Ever been the recipient of "making amends"?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Oh lordy, I expressed a less than entirely positive opinion of an organization based on multiple (not one single) experience and of how it works when people are forced into it by court. If that means I ‘shat’ on the organization by daring to offer some mild criticism, I wonder how you would describe someone who actually said they were a bad organization who only does awful stuff?

When an organization has a cultlike following, they tend to dismiss any criticism from outsiders and refuse to engage said criticism in an honest manner. For example, they might simply deny that something that happens routinely ever actually happens (that people get forced into AA programs and make progress in them), or they might exaggerate mild criticism to the level of ‘shat on the organization’ in an attempt to make it look unreasonable.

62

You are getting your information from the people going through the program not the ones they have wronged. The response from the people on the receiving on this thread has been overwhelmingly negative, with one notable exception. The explanation is obvious. The making of amends was negative for the person on the receiving end, but people in the program report it as a positive experience. The reality is that the thousands of positive experience you’ve heard were probably accompanied by negative experiences.

ETA: Ugh snooze you lose

63

So how much meeting and discussing are you doing with the recipients of amends? It sounds like you’re only talking to the people in the program who make amends, who have good reason to view the results in an excessively positive light (if you perceive the other person as forgiving you, you can move on, while if you interpret them as brushing you off, it’s harder), or to shade their recollection so they can fit in with people telling success stories, or to just leave off any amends that didn’t go well.

64

I’m certain there are good amends stories (there’s one in this very post as a matter of fact). I also note that a lot of the bad ones (mine included!) are coming in situations where the person in recovery is less making amends to people who are still in their life (or seizing the moment when they run across someone they wronged in the past) than when people in recovery track down people they wronged who are no longer parts of their lives specifically to make amends because it’s on their list.

People get really enthusiastic about their recovery a lot - which is a good thing overall - but the temptation to spread the love, so to speak, can be pretty overwhelming. It’s worth noting that in a lot of ways, the default with this particular step ought to be to keep it confined to the people still in your life. By all means, make a list of everyone you’ve wronged - even the people who aren’t part of your life anymore. By all means, if any of those people are still in your life, you most definitely should try to make it up to them. But if people are on your list and not in your life? Perhaps put some lengthy and serious consideration about whether intruding into their life is appropriate, with the default position being “not so much”.

65

Especially since the relapse rate for participants in these 12 step programs is pretty high (a lot higher than 0%, anyway). So the person being contacted is taking a risk that you’re contacting them with good intentions but having been allowed back into their lives will then relapse into the same behavior that you’re now trying to make amends for, and they’re now a lot worse off than before you started.

Of course, it depends what “make amends” means. If it means a phone call to say sorry, then no big deal, for the most part (unless the person was so traumatized by what you’ve done to them that they’ve spent years trying to forget you exist). But if you want some extended and involved “amends”, I would say it’s not a good idea for reasons given.

66

The person who should have apologized never did, but that’s okay because eventually we cut him off. After that I think he might have tried. (A little back story: Before my husband and I were together, we had both separately kicked him out of our places when he was staying there to “try to get his shit together,” and then after we were together we once jointly kicked him out yet again. And in all instances he said, “I forgive you for kicking me out.”)

The person who did nothing in fact did apologize for anything she might have done. The worst she did was when we were coworkers, and I was out of town on business, and she organized my desk. DIsaster. But not because she was a drunk.

67

Pretty sure that I was on the recipient end of one of those here with board PMs. I respond back that I don’t remember anything from them, and get nothing.

Appreciated it anyways, though.

68

Well, I have been on the receiving end of amends more than you might think judging by your posts.

I have refused to hear amends from some people. Usually ones that are using the revolving door.

One is from someone who stole from me, big money in my world. $7000.00 I won’t even talk to him until I get my money back and he learned the hard way to not use me for a reference.

Those that are making the case that all recovering drunks and members of AA only hear the ‘maybe true’ stories from the drunk trying to get right side are just showing how little they know about the program. Only one story in this thread so far seems to have been from a truly recovering addict and all those that sat through one from these other folks who, if described accurately should have been refused a meeting or a phone call or anything. You are doing more damage than good for that person. if that is your intent, fine but don’t go painting all the other people in the recovery programs with that same brush.

A lot of folks don’t make it, don’t make it the first time and some get it right away. Their is no authority that OK’s anyone on the time to do anything. As a sponsor, you should be guiding but that does not work a lot of the time.

If a person has 1/10 of my time in sobriety & 1/10 the number and different meeting in 1/20 the different cities, you might get me to rethink a position and all this total lack of knowledge about addiction and the recovery to a good and enjoyable life that is being displayed is just average noise.
Anyone with some time in the program who is doing it well and actually achieving some sobriety, not just being a dry drunk as so many are will not do what you are describing.

Facts are not disputable, maybe not provable in this case but to judge me without knowing me and tell me where & what I have learned or know is kind of like a person who has never seen an airplane telling me how to fly one, what with me having more than 10,000 hours pilot in command time. ( PIC )

Do you all know anyone who is in recovery and living well sober? That did not do any harm with their amends? I know a hundreds personally, families, friends of people in recovery, heard many a recounting of amends gone wrong done by them of on the receiving end.

This thread is like so many from the past on this very board that just passes on more incorrect information and never changes many minds.

One person says they have learned something good as per their knowledge base.

That is okay. Just don’t think you have much if any of the truth of what the programs are. You just have a 1-6 set of bad experiences.

Does not make a program with millions of recovering people irrelevant.

Those that think AA is a cult are so far out in left field they are not even in the ball park. But they are free to think it. Free to say it just as I am free to live a good life partly because of AA.

Carry on…

69

I’ve never received amends, but my sister did once. It was someone from when she was in junior high and at worst it was junior high pissiness. She got taken to lunch and got to hear about the former problem, which she figured was a decent trade. She had been unaware that the other girl had been drinking.

Ouch!

70

The stuff you describe did not match my experience with 12-step programs (I just chalked it up to “Your mileage may vary”), but then you said this, and I realized I HAVE experienced that.
When I was in High School, my father and I attended some counseling sessions. The counselor suggested (insisted, really) that I attend some meetings of … a group for the family members of alcoholics. Specifically, the one for teenagers.
For various reasons this was a terrible idea.
The more I got to know the other people in the group the more I learned that we had almost nothing in common. They had a lot in common, but almost the only thing they had in common with me was an immediate family member who is an addict. Which is not a basis for a close relationship.

I attended a lot of 12-step meetings in my life, mostly because the person who needed them couldn’t find a babysitter. I always felt welcome as an acknowledged outsider, or more accurately “addict-adjacent”. But the ones I attended that were supposed to be a support group for me made me never want to have anything to do with the people involved ever again.

71

Indeed.
For this reason, at least a few decades back when I attended a few meetings, one was not supposed to identify themselves as part of the program publicly.
You may have noticed that I refer in my posts to having attended meetings of “a 12-step program”, but I never say which one. I am not trying to be evasive, but when I attended such meetings part of the agreement was that, should I refer to it publicly, I would not say the name of the program.

I was a bit surprised to see some posters here identify themselves as participants in AA. My understanding was that one should not do that. Not like you can’t admit to having been to a meeting.
I have attended an AA meeting.

But the poster who said they had been in AA for 22 years? My understanding was that you should always use the generic “a 12-step program” in a statement like that.

72

I am reminded of one of the best apologies I have ever heard of. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what was said, but the description of it should describe all good apologies.
The backstory: a famous person had publicly said something offensive about a small group of people. (Exactly who and what was said isn’t relevant, and opens an whole can of worms, so let’s ignore it.) He met with the people and their lawyer, and after the meeting the lawyer said to the press, “We are satisfied that he knows what he said that was wrong, he knows why it was wrong, and that he did not know these things when he said it.”
He knows what he did that offended us. He knows why we were offended. And we know he didn’t mean to offend us.
That must have been a GOOD apology.

73

Why? Says who? What difference does it make?

People use “AA” colloquially to mean any 12-step-program anyway, half the time, it seems.

74

As I learned it, you can out yourself anytime.
Saying which meeting on which days is less free form.

We are not supposed to out anyone else.

We are not supposed to identify others or ourselves in the media but some self identify. Do not identify anyone else… people in the audience get the idea that they are speaking for the 12 step program which they are not even if they think they are ( idiots abound in everyplace ) which is the same thing a lot of folks here seem to think.

75

It’s funny to me that so many behaviours people now interpret in the worst possible way and consider selfish. Now even trying to make amend for past transgressions can be filed in that way, apparently.

I think cut people some slack. Even if they’re not doing a great job of making it right, at least they remembered you, felt badly about it, and want to fix things.
Bringing it up again might upset you, or it might make your day to hear the apology. How can they know? All they can go with is what seems to be morally right.

OTOH if a programme is telling people they must find someone to apologize to, and the whole thing is forced, and the person is not really sorry, that’s different. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in the anecdotes so far.

76

Once, in a second-hand sort of way. Early on in the recent Recession (maybe 2009 or so), my sister was working in the charitable outreach office of the parish where our parents attended church, and where I had gone to Catholic school from 1965-1970 (and which she had attended until 1973). As a pupil there, I had not been particularly well-treated by my classmates, and, while in hindsight, my personality traits probably didn’t entitle me to a WHOLE lot better, it would be fair to say that bullying had taken place.

One day, a man, about my age, and down on his luck, came in to see if he could get any help. The economic downturn had been particularly hard on him (he may have been in the financial services field, and was definitely a casualty of the disasters of 2008). When he recognized my sister, he identified himself as a member of the Class of '70, and confessed that as one of the most popular boys in the school, he could and should have done something to put a stop to the abuse he had watched me receive (to be sure, while I had no illusions at the time that he disapproved, I don’t recall him being an active participant).

Anyway, he asked my sister to convey his regrets for having stood by forty years prior. I was quite taken aback when she told me all this, and I hope all is well with him today.

77

Three reasons:

  1. no member of the organization is authorized to speak for the organization. Asking members to not identify themselves as members prevents them from accidentally seeming like spokesmen.
  2. Anonymity is a big part of the organization. If you see a celebrity or your neighbor at a meeting, you are not supposed to identify them to anyone else at the meeting, and you are not supposed to tell anyone else you saw them there. Not being able to say what organization’s meeting you were attending adds another layer, and serves as a reminder that you can’t talk about what happened there.
  3. People fall off the wagon. While this is acknowledged as an unfortunate fact, there is a level of difference between learning that a fellow addict fell off the wagon and learning that someone in the very same program as you fell off the wagon. For a person who is desperately searching for a reason why it would be okay for them to take a drink, the second one can seem like that reason.
    But as I said, mostly it surprised me because one of the things the 12-step programs I have experience with all shared was teaching that you do not publicly say which program you are in. Whatever their reasons are, they all had them, and had held that as a policy for half a century or more. So I was surprised to find they have changed, or that posters here were willing to ignore that prohibition.
78

An ex who thoroughly screwed me over (had affair, tossed me out of the house, took the dogs, turned into a Krazy Kristian because new love was one . . .) Emailed me 10 years later to “make amends.”

No. Just no. Suffer with whatever guilt you have, I’m not gonna make you feel better about what you did.

79

No one but you used the phrase ‘truly recovering addict’, and what you’re arguing is just a variation of the old ‘no true scotsman’ logical fallacy - what you’re saying is that if someone doesn’t make amends right, then they just don’t count as being someone in AA trying to make amends, which is absurd and dismissive of the experiences of people who have had a bad time, and of problems that the program has.

No one said that AA is a cult, but AA definitely has some cultlike characteristics, like I said. Your repeated insistence that no one can know about it unless they’re in it, for example, is the ‘outsiders can’t possibly be right, we have the secret knowledge’ mindset that is very common in cults.

80

We don’t have any secret knowledge, alas, but people without any direct or indirect AA experience are wont to make sweeping statements about it. That’s not directed at you, by the way. It hasn’t been an issue in this thread, but it is in most AA threads on the board.

I can see the cult thing. Every now and again, someone will go on and on about how fabulous AA is, how it’s the only thing going, etc., etc., quoting the Big Book, repeating the slogans. I tend to tune that out. They need it, I don’t.