Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And really most of the people who amends are being made to got fooled way more than twice before they cut the addict out of their life. I know people who have been the giver and receiver of these kinds of behavior, and the givers who acknowledge they did bad stuff don’t expect to be cut slack, while the receivers have learned well not to trust whoever hurt them.
If you really think something is significant enough to make amends over, and you are really taking responsibility for your actions, you wouldn’t expect people to cut you slack, because you acknowledge that you were responsible for some truly awful behavior, and that you took advantage of someone’s good and forgiving nature repeatedly as part of that behavior, and that you owe the other person, not the other way around.
I’m not someone making amends. I’m saying to some of the Dopers in this thread to cut people some slack. Of course the person apologizing is in no place to ask for slack.
A lot of the posts on the first page were implying this kind of apology was selfish because they had forgotten the incident in question. But the person apologizing doesn’t know that.
Your understanding is absolutely wrong. The anonymous part isn’t directed towards members outing themselves. It is towards members outing other members.
For example, I was in a treatment center with two people who were either famous or directly related to someone famous. The famous person, were I to name them, would be instantly recognized by pretty much everyone The other person was the daughter of an actor who was exceedingly famous in the U.S. during the 70’s.
The person who is famous has actually turned up on TMZ and the news for his drinking and drug issues after we were in treatment.
On the amends piece, the step clearly states that amends should not be made if it will injure the person on the receiving end, or others.
That is always going to be a judgement call. There are two people I would dearly love to make amends to who I have not contacted because of this. The two people were dear friends until I got drunk and destroyed the relationships. The two people deserve an apology from me and I would do it in a heartbeat if I thought it would help them. But I think that they wouldn’t appreciate me popping back up to apologize. So i let it alone even though it really does bother me.
And here is the kicker, I may be making the wrong call. It could be that making amends would help them get closure or whatever. But the possibility of hurting them is more important than how I feel about it, so I made the best choice I can with what I know.
If all this stuff was clear, there wouldn’t be an issue. And that is why the alkie is supposed to go over this with a sponsor who hopefully will be able to help the person make these kinds of judgements. Obviously it is not perfect but it seems to me that trying to right past wrongs is better than trying to whitewash the past.
And I’m saying that asking people to ‘cut some slack’ to someone who burned through lots of ‘second chances’ and ‘cut me some slack, man’ a long time ago is just an awful thing to do to them. People with uncontrolled addictions do awful things to the people close to them, including lying and manipulating them, and lots of people start a treatment program end up back in their old habits. Cutting them slack just opens yourself up to being victimized yet again.