind return to drinking until they die. Sobering up doesn't happen for everybody - we all know real people die from alcoholism every single day. Not everybody will make it out of their hell.

I really don't care about people shutting up with their advice even if it doesn't work for everybody - better to have people giving what they have to give than the alternative which is everybody just becomes another island in an endless sea.

Yeah, so I don't help others in ways that include suggesting drinking as the best choice to help them quit drinking. I do though understand why others believe it is the best advice they have to give based on their personal failures with their own quit drinking attempts.

Live and let live.

EndGameNYC

Beautiful, Robby. Just beautiful.

RobbyRobot

Thanks, EndGame. Means a lot to hear back on this. Seriously.
Awesome!

Blackcat11

Amazing and powerful story Sir!

Gottalife

My experience exactly Robby. My experiment with controlled drinking was not based on anyone's advice. I didn't discuss it with anyone in AA before hand. I simply was not fully convinced that I was alcoholic. I still clung to the hope that it might all be a mistake, and the cause was something else.

While I remained in that state, the seeds of the next drunk were always with me. Why would I do the things AA asks if I didn't think I needed to because I probably wasn't alcoholic anyway, and I wouldn't be here that long? One of those facts about being beyond human aid is that no one could talk me into wanting to get sober, and many had tried.

The AA Big Book makes that suggestion, I read it and acted on it. It turned out to be good experience. I suppose if I hadn't read it, it wouldn't have made any difference, I was heading for another drink anyway. But the book had told me that, if I was alcoholic, certain things would happen, and they did.

You will recall the story in the book about the guy they visit in hospital who is very grateful fro the information on alcoholism and thinks, now that he knows all this stuff, that he will be fine on his own. They tell him that's fine, but if you are an alcoholic, certain things will happen. Off he goes, ends up drunk, comes back understanding his condition.

With me and with him the relapse was inevitable, but the knowledge imparted by AA beforehand made it possible for a disaster to be turned into a positive event.

When I got sober, of course, I was full of joy at my discovery of AA and spent a great deal of time trying to talk people into staying sober when they said they wanted to drink. Not a single one responded. I'm not God, I don't have the power to motivate people to stop drinking and stay stopped.

I still wouldn't advise an alcoholic to drink, and I have never heard anyone told they haven't drunk enough. The thing is AA is about sharing experience, not advice. My experience seems to tally quite closely with the Big Book where it is stated:

"-"What do I have to do?" It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done."

I try not to tell others what they should do. I will point out suggestions in the book, or I will share what I have done. My experience.

RobbyRobot

Yeah. The Right Stuff. Awesome!
Thanks, Mike.

EndGameNYC

"Self knowledge did not save us."

fini

oops

fini

"Self knowledge did not save us."


Endgame....for me, i'm not sure what has "saved" me so far.
for sure, there's this: in my gazillion tries, i knew i had a problem. that was for sure. my repeated attempted solution was to try harder for control.
okay, we know how that worked out

one morning, sitting around with the usual hangovery-type ill feel;ing, it hit me: i am a drunk!

wow. whoa!
okay. whole different ball game.
it was that very self-knowledge that stopped me, stopped the obsession, stopped any desire to drink, stopped any considering of it.

now it's true that i added some actions to that, some daily do's, some ongoing stuff...but still, i can't say what "saved" me other than the self-knowledge of myself as a drunk, and what that meant/means for me. it wasn't and isn't an intellectual knowledge. there is no doubt there, no questioning. no ambivalence.


that is my own experience, and if it doesn't fit with your quote...so be it

BoxinRotz

He's still having difficulties due to his accident that occurred on July 3rd of this year. He's caused several brain bleeds post accident due to him drinking. He's tweaked his personality due to the accident/ head injuries but it could have been so much worse. Not everybody gets to walk away from a motorcycle accident like he did. Reality is that God could have taken him that day but He didn't, for whatever reason, we shall wait n see. Thank you for asking. I wish you all, including my husband, that you find peace, happiness and sobriety in your precious lives.

EndGameNYC

Whatever works.

The quote in my comment is from the AA Big Book, and has to do with the story from the book that Gottalife described in his comment. I would never tell anyone what exactly it was that got them sober or allowed them to heal.

As for my own experience, I would call the beginning of my healing "acceptance" and a leap of faith that there was a better way for me, rather than self knowledge. I knew full well that I'm an alcoholic throughout my three-year relapse. Knowing that didn't change a thing for me.

zane949

Wow thanks for all the replies...I am new here and was out of the country for a while..I am still sober..but I feel like my mind is setting me up for a relapse, I keep trying to tell myself it would be ok to drink again, I have talked to my sponsor who has given me permission to try some controlled drinking. Just bored I guess that's why I want to drink, I feel like some people talk about in AA the relapse before the relapse..like I'm already relapsed in my head ya know...anyway I know I'm not going to take a drink today and I appreciate all the support!

RobbyRobot

Sure enough, addictive enslaved thinking always greenlights a return to drinking, and falsely promises along with such return plenty of satisfaction. Drinking becomes weirdly enough both problem and solution. This accounts for the sense of relapsing in your head - its not difficult to imagine your present dilemma.

I'm clearly not of the school who profess addictive thinking can be controlled or otherwise manipulated into anything useful. Thinking with an alcoholic mind has always proved to me to be about as useful as spitting into the wind, you know?

I suggest forget about it. Justifying that since your thinking is already in relapse land, that it then makes sense to follow thru and get on with the dirty deed is just nonsense to me. When people start saying drinking is an option on the table, its time to find a better table with different players to play out your hand no matter what cards you may be holding.

We can make better choices. Choosing to "control" addictive drinking is less a choice made and more a failure to be truthful about an impossible situation of attempting to take up a practice that more drinking will eventually bring about a stop to drinking. Too many guys die stupidly proving what has already been proven: drinking doesn't stop drinking.

Good to have you posting, Zane.

Dee74

No offense, that's kinda like someone giving me permission to go slam my junk in the car door.

Permissions one thing, but common sense should tell you that it's not really the best idea?

D