Drinking problem?

[QUOTE=stoplight]
It is not as simple as you have described.
[/QUOTE]

I was summarizing the basic premise. It was more to clarify this statement you posted, most especially the part I bolded.

[QUOTE=stoplight]
AA believes drinkers are compelled to drink, that drinking moderately only leads to the compulsion to drink more. Under that model, it is black and white, one stops drinking to end the compulsion to drink.
[/QUOTE]

I’m very familiar with the program of AA as outlined in the Big Book, and as practiced within the fellowship in my area. I’ve been exposed to /involved in the programs of AA, AlAnon, and Alateen in different capacities since I was about 9 years old.

It is one recovery model.

No, it means you are not an addict, and if you are not addicted to alcohol you are not an alcoholic. It’s very simple and laid out (briefly) in the Blue Book. The folks you meet at meetings are not trained therapists, don’t always know what they are talking about, project their own experiences on others, and, frankly, may have a bit of brain damage from the sauce. They are also often the loudest and most dogmatic members. A skill you develop as you recover is learning who you can ignore.

Something that you have to remember is that AA was originally developed by and for “last-gaspers;” people who were at the point where the decision was to either quit drinking or die in the next few months. Many of the members now were also at that point. These are people who drank hard for decades, who see things only in black and white, and the program has not fully adapted to people who are not in imminent risk of death. They say a lot you should listen to, if only to remind you that you are quitting so you don’t end up like them.

I asked one guy to be my sponsor, just because a pretty lady kept telling me I needed a sponsor. He didn’t want to do it, probably because I had made it clear I was not going to do the steps. I did not “feel emotionally attached to the process” and I still got sober. My Higher Power was the group, and I’m not the first person to say that his G.O.D. was a “Group Of Drunks.” One guy took it personally and said when it was his turn that people who use the group as their Higher Power were vampires, sucking the life force from the group. Something to prepare yourself for is that a lot of these people are nuts and you can just let their negative thinking wash over you, like water washing over a duck.

But plan on starting out completely not drinking, and set your goal as not drinking today. Worry about not drinking tomorrow, tomorrow. That is what they are talking about when they talk about taking it “one day at a time.” And at first it may be only one hour or minute at a time, but keep stringing those minutes together and you’ll soon have a day, a month, and a year. Whatever you do, don’t set up holidays when you can have a drink because you’ve “proven” you can stay sober one month or one year; too often that turns into a full relapse. And don’t listen to the scare stories about relapse. You’ll hear people say they can’t have a drink because they don’t have the strength to go through recovery again. People don’t understand how strong they really are and AA’s woo about turning yourself over to your Higher Power discourages a member from consciously growing to understand his true strength. The odds are that you will relapse, but you’re tough. You can handle it.

I recognize how my recommendation of AA is pretty feeble, but it works about as well as anything, is available anywhere, and it’s free. I wish that the other treatment paths could say that because they might suit you better. Just do something, the sooner the better, before you get a DUI because these days those will totally fuck you up.

Oh, and folks in this thread should realize that we are not only talking to each other, but also to [del]the rubes in the cheap seats[/del] the members and lurkers who are reading it but not contributing to it. As I write this there have been 2638 views of this thread, and I don’t think the dozen or so posters made all those views.

As far as I know, there are a number of free recovery methods. SMART recovery, LifeRing, and Women For Sobriety are off the top of my head. Trimpey’s book Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction can be purchased on Amazon used for under $7.50 including shipping. Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Drinking can be purchased for under $5. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous can be purchased at meetings, usually under $5 (that’s in my area). Sometimes Big Books are raffled, sometimes they are given to newcomers if the group has the money to do that.

HAMS is a harm reduction model aimed at moderation, but as I said earlier, I think permanent abstinence is much easier, and the only guaranteed method to end an addiction.

Exactly. Which is why messages of doom and gloom shouldn’t be presented as fact. “Oh well, most people like me end up dying an alcoholic death anyway, so fuck it…glug, glug, glug”

Being in the throes of an addiction is no fucking fun, and people scour the Internet desperate for answers. I would like for them to know that if for whatever reason AA is not a fit for them, they are not doomed. They can find a way out, even if they are “low bottom”. People do it every day.

I would just like to point out the OP’s user name want2befree I think that pretty much settles the issue.
The OP acknowledges there is a problem.
Now they need to fix it. I can’t fix it, you can’t fix it, only they can fix it.
AAA, cold turkey, whatever the problem needs fixing.
Good luck want2befree, if you want moral support my email is in my profile.

Alas, these all lack the ubiquity of AA. For instance, SMART Recovery has nine meetings a week in the entire state of Illinois, including one for gay men and another just for women. LifeRing has none, and I don’t have a basic qualification to find out if there are any meetings at all near me for Women For Sobriety, which seems to have its own set of wooish problems, like metaphysics and nutrition. AA’s attitude toward proper nutrition is exactly what you’d expect in an organization created by some drunk guys in the 1930s.

I, personally, was helped by having a place where I could take in a meeting every day. YMMV, and that’s only one path of many.

True, but just because meetings are everywhere doesn’t mean it’s the right solution for everyone. I mean when it comes to finding meetings “the odds are good, but the goods are odd”, right? I believe the other programs have online meetings, if f2f is not workable for whatever reason.

I also wouldn’t discount the also free path of faith. People often turn to their religious guides and fellowships in ending their addiction. Not my path, but works for others. I know more than one Christian who tells me that “God of your understanding” is not acceptable. In their faith, there is one God. You don’t get to make Him up.

That’s good for you. I’m the opposite. Sitting in a meeting every day was the last thing I wanted to do. I quit so I could be free to live my life. I had no desire to trade the bottle for a folding chair. That’s just me.

Luckily, there are more options today than ever before.

Very good point. Especially the part about “the program has not fully adapted to people who are not in imminent risk of death.”

Although there are other ways for true “lasp-gaspers” to get sober, I believe AA is a good program for people in that situation. That’s why most of the problems I have with AA are not with the AA program itself, but with all the people—especially medical professionals—who feel that AA is the one-size-fits-all solution for anyone at all who presents any type of issue they have with alcohol consumption.

With other practitioners it’s not quite as bad—they are aware that other methods may work as well or better for a given individual, yet they still recommend AA even when it might do more harm than good.

If going to AA gets one sober then it worked. Makes no difference if later on that individual decides AA is not for them as long as they remain sober by whatever means does work for them.

You ain’t just whistlin’ “Dixie.” And it’s not the medical people as much as it is the judiciary. Round here, at least, AA is the only one size that fits all if you get a DUI, and you will usually have to go to AA meetings as part of your sentence. Which crosses, recrosses, and kicks dirt all over the church and state, freedom from religion boundary because, though AA claims it is a secular program, that is not borne out by its literature or what many of its participants say.

This is why I encourage people to seek help of any sort sooner than later, so they can avoid the DUI bullshit. It’s not how it used to be; I know a guy who is pretty sure he got around 63 DWI tickets (he may have lost count) back when it used to be just a ticket. Thanks to MADD and others it quickly escalates from heavy fines and a suspended license to jail time and a lost license that can take you years and thousands of dollars to get back.

are you leaning us in the direction that MADD and others are over zealous in their pursuit of DD penalty reforms?

Could you take a second and define DUI bullshit?

Not answering for drop zone, but there seems to be an excluded middle. When I was in my 20s, I would stop at a beer distributor on my way home and buy a case of cold bottles. The brand wasn’t twist off, so the owner would ask if I wanted one opened for the road.

Some years back, about 13 years ago, there was a period where I drank too much. Probably a lot too much. Something like five drinks a day, just about every day. Never at inappropriate times, always in the evening, either in a pub with friends (and all my friends drank at least that much, or more. I think I was the lightweight in that group) or at home if I wasn’t going out that night. That period probably lasted about three years. Was I an alcoholic? I don’t know. I know that if there were days when alchohol wasn’t available, that didn’t bother me. If there was alcohol around, I would drink it, but if there wasn’t, no problem. And if I was under the weather, feeling sick, I didn’t have any desire for a drink. So was I an addict? I really don’t know.

I don’t do that any more. My desire to drink that much seems to have completely evaporated. I love a cold beer on a hot day, and on weekends I’ll have a drink before dinner, and wine or beer with dinner, and then not have another drink of anything alcoholic until the next weekend, and always in an appropriate setting. I don’t think I could stand to have five drinks in one evening.

Why the change? I’m still not sure. When I started drinking that much, some bad things had happened in my life, and I was transitioning into a new life. Maybe that’s it. I wonder, though, because I only feel like having a drink when I’m happy. It’s not when I’m down or depressed. So that might not be it. Or maybe there was something chemical. Who knows.

But if the desire hadn’t gone away, if I hadn’t reverted to normal (OK, “normal”) drinking habits, well, I don’t know where I’d be now. I know people who drink that much, and more, all the time. Some are perfectly functional, and go to work every day, and have relationships and so on. And some are in the process of destroying their lives.

As to AA, I can think of at least one person for whom it’s worked. She turned a train wreck into a great life. And I can think of another for whom AA has become her whole life. She was a drinker, although not, as far as I and the rest of her social circle could tell, a heavy drinker, and she decided that she was an alcoholic. So she joined AA, and now she can’t (and hasn’t been able to for about twenty years) so much as decide what to wear in the morning without consulting the group. She goes to meetings nearly every day. She used to go to more than one meeting a day. Maybe she still does – I don’t see her as much as I used to, because AA has more or less replaced her circle of friends. It’s hard for me to see how AA has been good for her. It may have been good for to stop drinking, but might there have been a better way for her?

So for those in this thread who say that the problem with AA is its one-size-fits-all approach, I think that’s true. I’ve seen it do great things. And I’ve seen it do not-so-great things, too.

I don’t know. I’m glad I came out that period in my life without a problem, that’s all I can say. And for anyone struggling or wondering if they have a problem, by all means try to stop. If you can’t, if you can’t go a day or two without a drink, yes, you probably do have a problem. Do something about it.

It’s a tough one to call and I’m too close to it to be an independent judge, though I’ve never had a DUI myself. MADD did a great service by calling attention to the problem, like my friend with the 63 DWIs. Politicians took it and ran with it and the pendulum swang the other way, perhaps too far. Driving while drunk means you are at the controls of a deadly weapon with impaired judgement, reactions, etc. It’s like walking down the street with a loaded gun (or swimming pool :wink: )after a couple beers, but with mandatory penalties.

It isn’t on the law’s side, it’s how drinkers rarely have a clue how fucked up their lives will be with even a first offense. I have a friend who is readying herself for week vacation on the county’s dime after her second offense. She will love it in jail, though–since joining AA she has gone into it whole hog, is a mentor for every drunk teen girl in the county, and has already doubled or tripled the 240 hours of community service the law calls for as an alternative to jail, just because she likes it. I almost pity the other women in jail. She’s an exemplary drunk driver, but if even she gets the book thrown at her that hard, someone who is not working on sainthood has lots to worry about. Best thing is to just avoid it.

This is especially true with AA because it is ubiquitous, and your six degrees of separation from any other member can be expected to be, in practice, three or less. Then there are the ones you know from outside AA, who can be a problem. People like to talk, especially crazy people, and there is a fair number of crazies in AA. Case in point:

Tying back to another thread, I was telling my wife how all the middle-aged Black women at work have taken a shine to me. She said, “I hope it doesn’t end up like AA.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocent like.

“I hear you cut quite the swathe with the ladies there.”

I knew who the blabbermouth was, what she would’ve seen, and how she would’ve blown it out of proportion, because she did it at meetings, too, and is, on a good day, poorly medicated and, on a bad day, completely unmedicated. Wife knows this, too, and was having fun jerking my chain.

“I heard it from other people, too,” which means that woman spread it around church because I know most of the people my wife knows and that’s the only point where the set intersects. I asked, “Who else?” and we said in unison, “I can’t tell you because they are supposed to be anonymous.” I said it with a tone of resignation, and she said it with a tone of sadistic glee, then melodramatically put her wrist to her forehead and said, “Alas, the wife is always the last to know.”

Being a compulsive explainer (see: my every post), I told of how, when I was unemployed, I had a “home meeting” at 5:30PM. I’d arrive early because it was air conditioned, and sat by myself and read or wrote. There were two tables that were always in use at that meeting: one was called the Crazy Table for obvious reasons (the blabber sat there), and the other I called the Middle-Aged Flirts Table. I would usually move to that one for the meeting, though it was gross watching them flirt, but one time my fake sponsor (a guy can’t have a female sponsor), who is that “exemplary DUIer” I mentioned earlier (this was last year–I don’t know how fine the wheels of justice grind, but they turn exceedingly slow–more of the bullshit). Her flock of chicks grew and we soon had a minyan and could have our own sub-meeting. I was usually the only man there and the guys from the Flirt Table would rib me for having a harem and hogging all the attractive women, though the women weren’t there because of me, but because of my fake sponsor. And because they wouldn’t get flirted with.

I felt out of place but I got a job and I could stop going, but my image as a Lothario lives on in that woman’s mind, and has spread. But this is not an argument against going. You have probably not hidden your excessive drinking nearly as well as you think, and true friends will be happy you are finally doing something about it.

Dropzone, in my experience with the fellowship, you would be considered a maverick. One who benefits from the program, but hasn’t entirely drunk the kool-aid. If the rooms were filled with people like you, I would probably still attend. Unfortunately (again, my experience) folks like you are rare among the recovery group population. Luckily, one doesn’t need a 12 step model to recover.

Yeah, I’ve wanted to develop my own program because people would take me aside and lecture me after meetings about how I wasn’t following the program and should keep my independent thoughts to myself.

[aside] During the 2008 presidential campaign the doyenne of the Maverick clan, a Yellow Dog Democrat with family ties to the Democratic Party in Texas that go back to statehood, publicly objected to John McCain calling himself a maverick. I emailed her to thank her and we discussed how her family’s name has been abused and misused over the years. She did say that Jim Garner was a welcome member of the family. [/aside]

Exactly. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees.

The program guarantees nothing and never mentions a cure for addiction or ever mentions something as ridiculous as a success rate.

There is an expression - It works if you work it (their 12 step program). So they believe in their program. It’s helped a few people.

Another expression popular is - Take what you need and leave the rest.

If you have a problem with addiction there are worse places to attempt recovery. And if you try AA and don’t like it, or it becomes too preachy, you’re free to get up and leave and never return to another meeting.

This from chapter 5 of the Big Book:

So yeah, basically if it doesn’t work for you, you’re flawed.
Not the most positive message, and not one I personally subscribe to.