McGowdog

Recovered is better. Recovered > Recovering

I took the treatment out of the Big Book and it worked.

Recovered does not mean cured.

What's the issue here?

Read the title page of the BB and go with that. Don't take my word for it.

Buy your own Big Book, read your own Big Book. That way, we have no argument. Unless... of course... you want to argue.

freya

Several months ago, I was over at my not-a-sponsors* house for a chick-flick night with several other program women. Of course, at some point, we just had to take a break from the flicks and talk recovery / spiritual journey stuff. And it was a really great, deep-working discussion with people sharing important stuff, and at one point, my not-a-sponsor goes: "Oh my god, can you believe it! I've been working on this stuff for 28 years. Don't you think I'd have it all figured out by now????"

And we all laughed. But then I said, "Well, what else could we be doing that would be more important and more fun than this? I mean, really, what could be more fun and exciting than doing this kind of work?"

And she said: "Yeah, that's probably right....Most people would be using the movies as a break......but here we are taking a break from the movies to do do the work!!!!"

So, yeah, I do believe that I'm a lifer...and it's recovering for me!

freya


* She's my not-a-sponsor because, although she is in actual practice my sponsor, since she's AA and I'm Al Anon, we jokingly call her my not-a-sponsor.

jimhere

I'm recovered from alcoholism. Doesn't mean that I'm different, special, better, or have been raised to some exalted status. It merely means that I don't suffer from alcoholism anymore.

To be recovering means to still be suffering. I was recovering one time when I was in between Steps 3-11 during my first year. Before that I was neither recovered nor recovering. I don't want to be always recovering. It baffles me why someone years away from a drink would want to still be sick when I've seen guys I sponsor recover at three months or less of sobriety.

Seems the debate is usually started by folks who are neither. Most that say they are recovering aren't.

McGowdog

Thank you!

I still don't know why this is even an issue.

I guess I'm assuming that the people who argue this and/or debate this;

I refuse to dummy down my program. Here's what I have to do to get recovered. By nature, I should be on a bar stool, in a jail cell, or dead. This disease kills. I'm not willing to fu#% with it. You maybe, but I'm not. If you don't have to work the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous for sobriety, I'm not interested.

Where's the AA forum at? That's where I'll be.

nelco

How important is this??

Maybe its a pride thing with some people, I dont know.

I have and continue to work through all the steps.
I have contented soberity.
I take my recovery one day at a time....I will know very quickly what I am if I dont !! if I pick up a drink.......debate will be over. And the drink will be at the end of the madness......

McGowdog

It's life and death, actually.

Recov....VIRDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If the first 100 Recovered alcoholics that wrote the Big Book wanted to say recovering, they would have said and printed recovering.

We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree. Agreed? Or do you have some other program? If you do, please do us a favor and don't call it AA. Call it BB!

:rotfxko

But you'll have to name your book something else, like LB.

bugsworth

I agree with nelco...how important is it? Personally I consider myself free...not recovering or recovered, just free to live life as it should be. I worked hard to get here, why waste time worrying about semantics.

Dee74

I use the DD (Dee Does) method.
Don't drink, help people, live right, don't get bogged down in useless semantics.

Works great

D

Pinkcuda

When I seriously wanted to put drinking behind me through AA I realized I was not at liberty to pick and choose which parts of the book I believed, and which I didn't have to, which steps I felt like doing, and which principles I adhered to and which I didn't.
I'm going to do AA my way has never done a thing for anyone. I see people bouncing in and out all the time with that attitude.
I hear people saying A.A. didn't work for me. They did it their way. That's why.
"Half measures availed us nothing"
Therefore I must believe the book 100% and the book says "Recovered"

freya

I'm not getting the need to put people down just because they ask a question the answer to which you personally find to be a no-brainer. I want to just float out there the ever-so-remote possibility that not everyone sees the world -- or reads the Big Book -- in such totally static, black and white terms, and that it just might possibly, with a huge deep breath and a tiny little opening of the mind, be OK that people are different and conceptualize their recovery work in different ways. I've read the OP several times and see absolutely no evidence that the poster isn't sincerely interested in hearing and understanding better the various ways people answer his question and the reasons why they do so. I also see no reason to assume that his interest in doing so calls into question the quality -- in fact, the very existence -- of his recovery.

But, I do have to agree with you absolutely that, in my experience, most people who say they are recovering aren't....Unfortunately, in my experience most people who are recovering say exactly the same thing...(and, you know, for the life of me, I really sometimes cannot tell which is which -- of course, this could be because it's really none of my business to begin with!)....Now how friggin' inconvenient is that!!!...Geesh, I don't suppose that could possibly just be because the vast majority of people in my locale were "taught" to do it that way.....and that the use of "recovered" vs."recovering" just really isn't such a brilliant determiner of the quality and/or existence of people's actually recoveries?????...but then again, why would it be my -- or your or anyone else's -- business to be issuing overly generalized judgments about other people's recoveries based on this, or any other, severely limited standard to begin with?????? And, by extension, what would it say about my own recovery if I were to feel the need to be going around doing so?

Well, obviously......but, really, I seriously doubt that any of the first 100 now-probably-both-dead-and-recovered alcoholics are reading or posting on this thread. So, your point would be??????????????

We are talking about human beings here, right? We're not talking about Gods or even gods.....or even about people who claimed to have channeled what they wrote directly from the mind of the divine. And if we are not talking about writing directly from the divine in some sense, then where oh where is the assumption of infalibility and/or of absolute finality coming from?????

Some people actually believe that what makes great writing and thinking (of the human variety) great is the way it naturally lends itself to growth and interpretation and remains relevant in and adaptable to history's changing times and mankind's changing needs. Clearly, you are not one of those people, and that's fine -- but can you really say with absolute certainty that not a single one of those first 100 weren't?

....but, ooops, I forgot, you're not even participating in this thread anymore...isn't that what you said a few posts ago?

freya

nelco

Is this directed at me? If so I fail to see how a word is life and death!! .
my program is the same as most A.A's I hang with,I call them winners.......

I keep it simple..............clean house , trust God and help others

Its been working for me for 11 years now

McGowdog

Are you judging me? How's that working?

freya

I wouldn't know how it's working because I wasn't judging you at all....just pointing out, trying to get you to think more about, and maybe even support and develop a few of the more unclear and highly questionable implications of what you wrote. There is rather important difference. It is quite possible to hold someone accountable for his words without making judgments about him as a human being. As someome who seems to have been around more than a few 24 hours, I would think you'd be quite aware of that, so I'm kinda confused as to why you seem to be trying to pretend that they are one and the same.

And actually, in the line quoted in my previous post, Jim expressed quite a broad judgment about a fairly large group of people, based only on the fact that they ID as "recovering" as opposed to "recovered," and, if I recall correctly, you actually gave it your stamp of approval. That leads me to believe that perhaps it's not really judgments and/or judging others that you have a problem with, but whether or not what you decide to lable a "judgment" happens to align with your personal opinions or not.

Of course, I did make the "guess" that, despite what you'd said earlier, you were still emotionally engaged in the thread....but that's not a judgment either, just a common sense (and obviously correct) deduction based on what I've read of yours here and elsewhere.

freya

McGowdog

Are you drinking too much ... coffee... this morning?

Shalom.

...recovered...

freya

I'm a tea drinker, actually, and only one cup this morning, as usual!

...but thanks for your gentlemanly concern!

freya

McGowdog

Have a nice day.

I'm gonna go read my Big Book again.

So now that we have the recovering/recovered debate solved... let's ponder this; "Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program..."
BB Quote....1st. Edition

So, what's the difference between a cannot and a will not?

Mark75

OK, I had to run an errand and I thought about this, well, not the little spat .. but the issue in the OP

If a disease goes away when consumption of whatever the causative agent was stops, than I feel that a person is recovered. If you are anemic from eating lead based paint chips and your blood count becomes normal after you stop eating lead, well... your recovered. However, you can't eat any more lead based paint chips...

I am not drinking alcohol, for seven months. I still have the disease because I don't feel that many of those "character defects" (actually I kind of hate that term, but, there are other threads... ) that led me to alcoholism are gone. I need to keep working the steps... I am recover-ing.

I see a time that I will be recover-ed. I don't know when that will be, I'll know it. I also know that I have to keep my treatment active to keep my disease inactive. Just like I won't eat paint.

So, there's my 2 cents... (ducking)

Mark

Pinkcuda

The difference between "Can Not" and "Will Not" is a persons choice.
It's the same as Can"t or Chooses not to.

McGowdog

Yeah, it was directed at you, as I included your quote and your name in the response.

It's seems like it's just words, but words and how we use them are very important. Let's take attitude for example. You say you have 11 years, hang out with winners, and stay sober one day at a time, and assume some people like to have a "pride thing."

Well that's great. I hang out with people who say "recovered." I also hang out with new people who will learn to say "recovered" as well.

Have a nice day.

Well that's fine. You don't have to use that word. You could say, "sin" or "wrongs" or ...

PS: Thx 4 that Pink. I always believed the cannots were perhaps incapable of being honest with themselves and couldn't get sober based on that alone, or maybe a wet-brain or something. Funny thing about a wet-brain, (not like haha funny, like Slingblade funny), is that I've seen a couple who did stay sober... allbeit a little too late for comfort.

But the will not is someone who just will find a way to not "jump in" or give themselves to this simple program... aka, they may not be done drinking yet. But, many who should be ready die. So I think you have to be both fortunate to wind up at a meeting with just an ounce of willingness and be very very lucky to come across some recovered alcoholics who will shoot you straight and help you see your 1st step and show you what specifically they did to work the AA program out of the book step by step, letter by letter, and word by word.

But whatdoIknow?

NoelleR

It was suggested to me early-on in recovery that along with the BB I also have a dictionary close at hand..........

.....so, what's the difference..between 'I cannot' and 'I will not'..? Might I suggest you check it out in that dictionary?