RufusACanal

"You are not to sit with a long face in places where there is drinking, sighing about the good old days. If it is a happy occasion, try to increase the pleasure of those there; if a business occasion, go and attend to your business enthusiastically. If you are with a person who wants to eat in a bar, by all means go along. Let your friends know they are not to change their habits on your account. At a proper time and place explain to all your friends why alcohol disagrees with you. If you do this thoroughly, no decent person will ask you to drink. While you were drinking, you were withdrawing from life little by little. Now you are getting back into the life of this world. Don't start to withdraw from life again just because your friends drink liquor."

Tazman53

One of the wonders of taking the steps and applying them to my daily life, I go where I wish, when I wish and am able to have a good time.... of course I do not go to a bar with a friend just to watch him get drunk, but if there is an event or occasion that I have a reason to attend I go without hesitation.

If I am going to vicarously enjoy the old life through friends and aquaintances then I need to look at my motives of why I "need" to go.

bob_sapp

This is what I don't understand. Bars are where all the people are, but all my drinking friends have abandoned me because I chose sobriety. AA people don't want to go to bars, so should I start going to bars by myself to meet normal people and be part of society?

Taking5

You can meet "normal" people everywhere, and a bar has more than its share of abnormal people. Nor are "all" the people there. Look elsewhere.

A great quote I heard in a meeting once was "we pray every day 'lead us not unto temptation'. It doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to willingly walk right into it".

Music

The Big Book has the answers you're looking for Bob. I found that if I want to stay sober, there's nothing I can't do and no place I can't go... if I'm spiritually fit and have a good reason to be there. I'd say "work" is as good a reason as any.

RufusACanal

"Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we mustn't go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn't think or be reminded about alcohol at all. Experience proves this is nonsense.

We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind: there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband to distant places on the theory he would escape the alcohol problem.

Any scheme of combatting alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself, he may succeed for a time, but will wind up with a bigger explosion than ever. Our wives and we have tried these methods. These foolish attempts to do the impossible have always failed.

So our rule is not to avoid a place where there is drinking, if we have a legitimate reason for being there. That includes bars, nightclubs, dances, receptions, weddings, even plain ordinary whoopee parties. To a person who has had experience with an alcoholic, this may seem like tempting Providence, but it isn't.

You will note that we made an important qualification. Therefore, ask yourself on each occasion, "Have I any legitimate social, business, or personal reason for going to this place? Am I going to be helpful to anyone there? Could I be more useful or helpful by being somewhere else?" If you answer these questions satisfactorily, you need have no apprehension. You may go or stay away, whatever seems best. But be sure you are on solid spiritual ground before you start and that your motive in going is thoroughly good. Do not think of what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can bring to it. But if you are spiritually shaky, you had better work with another alcoholic instead!"

If you read the Book, you will find the answers.

jimhere

In my early days of sobriety I met this woman in AA and moved in with her. That was good for about two weeks and then it was same old same old. I was a classic case of untreated alcoholism trying real hard to get my life back together by looking good on the outside. She & I fought a lot, so I started using that as an excuse to hang out in my old haunts drinking soda, playing pool, and trying to pick up women. You can imagine my suprise when I found out I couldn't pull off on purpose what I used to do by mistake-LOL! It is only by God's grace that I didn't get drunk during that period.

I'm a free man now and I can go anywhere. My book tells me to go and live and play and laugh and enjoy life. I like live music, especially the blues. And the best place I know of to hear good, down and dirty live blues is a tavern here in town down near the waterfront. It's actually kind of a dive, but I don't fear going there. In fact, I feel right at home there -LOL! Sometimes I go alone. other times with friends. My girlfriend is non-alcoholic, a "normal" drinker, if you will. Ocassionally she'll go along but doesn't like the bar scene.

I myself don't like the term normal. I prefer alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Normal is like "Us and them," or what I hear in meetings as "Earth people and then there is us." I even hear the term "normie" used almost derisivley. I don't know about you all, but I spent most of my life being and feeling apart from. Why use what gave me life and saved my life to seperate me from life? Some other spiritual literature I've read talks of "Being in the world, but not of the world," And of being not conformed to the world, but being renewed by a transforming of my mind. I have a new mind and I can take it anywhere. From what I've seen of so-called "normal," I don't know if I want that, but I'm not "normal" and never will be. But I can live "Out there with Them" and they don't know any different.

I often hear this phrase from the book misquoted, the one in the 11th Step evening review that asks me what I've put into the stream of life. I hear people say that now they "Are in the mainstream of life." Is there a main stream and a minor stream? Like I divide my life into little compartments-AA over here, work over here, family over here, etc.? It says "The stream of life." In either in or I am not, and any spiritual life that doesn't include the whole of life really isn't a spiritual life.
Jim

Big Book references from Alcoholics Anonymous, First Edition

lizw

I went through a phase at 3/4 years sober when a group of us AA girls spent a lot of time going and dancing in clubs. It was all rather innocent and quite a bit of fun. None of us were panting at the mouth to drink etc.... but I didn't go into bar (again) untill I was about 2 years sober when I first joined AA. I was too afraid people would hold me down and tip alcohol down my throat or something. Dumb? I know, but that is how I felt.

I do also believe the expression, if you sit in the barber chair long enough, you'll get a hair cut.

At one of the meetings I used to go to, a longtimer used to say it was his disease that told him everyone went to bars drinking. These days he reckons 'non alcoholic' folks stay home and watch TV, spend time with their family and/or get a hobby.