RobbyRobot

Yeah. Well, with respect, you clearly don't understand how a higher power works beyond your own feelings. Your stated claims are more about yourself then about whatever else. Taking your words of experience to heart would be a serious sheep like submission in its own right, yeah? Your feelings of disgust are your own to deal with, and how you feel about whatever is hardly important enough to be taken seriously as a surety that your personal understanding of a higher power is cogent, by me anyways.

Fly N Buy

The THING about AA is it helps us deal with.....

Some misery managed to make a comeback. Depression, self doubt, self loathing, full realization of lack of desireable social traits or skills, awareness of age and waste of a life, hopelessly stuck in the past pondering what ifs. A sober life can be pretty much crap if you are damaged. You don't cope, you endure. Maybe things will be different when i get back to the real world. Have to be totally focused and prepared to do battle.

mfanch

I have a higher power called NOT ME. I'm an atheist and AA works just fine for me if I do the work.

The hard part is tamping down that ego.

thisisme

bh28,
I hate him to.
In the end your only hurting you and yours.
Don't blame inaction on method.

I hope you find sobriety and it takes you.

Carbonized

double post

Carbonized

Try again. I doubt that i can numb myself enough to toe the party line without breaking down in laughter or scorn. Think about this, the guy who took me to AA to where i was last is an active crackhead, pothead, and smoker of spice yet all is fine as long as he doesn't partake of alcohol.

desypete

oh dear so i take it you dont think aa can work for you then ?

if all you heard in an aa room is all about a higher power then i wouldn't be surprised you wouldn't get anything from aa

did people not talk about what there drinking did to them ?
did they talk about how it made them feel ?
did they talk about the depths it took them to ?

i got identification from aa on my first meeting, i couldn't ignore what the other aa members told me when they talked about themselves and what had happend to them etc
as it was like they were talking about me

sure i would hear things being mentioned about a god or a hp from people but it was the members who talked about themselves and what the drinking had done to them that i understood at that time
i wanted to know more from those guys i wanted to know how on earth they could be like me and yet there sober

i had to keep on coming back to aa to find out more and more as i was really so thick i couldnt understand it all after just a meeting or 2

in fact after 10 years around and many thousands of meetings later i am still trying to understand it all
but in the mean time i an not drinking so thats got to be a good thing in my eyes
as a bonus my kids have peace in there lives and i have it to they dont have to worry if dad is coming home drunk tonight or not
in fact my kids used to tell me when i needed an aa meeting lol they just came to accept that what ever aa is or is not the one thing is it keeps there dad sober were as nothing else could

please dont think i am a sheep as i am not i dont belive in a god and i certainly dont qoute books or lines out like a parrot
i am just living sober daily and i let people help me today were as before i thought i could do it on my own
i went 15 years on my own at one time but i soon crashed down again so i learend a lesson for me
that even being sober for 15 years without help i will forget just how bad i was and in the end i will have to pick up again

i have heared it all the time around aa how people have stayed sober for long periods but once the cut out the meetings and there recovery well it doesnt take them to long before there back to old habbits

i dare say i could cut out aa of my life today should i wish to and remind sober for some time
but my sober life would change, i would go back to being more and more selfish and right about everything all the time
i would get to be unlivable again
then feel fed up and low and sad and feeling sorry for myself

so for me i will just pop along to my local meeting give up an hour of my time and have the rest of the day for myself unless of course someone needs a bit of help and i will share some of my day helping them

sorry about the long post : )
i am trying to work on me to try not to make such long speaches but once i open my mouth i never know when to shut up : )

i will resist the temptation to say barr
have a good day my friend

RobbyRobot

In thinking about it, how is it you didn't realize who was taking you for a ride? When you keep company with whomever, do you not make some judgment calls? Your example of such a guy taking you to a meeting speaks for itself.

You couldn't see how lost the guy was?

soberlicious

So...great debate, carbonized. Interesting banter aside, what is your plan for ending your addiction?

anattaboy

bada-bing!

Carbonized

Been sober over a year now. Tapered, quit, and went through withdrawal while homeless, jobless and monyless with not one single bit of outside assistance other than this website and even then, i didn't post for months as i readjusted to a new condition.

Needless to say, you can imagine my opinion of anyone who relapses after being in comfortable rehabs or has doctors care or other such assistance or uses "higher power" type nonsense, and still can't stay off the booze. I'll bet anyone here to see which one of us can get bombed out falling down drunk and NOT fall off the wagon or feel any guilt about it. I deliberately got drunk after about my fifth or sixth month after quitting to test myself and passed with flying colors.

Dealt with it on my own, not with a crutch.

Coldfusion

My father lost a leg in the Korean War, and he had no objection to using crutches.

Aellyce

Hey guys I have not read all the posts in details, just something I thought to share since it's part of my day right now, and I know it's part of my "greater" interests.

I've been interested in the many facets of human nature as long as I can remember. Many different manifestations. As some specific aspects (out of the many), I have been interested in intimate relationships, and politics. How, and what, do these two areas of interest can have in common, we might ask?

In my case, I would say: an inspiration to get out of the self, beyond the self, discover connections, and perhaps potential ways of improving our lives. This is the idealistic side of it. But I often find that the reality can also be quite uplifting even if any present state looks rather gloomy

desypete

how on earth did you turn your life around from having nothing ? and in such a short space of time without any help ?

how did you wash your clothes ? or brush your teeth ?

forgive me but i simply dont belive anyone out there on the streets can quit drink and get there life back on track as you claim

i work with the tramps out in the streets and they have nothing it would take them years to even get a real sober brain let alone get a job and home and have enough money for a computer with internet connection

so forgive me for having this little bit of a doubt about your claims

if there true then you should right a book about it and let us all know just how you did it

you clearly dont need to be on an online recovery site if you can do this on your own that much is for sure

PaperDolls

Congratulations?

Carbonized

I was on the streets so many times it's not funny. I've not totalled it up for some time but it was about 5 years the last time i thought about it. The last stretch was from roughly September 2012 to April 2014. The thing about being homeless is you have plenty of time to think, ponder, and plan. it's pretty much the same as if you were in prison, the difference being that convicts don't have to worry about three hots and a cot. Basically, i realized that life had passed me by and that was it. I have one last chance to make everything come out all right but there was no possible way to even begin to make a go of it while being a very active alcoholic. I had flirted with going cold turkey before so this time i studied every book in the local public library on alcoholism and withdrawal as well as various other forms of knowledge to sharpen the mental edge so as to be able to deal with what was to come.

Slowly i tapered down over the period of a month until i had one last beer the misery was on. How did i deal with it? Just like every other day, except i wasn't drinking. Where i was camped we had to get up and out early each day before the police came so laying in was not a prospect. Head to the local shelters to shower and clean whatever you can up if they were operational that morning then killing time till the library opens up and get a seat. Had a cheap old laptop from when i had a decent (but shortlived) job so get online and check things out quickly then begin prepping for the big moves that would come after sobriety comes about.

On the streets, everyone around me had one form of hustle or another. Prior to withdrawal i made little scores here and there doing temp work and helping guys who weren't computer savvy with online things such as filling out welfare applications, pensions, social security, etc as well as being the go to guy on skid row for finding out what was happening in job markets across the country for seasonal labor and such. After cutting out the drinking, temp work was impossible so i relied on the white collar hustle to keep afloat.

Just because i was a drunk didn't mean i was an idiot. BTW, i also knew a few guys that were long time homeless and had bonafide PHDs.

As time went on things cleared up physically. Mentally was a bit of a different thing. The crap life on the streets was seriously depressing but i felt rather upbeat about being sober and knowing that i would have a tax return to get mobile again was rather exciting. i put out various feelers and was within a week of heading up to the Dakotas to look for work when i was contacted by by a former supervisor who heard i was straight and ready to roll. Bought some thrift store clothes to replace what i had and jumped on a greyhound bus.

Been working crazy hours and thinking about the next moves almost non stop since i got here. Next year is going to be the moment. My tour here is up in a couple of weeks then it's back to the world and time to put into action what i spent years pondering,calculating, practicing and testing the waters.

Do or die.

SoberLife2014

Well, different strokes for different folks. Whatever works for you. AA didn't work for me, but I don't blame AA. I still got some good stuff out of it, and it helps some people. It has some rigid guidelines but that works for some people and that's fine. I've also found that it's based on some cognitive behavioral psychology so if you want to dog the HP but still dig the science behind it then it's still a good program. I guess in a way you'd be saying the psychology of it would be your HP... anyway, the bottom line is it works if you want it to work. If you don't want to work it then find something else. Whatever floats your boat.

GracieLou

This!

If you don't like your recovery program then by all means try another but I would suggest which ever one you try that you at least give it some time. Stay sober and try the same program for 30 days.

I see so many try a program for a week and say it does not work. No recovery program is a miracle cure.

I got news for you, you are going to have to change something! Nothing changes, if nothing changes.

If you are not willing to change, even just a little, then nothing is going to work!

Hawks

Well its nothing I would not say about myself.

Dumb enough to drink like a pig 30 years out of 42.

Smart enough to finally ask for help with my drinking.

Cest la vie.

Offence taken?

Take what you want and leave the rest.

Carlotta

Just pray that homelessness does not happen to you.