This is a response to an earlier post that described an organization that is very different from the same organization I have been a member of for over 23 years. This was a comment I posted, that I decided to turn into a post. Hell, I spent so much time writing it, I want a little attention! Seriously, I usually do not participate in these types of discussions, but this author's experience was so radically different from my own experiences, that I feel it is important to write about another perspective. If I had read that post when I was dying of my alcoholism, I might not have ever gone to AA. I do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous. The following is my opinion and my experience.
I am a recovering alcoholic and addict, sober since 8/21/1985. I had my first drink when I was 13 and had just turned 20 when I got sober. I have always been an active member of AA. It wasn't what my parents and I planned for my life when I was born. As an active member, I attend meetings regularly; I work Steps 10, 11 and 12 on a daily basis (self-examination, meditation, prayer, helping other alcoholics and living a productive life); I sponsor other women (help them to work the steps of AA); I am an elected member of the Steering Committee of my group (AA has very clear guidelines and Traditions that healthy groups follow).
I am also the mother of two brilliant, funny and handsome sons who have never seen me drink (they have also never been to a meeting); I have a graduate degree from one of the top institutions in my field; I was the den mother for 3 years; I am highly successful in my career; I am actively involved in my community: politically, in the schools and charitable organizations; I am fun; I like my life (most of the time); my family and friends love me and more importantly, they like me! I am humble. (That is one of those inside "AA cult" jokes). I am extremely anonymous, only breaking my anonymity to help others. You would never know to look at me or talk to me that I am an alcoholic and a heroin addict. This is all because of AA.
I have lived in 8 different towns/cities and 4 states in the past 24 years and my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous has been completely different from what was described in the author's post in ALL of the places I have lived. I have attended more than 2,000 meetings. I have been sober for more than 8,600 days. I believe that the author's experience is her truth and reality. I have heard similar stories (although not all from one person's experience) and AA, like many organizations, is full of sick people. People are sick, and groups can become sick. Non-AA people are sick too. That is the nature of humanity. That does not mean that AA, as a whole, is what the author and many of the commentators have described.
When I got sober, I asked 3 different women to sponsor me and they all said no. (I was young, new to town, a skinny, bedraggled heroin addict and I suppose rather frightening!) I was desperate and dying and I asked a man with 20 years of sobriety and my grandfather's age to be my sponsor. (The word "sponsor" is not mentioned anywhere in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and I have not had a "sponsor" since my first two years of sobriety. I do have good friends, peers and therapists who will call me on my shit, but no sponsor.) My sponsor, Bob, was a very successful businessman and well respected in AA. He told me that the intention of AA was NOT for people to come into AA and retire. He said if people were going to 2 meetings a day with that much sobriety, that was unhealthy. He told me to stay away from those people. He told me that many people in AA are sick and to stay away from those people. He told me the goal of AA is to help people stop drinking so that they can live a full life as citizens of the world. I had suffered from anxiety and depression as a teenager and I became severely depressed when I had a year of sobriety. Bob told me to stop talking about it in meetings and gave me the card to his psychiatrist. That was the first of many times I took anti-depressants and went to therapy. I share this in meetings. No one has ever come up to me to tell me I should not be doing taking medication for a chemical imbalance or seeing a therapist. The AA literature clearly says that members should make use of outside help (doctors, psychiatrists, etc.)
Several statements about AA were made that I strongly disagree with. People across the planet like to say, "Everything happens for a reason" and "It is God's Plan". That is not AA. There are old men everywhere talking about and living in the past. That is not AA. Sharing intimate sexual and physical abuse issues about your life in mixed company at a campfire meeting or at a podium. That is not AA. That is NUTS. Gay AA is very active in many areas that I have lived in. They are not "quarantined". The last lines described what "we are taught in AA" . I was not taught any of this. None of this is in the literature. These are people, sick people, saying these things. This is not AA.
AA has become much more accessible over the past 30 years and people often come into AA before they hit bottom. (The reason hitting bottom is important is because who the hell wants to go to these meetings and do the work unless all options have been exhausted!) People who have not yet hit bottom, often do not have the level of desperation necessary to have a full recovery and so they continue to act out in behaviors that perpetuate sickness.
Many people who are alcoholics are also bi-polar, ADD, depressed, etc., and have been self-medicating with alcohol for years. But, there are also many people who are bi-polar or depressed or who have other issues who are not alcoholics but really just "heavy drinkers". AA is often a place where people are accepted and given attention for the first time in their lives. Many people, who are not really alcoholics, like this attention and they come to meetings for these reasons. These people really should not be in AA.
AA is for alcoholics: men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. There are many other organizations or therapists that can help "heavy drinkers" and "situational drinkers" whose drinking is actually a secondary issue to mental illness or situations (college, divorce, etc.) Not everyone who drinks heavily is an alcoholic.
If I had experienced AA the way the author did, I would have quit too. As an alcoholic, if I quit AA, I would be dead.
That isn't brainwashing, that is the truth.
Related posts:
the irony of a drug dealer named Joy...
I'll trade you my Christmas tree for a gram of coke.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
wakingupslowly
Ablonde
six foot skinny
Bob Eckstein
Steve Blevins
mistercomedy
Salon.com
Comments
mamoore: I love your line, "thankful for the father that it returned to me."
Juliet: Thanks for your comment. I wondered if I would be glad I wrote it:-)
And your other posts that you have linked are fascinating too.
I'm glad your path worked for you.
I can tell you from the open meetings I attended with my alcoholic ex, and my own experiences with Al-Anon, nothing in the other post struck me as foreign, inaccurate, untruthful, or out-of-character. I saw and heard nearly everything that post mentioned. I'm very, very glad for you that your own experience was different.
I'll never forget attending an open AA meeting in support of my son. We walked into a smoky room filled with people who could not have looked more different than me. I was dressed as if I had wandered in from a Sunday school potluck. They were a group who had obviously seen some difficult days; one of my first impressions was "tattoos and tube tops." I felt out of place for around 30 seconds. This group could not have been more welcoming, or more kind to my son. It was a "share" meeting, and to my embarrassment, my number was called. Again, as I shared, I felt from these people the same feeling of support and kindness and encouragement. I left thinking that this is what church was meant to be - people with no pretense, sharing honestly, meeting people where they are and extending welcome.
I haven't been to any AA meetings since, but I have been to many Alanon meetings, and I've never heard anyone tell me an evil event or experience was "God's will," or discourage me from seeing an outside therapist, or judge me in any way. So I appreciated you presenting your positive perspective - and you wrote it beautifully.
I have run into examples of the behavior described in the first post. But my sponser and friends explained that AA (like many organizations made up of people) has any number of self important jerks. It also has a lot of sick people attending. Healthy people don't come to AA in the first place. I was told just to stay away from them. But a lot of them become healthier over time.
I am an atheist. I never got any grief over this. There are people who might make an issue of this but I ignored them.
When I started going to meetings I did make an issue of it internally. It offended me that people believed in god, were Christians etc. I saw any beleifs other than mine as an attack on me. Over time I realized that I was just as intolerant as the god squad. It dosen't really matter what people believe (except in politics). What does matter is how they live and treat other people.The biggest thing I got from AA, aside from sobriety, was accepting that other peoples ideas about religion or spirituality was not a threat to me. Live and let live. If it works for them fine.
By the way, after the first 5 years, I have rarely attended meetings, sometimes going for years without going to one. I'm doing fine. I know plenty of other people the same. But I'm really glad there are people like this writer to keep it going. Whatever it's faults it literally saved my life and opened the door out of hell.
Oh how I wish I could find another non-12 step group for my wife whose response to situations where she has difficulty coping is to binge drink a quart or so of vodka until she is so poisoned that she's comatose for several days, then slowly recuperates and, never saying a word, proceeds to carry on as if nothing has happened.
She refuses AA and rebuffs efforts to suggest other assistance. But someday the love of my life may binge, pass-out and never wake up. It's frustrating not being able to help.
thank you for sharing some of your recovery with us. and for sharing so much wisdom gleaned from your years of experience and recovery. i went to open AA meetings for education and understanding and there were meetings that were just full of sick people, as you said, people whom i knew were not addicts but wanted that attention. people who were really dry alcoholics, not working the steps, just showing up for the free coffee and the attention. now there are many duel diagnosis meetings, which i think is a great blessing. because many mood disordered people and bipolar people and such really are alcoholic as well.
i'm so grateful to have you back for a short while and can't wait until you're back with us this summer. my closest friend on here is also a heroin addict with decades of recovery. i would like to put you two together at some point if that is okay. she is a lovely person, as you are.
okay, i'm off to do some actual writing. love love love and huge gratitude for giving that other post a context, for pointing out what is AA and what definitely is NOT. knowledge is power, as you know.
If you drank from 13 to 20 and sobered up at 20, I am so sorry that you spent the balance of your childhood doing that to yourself, and that no one supervised you well enough to have you busy doing other things. Learning about alcohol, essentially on your own, during the impulsive, risk-taking adolescent years, rarely leads to a moderate, mature way of handling any substance. You might want to forgive yourself that whole era, go back and re-parent yourself.
Please, step out of the labels and lifelong sentence to attending goofy meetings and engaging in mindless recitation. Forgive yourself, recognize who you are today, and that you have choices. The one and only gift God gave us when he gave us life was Free Will. Free Will is the opportunity, each day, to reflect God's love through our own thinking, speech, and action. Is this how God would want me to speak? Drink? Eat? Act? If not, what other way is reflective of God's glory? Start today. Live.
Love this post. Thank yuo for posting this response so I didn't have to, because mine wouldn't have been as good.
I came back to AA 2 years ago. I was sober for 20 years but didn't work the steps and didn't go to meetings for 15. The big difference now is I work with recovering alcoholics, and I work with a sponsor. In my opinion if you have not tried to help a newcomer work the steps you don't really know what AA is about.
The AA 3rd tradition states that "the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking". Bill W. also recognized in 12 Steps and 12 Traditions that AA membership would expand to include people who were "little more than potential alcoholics". So when people with bipolar or other mental disorders come into our rooms, we ought to welcome them as we would anyone with a desire to stop drinking. We ought to leave diagnosis to those better qualified to give it. It must be true that there are many non-alcoholics who roam AA meetings and dilute the message by using meetings as group therapy instead of sharing their experience working the steps. But what can be done about it? After all , the steps and all courses of action described in AA literature are but
suggestions. No one can be kicked out of AA. All the people i know who left AA took themselves out, whether they admit it or not. Including myself. I entertained all these resentments about how people in AA do this and that and isn't that horrible, blah blah blah.
Funny how those people don't bother me that much any more. I wonder why that is. Maybe because I embrace the concept that I ought to examine my own life and stop worrying about what other people do so much. Maybe I am trying to be an example for other people instead of griping about how people don't do to suit me and my superior brand of ethics and how the world SHOULD operate if I was the big boss, etc. Worrying about all the evil in the world never seemed to lessen any of it, did it?
Helping another suffering person find a solution has helped us both. I have seen it and experienced it. It's wonderful. Try it. If you are not in AA read the Epistle I of James in the New Testament. If you do not have a circle of friends or a fellowship in which you can discuss such things, look at your life. Are you doing anything to help another suffering human being, ever. And if not, why are you wasting time worrying about what poor sick confused people do? Are you a victim? If so it's because you have decided to be a victim. That is what is meant by "your part in it". Not your part in what happened but your part in your resentment and fear around what happened. That's what holds us back.
On sponsorship: Although not explicitly mentioned in the Big Book, there is the chapter called "Working with Others" that contains some of what has become the sponsorship concept. Bill W. did have a sponsor, Ebby T., and AA co-founder Dr. Bob reportedly sponsored over 5000 people in his 15 years of sobriety before his death in 1950. Sponsorship is explicitly mentioned in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age".
I am back in AA now and I love it. I won't take the gifts of sobriety for granted today. I have seen too much of the miracle of recovery in those who thought they were hopeless. As for individuality, I don't know of anyone who feels they have had to sacrifice one iota of it to be in AA. On the contrary, we are still just as cranky and skeptical as ever. We are just a bit more loving about it, perhaps.
it seems there are not so many ,
is there any wonder...lol
( i sense your graditude mb and i relate
Individual counseling, medication management and continuing follow-up counseling
for one year -- $3,500. Call 941-321-4104 or email to beverlyrayfield@earthlink.net
imagen a down and out drunk or junkie tryin to make this choice
spend $3,500 for the Sinclair Method or..... go get stoned
have we forgotten what we are dealing with here?
no not everyone "walks away happy"... this is why some of us are so intense about the reputation of the best know help for the alcoholic on planet earth to date