What are some of your favorite "recovery" cliche's?
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Join Date: Apr 2006
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Don't get me wrong, I like most of the cliches' and slogans and I have found that there is deep meaning behind them. But I only realize that in hindsight after I'd taken the steps.
I recently posted on another thread about the shape I was in at six months away from my last drink. I had been to four treatment centers and had sat in hundreds of AA meetings and knew just enough to be dangerous to myself and others. I had a head full of crap. I was also dying of untreated alcoholism, feeling left out of a fellowship that I should feel like I belong in. And I was confused as hell.
People would say stuff like "Next time you want to drink, just think the drink through," which made no sense because sometimes I didn't think at all and found myself drunk, wondering how the hell that happened. "Don't quit before the miracle happens." That's like dangling a carrot in front of a horse, always pursuing something down the road. Part of my problem was not being able to live in the here and now because at that time the past was eating my lunch, the future didn't look so good, and the present reality was unbearable.
I would hear people talk about turning it over and wonder "How do you do that?" Later on, my sponsor would answer that question by asking "Can you count four through twelve?" I would rage and vent in meetings. People would tell me to read page 449. If one more well meaning person had said to me "This too shall pass," I was going to grab them by the throat, because it wasn't passing. Untreated alcoholism doesn't pass, it only gets worse, eventually "passing" into increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior culminating in either active alcoholism or suicide.
What I didn't know then was that I needed a real answer, not page 449 or vague cliches' thrown around by people who don't have an answer. I hear people years away from a drink say stuff like "I know it works, but I don't know how it works." It is my responsibility to know how it works. In fact I am rather useless in AA if I don't know it works.
Thank God I met some men in AA who knew how it works. They did not give me vague cliches. They had a real answer and their lives demonstrated it. They talked with conviction and authority. They knew what they were talking about. They told me that they could show me precisely how they had recovered from alcoholism and that they could show me a way to live that would make sense to me. They had a real answer.
Jim
I recently posted on another thread about the shape I was in at six months away from my last drink. I had been to four treatment centers and had sat in hundreds of AA meetings and knew just enough to be dangerous to myself and others. I had a head full of crap. I was also dying of untreated alcoholism, feeling left out of a fellowship that I should feel like I belong in. And I was confused as hell.
People would say stuff like "Next time you want to drink, just think the drink through," which made no sense because sometimes I didn't think at all and found myself drunk, wondering how the hell that happened. "Don't quit before the miracle happens." That's like dangling a carrot in front of a horse, always pursuing something down the road. Part of my problem was not being able to live in the here and now because at that time the past was eating my lunch, the future didn't look so good, and the present reality was unbearable.
I would hear people talk about turning it over and wonder "How do you do that?" Later on, my sponsor would answer that question by asking "Can you count four through twelve?" I would rage and vent in meetings. People would tell me to read page 449. If one more well meaning person had said to me "This too shall pass," I was going to grab them by the throat, because it wasn't passing. Untreated alcoholism doesn't pass, it only gets worse, eventually "passing" into increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior culminating in either active alcoholism or suicide.
What I didn't know then was that I needed a real answer, not page 449 or vague cliches' thrown around by people who don't have an answer. I hear people years away from a drink say stuff like "I know it works, but I don't know how it works." It is my responsibility to know how it works. In fact I am rather useless in AA if I don't know it works.
Thank God I met some men in AA who knew how it works. They did not give me vague cliches. They had a real answer and their lives demonstrated it. They talked with conviction and authority. They knew what they were talking about. They told me that they could show me precisely how they had recovered from alcoholism and that they could show me a way to live that would make sense to me. They had a real answer.
Jim
Living in sobriety
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 3,870
Thank God I met some men in AA who knew how it works. They did not give me vague cliches. They had a real answer and their lives demonstrated it. They talked with conviction and authority. They knew what they were talking about. They told me that they could show me precisely how they had recovered from alcoholism and that they could show me a way to live that would make sense to me. They had a real answer.
Yes this was my experience too jim......................but I still find slogans useful, slogans like ......"keep it simple"
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Originally Posted by ex D-Boy 
if you have one foot on tomorrow and one foot on yesterday you put yourself in a perfect position to pi.ss on today.
lol, god i love that one, never gets old
lol, god i love that one, never gets old
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Thread Starter
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Originally Posted by SummerSkye
My favourite is "Alcohol doesn't drown your sorrows, it just teaches them to swim!"
Life is Grand
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Michigan
Posts: 2,039
When the pain of your situation gets worse than your fear of change..you will change.
Guilt Kills
God judges us by what we do, NOT by what others say.
Let us love you, until you can love yourself...
so many....LOL, when I first came to AA, I swore that I was going to kill the next person who told me another cheesy cliche'...now I am that person....sheesh!
Guilt Kills
God judges us by what we do, NOT by what others say.
Let us love you, until you can love yourself...
so many....LOL, when I first came to AA, I swore that I was going to kill the next person who told me another cheesy cliche'...now I am that person....sheesh!
The Long Climb
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 120
In response to "How are you?" a old timer at an AA meeting said to me "I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be anywhere." I like that.
One I can't stand is "The further you are from your last drink, the closer you are to your next." IMO that implies that everyone will relapse repeatedly. I don't like that.
One I can't stand is "The further you are from your last drink, the closer you are to your next." IMO that implies that everyone will relapse repeatedly. I don't like that.
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Pugetopolis
Posts: 2,384
Fake it 'till you can't make it
Originally Posted by RayRayRay
In response to "How are you?" a old timer at an AA meeting said to me "I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be anywhere." I like that.
One I can't stand is "The further you are from your last drink, the closer you are to your next." IMO that implies that everyone will relapse repeatedly. I don't like that.
One I can't stand is "The further you are from your last drink, the closer you are to your next." IMO that implies that everyone will relapse repeatedly. I don't like that.
The closer to your next drink saying is just more of the self-defeating crap that gets slung around in AA. Most of it by the meeting makers make crowd that stay away from that first drink by hiding out at the Alano Club playing cards and live in fear of what's out in the parking lot doing pushups.
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