How do you deal with being wished a merry Christmas or a thoughtful and introspective Yom Kippur? You smile politely because you don’t want to offend the believers, ignore the religious shit, and avoid the meetings where they discuss Step 2, especially Bill W’s own expansion on it in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which is*** really*** offensive.
AA is a tool, originally intended only for the hardcore, just weeks or months from death, and frankly brain-damaged drunk grasping at a last straw. It was not intended to be generalized and the founders used to shoo away the less desperate. (And women, who were assumed to be unlikely or even incapable of reaching a proper rock bottom, being dainty, fragile souls.) As a tool, it does its best work when used on what it was designed for. However, AA is a hammer and the causes and solutions for alcoholism are not always nails.
As I’ve mentioned in other threads, I’ve just recently given up alcohol myself (15 days sober!) after a bad experience with withdrawal. While I was in the hospital, my mother, who went down the same path once, brought me a copy of the AA book, which I’ve read some of. (Haven’t been to any meetings yet, but I probably will when I start therapy in a few weeks.) The single biggest thing I’ve taken away from the stories in it is “Wow, at least I never got as bad as these guys were”.
The things you haven’t done are called “yets,” as in you haven’t done them yet, but keep drinking and you might!
A lot more people find AA before they lose everything, as compared to when the book was written and compiled. Quite a few young people sober up early and save themselves decades of grief. You’re on the relatively young end of the continuum, no?
Yeah, what Emiliana said. It was a sort of failure of vision by the founders, but the other people who needed it found it, anyway.
Fifteen days is great, Smapti! We (not it!) could probably start a running “meeting” thread in MPSIMS, incorporating some of the non-AA fixes people here have found.