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went to my first and last AA meeting

Old 01-21-2016, 01:05 PM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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You refer to yourself as "an acute alcoholic" who only blacks out 2 or 3 times a year. There are plenty of people who drank like you and who are now in AA. You apparently just happened to attend a meeting where none of them spoke. If you attend more meetings you will hear the stories of plenty of people you can relate to.

Of course if you have already decided (based on 1 meeting) that AA can't help you, there's really no point. There is a secular section on this site that might be more to your liking.
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Old 01-21-2016, 01:08 PM
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Just a Reminder:

The Newcomers Forum is a safe and welcoming place for newcomers. Respect is essential. Debates over Recovery Methods are not allowed on the Newcomer's Forum. Posts that violate this rule will be removed without notice. (Support and experience only please.)
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Old 01-21-2016, 01:54 PM
  # 23 (permalink)  
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The way you utilize AA can be your choice. Make it work for you as an individual. I don't go to meetings every day. I go once a week but I'm committed and consistent. My goal is not to live in the halls and only speak AA, but to learn how to live a normal life and get involved in the mainstream of life. At 6 months I'm doing that with new hobbies, places and people. I have an AA friend I stay in contact with who encourages me to find my own path, not copy theirs or be dependent. I've had the same experiences as you especially when it comes to relating with other's stories. They can be a drag with the stories and repetition. BUT...I'd rather be at them now not relating instead of drinking again killing myself until I DO relate.
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Old 01-21-2016, 02:08 PM
  # 24 (permalink)  
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Hi QuitforSon. I am atheist. I do not know what a "hard core" atheist is <looking askance at Meraviglioso>. I find AA helpful, even though I think the praying and religiosity is silly.

Most people I meet in meetings are not as you describe. Most were functioning alcoholics who held down jobs, were self-supporting, etc. Their input is valuable to me.

I never even got in trouble with alcohol. No DUIs or legal trouble, nothing like that. Alcohol was just quietly eating my life away, like most people in AA.

Especially since Toronto has AA Agnostica, I hope you give it another go. I am green with envy and wish we had that here.
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Old 01-21-2016, 02:21 PM
  # 25 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by oldsoul1122 View Post
The way you utilize AA can be your choice. Make it work for you as an individual. I don't go to meetings every day. I go once a week but I'm committed and consistent. My goal is not to live in the halls and only speak AA, but to learn how to live a normal life and get involved in the mainstream of life. At 6 months I'm doing that with new hobbies, places and people. I have an AA friend I stay in contact with who encourages me to find my own path, not copy theirs or be dependent. I've had the same experiences as you especially when it comes to relating with other's stories. They can be a drag with the stories and repetition. BUT...I'd rather be at them now not relating instead of drinking again killing myself until I DO relate.
Exactly.

I am grateful for AA, remain connected to it, have read the Big Book several times, have learned an incredible amount from those in the rooms, and have drawn invaluable tools from the program. Without it in my arsenal - I wouldn't be sober today (over 2 years now).

At the same time, I go to meetings infrequently. It is but one of many aspects of my sobriety. It's an important one, but I'm not dependent upon it. I want to live a full and balanced life and for ME, that also means not being so AA_centric that I can't go for a few days or even a few weeks without AA and stay sober.

On the other hand.... I always gain something from those meetings... I give back by volunteering at hospital meetings.... I benefit when I give back or when I just attend. I learn and grow - and not just about alcohol or addiction, but as a human. I often think it ought to be called Humans Anonymous.

Anyway.... these are my experiences and I share them for quitforson and others' consideration. It can be easy to make a snap judgement about AA or any program.... especially when our addictive thinking takes charge. I know that my experiences are my own - yet I also know that many before me and many to come will go through similar processes down similar paths. Perhaps these words of sharing can helps someone find their own path to sobriety in a shorter, less painful way than I did.
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Old 01-21-2016, 02:56 PM
  # 26 (permalink)  
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For years I thought AA wouldn't be right for me. And for years I was 'just' an evening binge drinker. I also knew for years I had a problem, I knew I drank too much too often. But I went along and just thought I could live with it , I convinced myself living through all the negative consequences was worth it , the price to pay for that 'awesome' buzz . It changes overtime or at least it did for me, the justifications of the price for the buzz got harder to make or live with. I started trying to quit or at least stop for periods, but the time between stopping and starting again kept getting shorter and the attempts less frequent. The evening binge thing changed , a lot of things changed all for the bad. Still didn't think AA was for me, but I did think that somehow it should be or that the only solution was really going to be found 'there', so that part of my thinking(what I call my AV) latched on to the idea that since I wasn't going that route , I might as well resign myself to the 'fact' that I would always be a drinker , no matter how much higher the price for chasing that buzz was getting , I was still willing to pay for it.
But then I just couldn't take it anymore , it got real bad, even for me. AA or not it had to stop, as others have already said there are other ways or paths that get to quitting. You identified one you don't want to peruse ,or at least not for now, so what is your plan for future alcohol use?
At the end of my rope, or what felt like it at the time, I stumbled onto SR and found out about AVRT and RR( the Secular Connections forum has great threads on these ideas), don't let one path being a bad fit trick you into thinking you can't quit.
I was right that for me AA wasn't a good fit, I was wrong to use that as an excuse to keep drinking .
Wish you well
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Old 01-21-2016, 03:18 PM
  # 27 (permalink)  
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I would be far more worried about what is right with any program of recovery than what is wrong. AAers are doing something right because an awful lot of them have been sober for a very long time.

Can you say the same?
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Old 01-21-2016, 04:16 PM
  # 28 (permalink)  
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if ya were to go back and hear the thinking of those people-remove the drinking as youre not there yet- you just may find a lot of similarities.
from the bb- into to the second set of stories titled
"they stopped in time"
We think that about one-half of today's incoming A.A. members were never advanced cases of alcoholism; though, given time, all might have been.
Most of these fortunate ones have had little or no acquaintance with delirium, with hospitals, asylums, and jails. Some were drinking heavily and there had been occasional serious episodes. But with many, drinking had been little more than a sometimes uncontrollable nuisance. Seldom had any of these lost either health, business, family, or friends.
Why do men and women like these join A.A.?
The twelve who now tell their experiences answer that question. They saw that they had become actual or potential alcoholics, even though no serious harm had yet been done.
They realized that repeated lack of drinking control, when they really wanted control, was the fatal symptom that spelled problem drinking. This, plus mounting emotional disturbances, convinced them that compulsive alcoholism already had them; that complete ruin would be only a question of time.
Seeing this danger, they came to A.A. They realized that in the end alcoholism could be as mortal as cancer; certainly no sane man would wait for a malignant growth to become fatal before seeking help.
Therefore, these twelve A.A.'s, and thousands like them, have been saved years of infinite suffering. They sum it up like this: "We didn't wait to hit bottom because, thank God, we could see the bottom. Actually, the bottom came up and hit us. That sold us on Alcoholics Anonymous."



whether ya do or do, hope ya find a way to stay sober.
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Old 01-21-2016, 04:20 PM
  # 29 (permalink)  
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If you've decided AA is not for you, have you given any thought to what you might do now QFS?

D
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Old 01-21-2016, 04:33 PM
  # 30 (permalink)  
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My experience was very similar and I am pursuing sobriety without AA. Many people have and you should feel fine with your decision as long as you have an alternative that you feel will get you where you need to go. However, a plan felt necessary for me - I needed rules, structures, and discipline. I found them internally rather than externally and so far so good.
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Old 01-21-2016, 04:34 PM
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AA doesn't keep anyone sober; AA is different by region,state, country, neighborhood; AA is a different for each attendee.
I can't judge; I can stay sober. I just need to be willing because willpower didn't work.
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Old 01-21-2016, 04:50 PM
  # 32 (permalink)  
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Interesting discussion all. I love all the offshoots and alternatives of AA. SR has been a really interesting showcase of alternatives. In a way, each recovering alcoholic is unique although many commonalities exist. I hope 5, 10, 20 years from now there will be even more resources for folks.

Quitforson, I hope you come back and post what does work for you. It would be helpful for many who don't care for AA.
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Old 01-21-2016, 06:59 PM
  # 33 (permalink)  
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Great thread. I too had many misconceptions I have posted on SR about AA. I felt kind of ignorant. I have noticed in my travels some meetings are more religious while others are more open to interpretation.
Regardless of what you do at least read about the HALT triggers that cause use to want and use. Get a plan together for that first offer of a drink. Or when its Saturday night and your foaming at the mouth already have a plan to curb that appeal. Lots of helpful insight and a phenomenal community here.
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Old 01-21-2016, 07:12 PM
  # 34 (permalink)  
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Just a quick reply, as I'm sure you have already gotten plenty of feedback. I can tell you that I ABSOLUTELY felt the same way at my first meeting, actually probably my first 10 meetings. In fact, I think the entire experience helped give me a false sense of reassurance that I was just fine. So I used that as a reason to keep drinking..

You don't have to do AA. But please, please don't confuse that with the notion that you can simply continue drinking. It's a progressive disease, you will get to that point eventually should you continue.
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Old 01-21-2016, 07:19 PM
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Brian, great post, and you got som great responses, don't you think?? I loved this statement...cracked me up!! "I like good medium drunk not full out blinding drunk. Perhaps I would become the chronic down the road if I continue. "

RELATE!!

I am glad you are here on SR. One thing AA always says is "keep coming back". I hope you keep coming back to SR as you figure out your sobriety.
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Old 01-21-2016, 07:24 PM
  # 36 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by Meraviglioso View Post
Unless you are seriously hard core atheist or a devil worshipper, is a group of people praying for serenity really that offensive or some mega turnoff?
It's not that it's offensive. It's that starting one's recovery with yet another pretense is offensive to the process of recovery, which in essence is the path back to honesty from the deceit of addiction.
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Old 01-21-2016, 07:28 PM
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Well said, Thump.
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Old 01-21-2016, 11:03 PM
  # 38 (permalink)  
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There were many things that made me uncomfortable at my first AA meeting, including the fact that I was at an AA meeting. By the time I got there, every piece of real estate on the planet "wasn't for me." I wasn't there for the gift shop, and I didn't ask for directions to the fitting room. I wasn't all that different from, nor was I quite the same as, anyone else in that room. I asked for help to get sober. Not a single person asked me about my philosophy of life, my views on religion, or whether or not I thought it was abusive to dress animals in clothing.

The plan was to get sober and to fill my time here with something other than drinking. No one in my life cared how I did it.
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Old 01-21-2016, 11:18 PM
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Originally Posted by EndGameNYC View Post
There were many things that made me uncomfortable at my first AA meeting, including the fact that I was at an AA meeting. By the time I got there, every piece of real estate on the planet "wasn't for me." I wasn't there for the gift shop, and I didn't ask for directions to the fitting room. I wasn't all that different from, nor was I quite the same as, anyone else in that room. I asked for help to get sober. Not a single person asked me about my philosophy of life, my views on religion, or whether or not I thought it was abusive to dress animals in clothing.

The plan was to get sober and to fill my time here with something other than drinking. No one in my life cared how I did it.
Your point is well-put: no one owes us a damned thing in group. But -- the folks there, tangential though they might be to your life, do in some ways care how you do it.

They might not ask about your views on clothing animals, but that might not mean they ain't curious -- perhaps they're only shy and awaiting you?

I think you get out of recovery, whatever route you take, what you put into it.
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Old 01-21-2016, 11:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Thumpalumpacus View Post
Your point is well-put: no one owes us a damned thing in group. But -- the folks there, tangential though they might be to your life, do in some ways care how you do it.

They might not ask about your views on clothing animals, but that might not mean they ain't curious -- perhaps they're only shy and awaiting you?

I think you get out of recovery, whatever route you take, what you put into it.
As I believe is true of most people, I look back with a different kind of clarity than I possessed in the moment. I was too terrified to be concerned with much else beyond getting sober.

Faith didn't grab me from above, and I wasn't overcome by the sometimes assumed "spirituality" of a shared affliction (though I do believe there is something to the latter). I survived my own recovery based on a conviction that I owed myself a better life. The only thing to "do" was to start.
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