Morning Glory

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http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ciousness.html

Itchy

Very young I studied the great philosophers on my own, at home, and did for years. My model early on was the old Glass grinder Spinoza. A quote from him seems appropo to the topic developed as it has:

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion”
Baruch Spinoza

DoubtfulDebs

okay... many things i could say to that, luckily i'm now clear-headed from the longest and dare i say easiest spell of sobriety i've had in years, so i'll just ask you to consider in your own time whether you thought your comment would support me or anyone reading this in staying sober?

i''m also not crazy about the imagery of 'struggling until you have to surrender', but that is 'my stuff' from my past and i'm sure you can work out that there are people for whom that's not a helpful mental image there.

i know you mean well, just think it through whether anyone's addiction actually needs cheerleaders to help it in overcoming the methods they chose, i think you'll find we all have enough on our plates thank you!

peace.

debs

Boleo

" There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits."
— Opening narration – The Outer Limits show – 1960s

DoubtfulDebs;

I am not trying to discourage you, Just trying to give you a caveat. While it may be said that there are no wrong ways to stay sober, there certainly are a plethora of unreliable ways to stay sober (both in and out of AA).

When you said "anything i can get myself into, i can get myself out of using smarter psychological methods and so on." It brought back scary memories of where I was at, when I tried to use psychological tricks & tips to stay sober.

It works for some of the people some of the time. Do you really want to settle for a "good" method of recovery, when it is not only a life & death issue - but a life-long journey as well?

"Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best".
(Abe Lincoln)

Soberpotamus

Who the hell said this? LOL. Where's the long-term statistics based study??

And my question after reading that statement is this: If it works for some of the people some of the time... that doesn't exclude the possibility of ALL the time for some people, does it?

Zencat

....need time to cool off.

Soberpotamus

Hahahaha, Zencat Are you saying you need time to cool off, or I do?? LOL.

Zencat

I do...You are golden in my book. Thanks for your POV in life, recovery and the funny side of life.

Soberpotamus

Wow. Awww, that is the best compliment ever, Zencat. You're very sweet to say that. Thank you. Made my day.

Zencat

All righty now .

As someone wise said once: the facts are many and the truth is one. And I will add that many truths are individual and not always universal. Especially when dealing in personal truths. Then I feel its a case of opinionated truthfulness.

Now what about the facts? I rely on the scientific method to discover the facts. What about mystical facts? IMO there are none. To me, the whole put you faith in something needs to be fact-less. Otherwise why bother if you know, by evidence of knowing, by provable, repeatable, replicating knowing one way or the other.

I am secular, weak atheist, humanistic, tree huger, liberal left coast cosmic freak. There is nothing...Zen...outside of me that will do a job I need to do for me because I'm lazy, stupid, crazy or tired and delusional about my absolute powers to change my; thinking, my behavior, my perspective, my life.

If everything outside pure experience is delusion. Then everything inside experience is...an inside job...D'oh.

Zencat

Your welcome. We all need complements and I'm happy to give you the 'pat on the back' you deserve.

DoubtfulDebs

okay… so i come back from one of the most rewarding days of my life, made doubly good because i know i'm enjoying a weekend in a hotel on expenses (all legit, i've earned it recently ) and will get to see the sights sober as a judge... to see your post telling me that my method of recovery is something i am 'settling for' and is not – this is very clear – 'the best' method.

i won't have to look much farther than your sig to see what you think may be the 'best' way to quit boozing.

i am glad that this method worked for you and i wish you lifelong success with it, however it is against my deep-seated religious beliefs (in which i am the only person accountable for actions i take with my free will) and has also proven to be unsuccessful and counterproductive when i did give it a try before finding rational recovery.

if you continue to post at me undermining my chosen method of recovery, which so far has worked 100% and with less mental struggle than any previous tries, i will request a moderator steps in and either asks you to cease these statements, which can in no way be construed as supportive (and furthermore are being made in the secular part of this forum) or if they don't wish to do that, that they remove my account from this board – this is because i joined for supportive interactions and not to be told i am 'doing it wrong' when so far my recovery has been pretty plain sailing.

i would never dream of entering any forum using a method that has failed for me and attempting to tell other people they are 'settling for' a 'second best' method.
i don't see how much more clearly i can spell out how inappropriate (not to mention, the polar opposite of 'humble') your replies to me in this thread have been, and while i don't wish to begin to guess at your motivations for posting what you have, one thing i do know is that you sound exactly like my 'addictive voice' ie that part of me that against my better judgement urges me to drink, in part by telling me that nothing i can do is more powerful than that urge

now, i'd like to drop this, but since i'm not the one who piled in critiquing someone's recovery to begin with, the ball is in your court as to whether you want to continue. i didn't join here to get into fights or verbal contests over who's doing what right, y'know?

i imagine we all have a pretty big load of gratitude to whatever system is currently saving our lives and our sanity, so any such contest would by definition be pointless...

peace.

debs.

Murray4x5

Not too much "Doubtful" about our debs (Yes, you've been adopted).

Enjoy your swanky working holiday!!!!!!!!!!

Terminally Unique

I have to give Debs credit for getting the hang of AVRT so well. From what I can see, she seems to have the hang of it better than most. I myself was a little slower on the uptake, I think.

Zencat

Thanks Debs. I am thankful that you took to responding in a matter that is important to you as well as me.

I wrote it before and I'll write it again. No one way to recover is appropriate for everybody. Personal choice to heal with a method that can do the job, is fundamental to my wellness journey.

As for the distractions tossed into the way of my choice of a healing path. I walk all over it and continue on my way.

Murray4x5

Great attitude!

Some of those distractions can be darn near life threatening. In the argumentative phase of my recovery (the first 3 or 4 months) when I was actively sharing and defending my theories and choices, I was accused several times of not being a "real alcoholic".

Because I hadn't lost my family, my job, my house, and come near to death from over drinking, that meant I wasn't a "real alcoholic". What an insane thing to say to somebody who was able to step off the one-way downward slope of alcoholism!!! How many people would hear that and think to themselves, "Maybe I don't really have a problem...maybe I can just slow down a bit..." and end up hitting the bottle even harder? Some would never recover.

My reaction at the time was to throw it back at them, telling them that by following their logic the only "true alcoholics" would be those who died from drinking. Alcohol was controlling my life; I was drinking to blackout 4 to 5 days a week, drinking at lunch on work days was making sense (I drive for a living) and drinking in the morning was soon to follow. That was alcoholic enough for me.

I applaud anybody who stands up for themselves, who is willing to think for themselves, who is willing to put in the individual effort and hard work needed to discover a road to recovery tailor made for themselves.

Some of us just aren't herd animals. Some of us just don't need face to face meetings and SR is enough for us. For whatever reason, that gets under the skin of a few members of one of the large organized recovery programs. It saddens me though, that they're still out there, still throwing hurdles in the path of the unaware, and that a part of them will celebrate and not be saddened if I ever pick up the bottle again.

Terminally Unique

raindancer11

Me too. Learning about the influence of "tribe" been critical to my success so far. Not only to see alcohol for what it really is but also to choose a solution is healthiest for me.

Boleo

I digress. I failed to recognize that S.R. needs a forum for every conceivable type of recovery. Obviously I am not welcome here. Even though I have been labeled secular by many Christians for my Taoist and Zen beliefs, I am not nearly secular enough for this forum which appears to be designed specifically for epistemological solipsism.

Terminally Unique

I lost my six-figure job, my residence, various other things of far greater importance to me, and I looked like one of the people from Intervention, but I rarely disclose that information. It is irrelevant as a qualifier, IMO.