Sharing Old War Stories...bad?
 

Ive only got 25 days, but Ive gotten into routine of a meeting every night & met some good sober buddies. It almost naturally happens that old drunken stories come up...now, I figure old timers with years in can share stories no problem (and they seem to like to, haha). But with newbies, like myself, what is your opinion on sharing old war stories?

I ask because an AA buddy and I got to laughing about old drunk college stories & gotta admit it made me feel a little twitch. Not anything big, but just made me miss college & the parties. I plan to share this my Sponsor, but curious as to SRs take...

I'm not a big fan - I like to look forward not back - but others find these stories can be useful as cautionary tales.

If you find you're getting twitchy tho, it's probably best not to engage, maybe at least until you feel more secure in your recovery?

D

Hey Shane...How's it going bud?...What's the old saying they have?...It's OK to look at your past...Just don't stare at it....I hate it in meetings...I like to talk about and hear about getting better...But when I get together with AA friends...We can be watching a game or anything and they do come up...That's all we ever did! I look back at my past...I don't care what it was...Alcohol was involved some way...Don't worry about the little twitches...thoughts...They won't hurt you...ACTING on them will hurt you....They go with time.....When I was real early in...I'd get a little twitch and I'd say the serenity prayer to myself..That took it away pretty good. Glad to see you are still doing well. Keep trudging.

I think I shouldnt be telling college stories involving campus police, and smiling as I do it. I am doing everything I can to stay positive and stay on track, but yet I still find reasons to be down on myself. My mind just goes real negative at times...cant help it. I still very uneven, probably somewhat due to the insomnia...that or this is me & doc was right about the Zoloft (I still havent filled Rx yet).

I'm with Sapling, I like meetings that are focused on the solution much more than I'd like to hear a bunch of drunkalogues. Thats why my favorite meetings are book study or step study meetings.

Some day those stories might save someone's life.....You're doing great Shane...Give yourself some credit now and then....Be grateful you're not drinking....That's very important.

Oh yeah Shane... have I got some war stories for you... ok, maybe I wont share ;-).

I find that I can get myself in check pretty quickly when I think of some of the negative impacts that alcohol has had in my life... now there is some real war stories.

Watch out for those ANT's (Automatic Negative Thoughts) Shane... they bite a lot harder than you think. You are doing some great work & from what I have read you are a wonderful person.

Keep it up my friend.

Cheers ~ NB

I don't think anything good comes from reliving the past.

How about some some guy that walks in into his first AA meeting...Scared sh!tless and thinks nobody in the world has done what he has done...And a guy shares his past with him and this guy doesn't feel so bad...So alone...Like my sponsor did with me.

I've no interest in changing anyone's mind about the value of sharing experience and the insights and strength we can take from one another, but I saw a great example of that today in another thread.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...-recovery.html

TimeInaBottle could have kept silent or shared his experience vaguely, not wanting to upset the 'close the door on the past' crowd but instead laid the facts of his experience out honestly and without elaboration or justifications, so that Noro could take what lessons he might from someone who has lived through something similar.

A very generous and caring thing to do, as opposed to being uncaring, paranoid and allowing self-delusion and selfishness to determine our actions...staying closed off and sick, in other words.

I found those types of shares very counterproductive and triggering. Many meetings seemed to disintegrate into that mode regularly and it helped to find meetings that focused on the steps and literature rather than how bad we used to be and how bad we could be if we relapsed. Kept my mind in the bad place.

I always had my Basic Text with me at meetings, and when people would go there (and some people always went there) I would tune it out and read my text or say my prayers until they were done.

one thing I like about this site is that I can ignore and leave any post or thread that is triggering to me. Pills were a huge bugaboo for me, and if I go to the substance abuse section and someone is rattling off a list of what they used, how much, how often and how they got it into their bodies, I simply don't read it. Can't go there.

I have found speaker meetings and speaker tapes to be counterproductive for me because so many that I've listened to start off with a long and detailed story of the person's sordid and sad past. It's like addict porn for me. I listen with grisly attention and then feel icky and crazy for a long time afterward, my mind on everything dark instead of everything light.

I think there's a difference between sharing our experience (which we do here all the time) and war stories tho which, to me, can often have a whiff of almost a perverse celebration to them.

Like I said, I see all the time here that others seem to get something out of other peoples misadventures, but generally war stories leave me cold

D

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it....

As a newcomer I didn't spend much energy on the past but it certainly came up in the form of funny stories and also terrible guilt. I tried to keep my focus on the day though, and still do. but after doing the steps all this past stuff became nothing more than stories. it lost its power over me because I changed my patterns and made amends. I can freely joke about or retell in a cautionary manner with no emotional charge. they're just stories now. I don't share that stuff in meetings though unless its tied to a specific solution or step that I'm trying to convey.

I was going to write out a big response to this, but Dee seems to have summed up my thoughts on this perfectly. There is a big difference between cautionary tales and 'war stories', where people laugh their heads off at obscene drunken escapades that one should hope are anything but funny with a clear, sober mind.

After meeting chat, yes, in a meeting, it depends on the situation. If it's followed up with how the steps are working, great. ON a one-to-one basis, after the meeting, especially if it's in relation to a newcomer....selling that hopelessness and all.

Thanks for the replies.

I guess I knew when we were talking it was not a positive discussion to be having, almost laughing about old drunk stories with a fellow AA buddy. Good to hear my intuition was spot on...Thanks.

It depends, I find some stories inspirational, but I don't enjoy glorification of old drinking days. I had some breakthrough moments in sobriety when somebody hit upon something in their past that I could also relate to... there were many things I thought I was unique in feeling/thinking/experiencing. Soon found in meetings that wasn't the case.

Im looking forward to the NEW war stories of how Im finding out how to face the monsters that led to retreat from being the person I truly want to be in the first place.

New war stories of fighting fear, shame, boredom and anger with the force of wanting to be in control of my life and using vulnerability to become strong.

Looking forward to talking about how crazy sober I was when I took the car out and used the bathroom instead of someones flowerbed.
Or how well I slept after dancing sober all night- and then woke up insanely early and felt grateful for the world as I watched the sunrise.

War is heaven.

A story here and there, to help another alcoholic to identify... has it's place. If done properly, it's a kind of service. You can't tell me whether I am alcoholic... but if I listen to your story, maybe it will me on my journey.

There's no law that they can't be funny, groan inducing anecdotes... but follow it all the way through... what happened, what is it like now?

Funny.... the stories I should tell are the ones I don't want to.

I have another twist on it: sometimes I like to hear the drunkalogues because I occasionally wonder if some people are really alcoholics in some AA meetings. A girl came in to one of my groups and never mentioned any problems with alcohol, mostly she talked about personal and psyche problems. Then depression, then she started taking anti depressants. Then it was Men problems. Last time I saw her she scolded me for not doing my nails better and wanted to give me a sugarless cake recipe. When it gets to that point, yeah, I really want to hear a drunkalogue from that girl!!!:lmao