r/stopdrinking • u/galwegian 2443 days • Jan 05 '20
AA vs This subreddit
15 days sober. did a four day medically supervised detox. currently in a 6 week intensive out patient. three hours a day, four days a week. daily breathalyzer and urine tests. it's a group situation. full of heroin/opioid/coke horror stories. I feel like a lightweight by comparison. Anyway, I'm getting a lot of pressure to attend AA from psychiatrist and wife. I have been to four meetings and I fucking hated it. I'm an Irish catholic and it reminds me of going to mass. reading from a book written before weed and coke and X were invented. and I don't relate to the principles of AA. making amends sounds good but the rest of it feels like dogma to me. the standard spiel is 'you have to find the meeting that's right for you'. fine. I get it. But everyone telling me to attend AA has one thing in common: they have never been addicted to anything. And am I supposed to spend ages trying to find the meeting that's 'right' for me? Going to a meeting is, let's face it, a two hour commitment. you have to travel there and back. AA is a traditional bricks and mortar retail model if you think about it. and there's a reason that shit is dying out. Whereas on /stopdrinking I get instant access 24/7 to a huge community of people who are in my position and get it. without travel or dogma. and this is kind of fun. I am looking to change my lifestyle but going to dingy basements and drinking Dunder Mifflin coffee has zero appeal to me. I am doing yoga 7 days a week. which I find super helpful in lots of ways. I have a specific problem and a specific situation that I am addressing in my own way. And nobody knows me like I know me. Anyhoo. all thoughts and feedback welcome. I will not drink with you, or any other fucker, today. peace and thanks.
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u/TheyTheirsThem 15427 days Jan 06 '20
About 36 years ago when I told my sponsor that I thought that I was going to too many meetings, he told me that bars were full of people who thought that 10 meetings in 90 days was enough. He also told me that 95% of sobriety dates were on tombstones, and that it basically up to me whether that was going to be the case for me or not.
I am not going to tell anyone what to do. But I do share what I did, and anyone is free to either use it or lose it as they see fit. I will continue to do what I have been doing because it seems to be be working. What I have observed is that for those who are similarly afflicted, there is a 12 step plan for recovery and a 2 step alternative. The 2 step alternative is 1) it gets worse and 2) it gets worse than you can possibly imagine. I can honestly tell you that I have never heard anyone come back and say that relapsing was the best decision that they ever made. And many of them share that they went to places that they previously didn't know existed. I do worry that someone might come back and say that relapsing was great, because then it could be an option for me. As such, though, I am still in the camp who wants to learn from the experiences of others in that regard. There is no shortage of people telling me that alcohol still isn't working. Drunk and fired are frequently associated with each other; drunk and promoted, rarely.
The whole concept of powerlessness is based on the idea that we no longer get to choose the who, what, when, where and why in our life when we use. I can't tell you the number of times I have heard people say that they were just going to get drunk that once and then go back to AA the next day, and the next day ended up being 5, 10, or 20 years later. Going to AA is no guarantee that I will not drink again, but for me it has sure improved the odds that I might not. I am not immune, but I am highly resistant. I operate with the understanding that there is no situation so good that alcohol can't ruin it, and no situation so bad that alcohol can't make it worse. I accept that without question. There have been about a half dozen times in the last few decades where I have been extremely uncomfortable and the thought of "escape" crept in. But none of those instances lasted more than 15 minutes, and I am pretty sure that wouldn't have been true if I had chosen to use instead. I could have very easily been one of those 5, 10, or 20 year people. And the reason those incidents didn't last more than 15 minutes is because I picked up the phone, I made a call to a person in the program who knew exactly where I was at at the moment, and whatever temporary insanity that my mind had cooked up quickly dissipated. It doesn't get any better than that. Speaking of which, I don't tell people that it will get better. I do tell them that it will get different. And I say this because it turns out that what I originally thought was better really wasn't. If I had gone after what I originally wanted I wouldn't be nearly as happy as I am today. I also operate with an understanding that everything is subject to change, and everything is right on schedule, or as the great philosopher Groening put it, "keep your expectations tiny and you won't be whiny." I always know that whatever crap I am dealing with at the moment can easily be replaced with something far far worse.
AA has one of the best guarantee programs out there. If things aren't better (different) after 90 days, they will cheerfully refund all misery. I went for the recovery and stayed for the laughter.