visch1

With our personal shite fairy directing what do we do after cutting back from one? BE WELL

visch1

The statement I saw and interpreted as to the newcomers comfort level for meetings attendance. Which for most AA newcomers is none. AA is effective by attending a lot of meetings and shows the way to be sober as opposed to dry life. One reply might be how soon to you want to get better?

It's not all to do with confidence, we realize that shite fairy is still around the corner, a lot is for a memory refresh, Remember When, help another alcoholic and see friends along with seeing the results of people who stopped going to meeting. I'm retired for 25 years so have the time. Many times at the main meeting I attend, sitting in the front row, paying attention, there are 5 others with sobriety totaling around 200 years. I guess we should be advised by someone on the internet who has?????????? BE WELL

DisplacedGRITS

I go to one more meeting a week than i feel i need. That's usually 4-5 a week. I have a couple of days that i take off but i've got some meetings that i don't miss (especially the meeting i chair on Mondays , my Tuesday night Big Book meeting and my Thursday night meetings). They keep me grounded and quiet down that squirrel that keeps running around in my head

Lifewillgetbet

Everyone is different. I have my own personal home group now that I am comfortable with. We meet once or twice per week. Sometimes I slide into meetings I use to attend every so often.
It is really up to you. For me, a large portion of my recovery was integrating myself back into society with work and learning how to socialize minus alcohol.
I started doing activities that I would never even consider when drinking. It took me out of my comfort zone and I actually am starting to enjoy them. So I’m at the stage in my own recovery were I do not think going to AA every day is necessary. But this is my recovery.

DrSober

There's a book a read a long time ago that really spoke to me - it was a book by a sociologist who studied hundreds of cases of people who had recovered from very serious addictions without recourse to formal recovery programs.

Coming Clean - Google Books

Far from being a book that's against recovery programs, it was actually a really good book in the way that it (to me) explained exactly how successful recovery happens - by peeling away the mystique behind recovery programs like AA.

One of the main theses of the book is that the way people successfully recover from serious addictions is by first, of course, making a decision to cease practicing their addictions, and then to start practicing a lifestyle that is compatible with long-term recovery. The authors talk repeatedly about how successful 'self-remitters' recovered by connecting themselves firmly into a conventional, meaningful life (e.g., sober relationship, meaningful job, family connections, spiritual practice, etc.) which they talked about as in the end essentially crowding out addiction and leaving it no place to hide.

One of the other posters in this thread talked about a person who did 2-3 meetings per day in early recovery because this person was "lonely and unemployed." For someone whose addiction has flung them completely out of conventional life, has lost them a job, has had them rejected by family and friends, with no connections and no means, the "90 in 90" approach makes complete sense - this is probably one of the only forseeable routes that such a person can regain a foothold into a conventional life with meaningful connections.

That's not to say AA (particularly daily meetings) or formal recovery is only for the sickest amongst us, it's just that the community of recovery programs is one important way how many people reconnect with sober, functional livelihood.

For me, I have a balancing act in place. I have a career that I enjoy, in a sober workplace (I work in a medical facility). My wife has been sober and in recovery for 6.5 years. We don't have drinking buddies, or alcoholic / druggie friends. I have a number of responsibilities that depend entirely on me and it's pretty much either critical or almost de rigueur that I remain sober and clear-headed to discharge these duties. While I make meetings when I can (I went to one last night, I'm scheduled to hit one tonight, I also went to one last Saturday), if I tried to attend one or more per day to fulfill some sort of cookie-cutter recovery formula (e.g., like the 90 in 90 dictat so often heard in AA), it would produce some stressors on my job, marriage, or responsibilities that would in the end *not* be conducive to my long term recovery (fortunately my wife is very flexible and supports me attending lots of meetings right now).

I need my conventional, sober connections in life to be as healthy as possible - my conventional, sober life is as much an anchor as my Lifering meetings. So on the one hand, I agree with the idea that it's not always about what one is "comfortable" with in terms of attending meetings. If you're unemployed, without means or money, your friends and family have left you long ago because of your addiction, possibly hitting 2-3 meetings a day would be ideal for you. However, if you have a good (sober) job you enjoy, a large number of family responsibilities, friends and family who depend on you being sober, basically any number of connections to a conventional, sober life, you will need to necessarily balance your recovery work with maintaining these connections - because as the book so well illustrates, it's these connections to sober 'people, places, and things' that can be (doesn't mean they necessarily will be - but they can be) critical in keeping you sober for the long haul.

Just my opinion (I only have 52 days sobriety, so take what I say with a grain of salt).

visch1

You are correct and congratulations on your recovery. From long experience and observation I get a bit of uneasy in my mind when relying on good proper direction considering this dis-ease is cunning powerful and insidious considering an alcoholics thinking/reasoning processing. Quite often it says things we want to hear. Remember our best efforts to the contrary got us to this stage. BE WELL and I'll continue my so far successful meeting attendance.

DrSober

[deleted - never mind]

visch1

You post some logical and interesting thoughts. As is well known this is a problem that the medical community, church/religion, Physic community etc. has had dismal recovery results being it's so individual based and varied. I've had a war cry for years that just going to a lot of meetings, reading the literature and being AROUND any program won't lead to a comfortable life within our skin. A lot of meetings might give us discipline many don't have which in turn helps us to recover by exploring why we traveled this path. To me just stopping drinking is the beginning with a lot of work following. It's easy to say it's your choice but with our thinking in the beginning we usually will choose the softest easier path and end up in a relapse which there is no guarantee we can return from, just look around. BE WELL

DrSober

Anyways, off my soapbox. You go to as many meetings as you can. That doesn't mean you neglect your job, family responsibilities, eating, sleeping, intimacy with your partner, bathing, etc. to do it. If you find you're fighting cravings to use, you go to more meetings.

I trust that people here know they need to do what it takes to get sober. That doesn't mean that if they don't do as much as the most recovery-active person on these boards does (e.g., that person who does 2-3 meeting per day and has for the last 30 years) that doesn't mean they aren't doing what it takes.

Recovery is an individualized process. People recover successfully by doing 2-3 meetings per day, 2-3 meetings per week, or not going to meetings at all (I've heard it from reliable sources).

I'm doing what's working for me now. I'll keep doing that. At some point I'll probably be doing less Lifering meetings (don't know when that will be) but I know for a fact regular meeting attendance is my recipe for long term recovery. But that's just me, and doesn't apply to anyone else (unless they think it does).

Coldfusion

Shelpy, I honestly could not do this alone. My wife and I are probably co-dependent, and neither of us has willpower to be around alcohol. We'll have nine months sober on August 1.

deeker

Shelp you probably heard that 90 meetings in 90 days is suggested. It helps you get a firm foundation and we need that in the beginning. I needed to have all that good stuff put in my head and all the negative bad stuff pushed out.

I did 230 meetings my first 90 days. I know sounds a bit extreme, but I wasn't working at the time and I had the time so why not. I ended up making good friends fast and had a support system in place for when I cut back.

Most people I know who do 90 in 90 stay sober that whole time. Service work is good to. Find yourself a home group, offer to make coffee. One meeting you hit regularly every week so people can get to know you. You do that and you can't go wrong.

I now go to 2 to 3 a week.

But anything you put before your recovery you will most likely lose.


We won't have family, jobs, social lives, responsibilities if we are not sober.

Shelpy

I am unemployed so I should probably go pretty often. Too much idle time on my hands and a bad relationship- and living out of boxes at his house.. Id rather sit in a meeting than be here and realize what a ****** situation this is.

visch1

That scares me because so many people take it as a given if they read it on the internet it's a fact. To me it's like believing "informed government sources." BE WELL

DrSober

It's easy to say it's our choice because it always is. I would hate to say more because then the conversation devolves into perspectives offered by different recovery methods, which isn't supposed to be debated here.

I don't see value in making ourselves miserable (the opposite of "softest easier") as a way to get sober. Sobriety is absolutely hard work, as I've found, but that doesn't mean it should be misery-inducing. I think you're reacting a bit to language like "comfortable." I agree that recovery shouldn't be expected to be "comfortable," that's probably a bad choice of words. But I don't think anyone here who is honestly pursuing recovery is at all intending to choose what is "soft and easy." I don't presume that at all.

I think people should be selecting recovery methods and approaches that aren't necessarily COMFORTABLE, but that fit with their personal philosophy, viewpoints, and lives. That goes for the type of recovery program, or programs, people are working as well as the frequency and intensity in which they work it.

They used to think, back in the days of Freud, that if a patient needed therapy, the best thing to do would be to put them in analysis 2-3 times per week for 20 years. For someone with severe, chronic depression and maybe combined personality disorder, and childhood trauma that might be the way to do. For someone with a simple adjustment disorder, that approach might make them sicker. Addiction is addiction, sure. And an unaddressed, untreated "mild addiction problem" can easily progress to a roaring, highly destructive, life-ending massive polydrug dependency issue. Likewise, an untreated adjustment disorder can progress into a serious, chronic major suicidal depression if left untreated as well. Both problems should be addressed, but that doesn't mean both problems should be addressed exactly the same way. And yes, we may have addiction problems and so our capacity for healthy insight may not be the best but unfortunately, there's still no one that really knows us better than ourselves, ultimately.

DrSober

You make it sound like I'm quoting a wild conspiracy theory I heard on Reddit or 4Chan. People recover without recourse to formal recovery programs all the time - I wasn't aware that this was a point that's even controversial. Doesn't really matter because that's not what I'm doing.

DrSober

It cuts both ways. In a way this is partially an argument about what came first, the chicken or the egg. Plenty of people lose conventional lives, neglect responsibilities and social life, and destroy their families for their addictions. However, people don't really have much to anchor their recoveries onto if they don't build or maintain their meaningful, conventional livelihoods.

doggonecarl

This is really straying away from the OP's question.

DrSober

What part? Visch1 was commenting that people who do as many meetings as are "comfortable" to them might not be the way to go.

While I agreed that we shouldn't strive for "comfort" in recovery, I don't think it follows that we should try and force ourselves to pursue recovery in a manner that doesn't fit with our lives and makes us miserable. That relates directly to meeting frequency.

Basic message is some people need to do more meetings, some people need to do less. Unfortunately there's no one-size-fits all. The problem is that the person best suited to answer what's the best fit is the person who has historically had the most trouble with being insightful - and that's me, the addict. Ah, the irony.

visch1

In going to more than 13K meetings and observing people when they come into AA almost kicking and screaming, dishonest with themselves, in denial, barely understanding their dis-ease and being wiped out mentally and physically bankrupt it's suggested that they go to 90 meetings in 90 days, more if possible. Given the fact we are dealing with an incurable disease it might be a good idea to take some loving advice. Unfortunately many don't make the disease their 1st priority for whatever reasons and fade away, same as here. I was told and say today that our recovery is more important than family, job, relationships etc. The SIMPLE reason is we will loose them if we forget our priority. No one is a 90 day wonder with all the answers or even know what the questions will be when we start to work on recovery. It seems that so many need the tools for living let alone how to use them which comes with not drinking as it's a serious big deal many don't get and that saddens me as a close family friend aged 45 is in diapers in a ward still looking for her beer and has trouble recalling her name. But people don't like to hear about that! BE WELL

Soberpotamus

+1