Ex-Alcoholics Anonymous -- successful grads, or sodden drunks?ds

I hope this isn’t in the wrong forum, but it seemed like a “what’s your experience” question, rather than a “factual information” question, so I didn’t put it in General Questions. I’m not particularly looking for cites, so I didn’t put it in Great Debates, either. Here’s hoping I got it right.

It is my impression that Alcoholics Anonymous says that you either are an alcoholic or you are not, and more or less implies that if you go to A.A. and don’t stick, you are probably deluded and definitely doomed. Does anyone know anyone who went to A.A., stopped going, went back to drinking (although not to excess, presumably) and did fine? This is not meant to belittle the seriousness of alcoholism by any means. But with the prevalence of 12-Step programs and the increasing awareness people have regarding addictions, I was wondering if there are people who “Admitted they were powerless over alcohol,” then discovered otherwise. What comes most readily to mind is collegiate binge drinking. Surely not all undergrad drunks evolve into true alcoholics. Surely not everyone who walks into A.A. finds that they really belong there, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

I was thinking about this because of an incident at work (Family Court) where one of the litigants said that they had attended A.A. at one time in their life, but no longer found it to be necessary. The Referee I was working with basically scoffed at the idea that someone could go to A.A. and not be an alcoholic. Therefore, presumably, the litigant was either consciously lying about their current intake or “in denial.” True, or not?

This question is addressed to A.A. members and non-members alike, so posting to this thread does not imply that the poster is or has ever been a member. I don’t want to compromise anyone who is trying to be Anonymous.

I went to Alanon for (hmm) lots of years, was married to a guy in AA for 5 years (the marriage). He’s been sober now for (hmmm) 20 years, yep. I believe he stopped going to meetings about a decade ago. no, he doesn’t drink, he’s semi substituted a deep religious base for the AA community.

as for the folks who went to AA for a long time, stopped going and at some point drank again. Anectdotal info only - they all fell flat on their respective faces w/in fairly short period of time. THis is not to say that it’s impossible. I’ve just not seen anyone do that particular gig. I’ve seen quite a few w/like 10 years sobriety, start up again and get right back at square one. YMMV.

The Village Voice had an interesting article about A.A. recently, right here. It generated a huge amount of mail.

I tried A.A. several times in several States over a 15 year period. I just couldn’t get into it. I guess it’s not for everybody. However, the fact remains that I am a person who really has to stay away from alcohol/drugs permanently. I just can’t handle the stuff. I’ve been drug/alcohol free for a couple of years now without A.A. How did I do it? By screwing up so many times and saying “enough is enough” so many times that being sober finally stuck. (The last straw was when I ended up in a homeless shelter). There are a couple other threads about A.A. floating around this board…I’m not going to bash A.A. here though I must admit I smile and agree when other people do. So I’ll just say it’s not for me. But the fact remains that when I drink or do drugs my life falls apart.

There are several alternatives to ‘12 step programs’ that are available and have well documented success in helping people cope with addictive behaviours.

The 12 step programs are however very easy to administer and require very little specialised help to maintain and thus provide a very cost effective programme that works for a large number of people.

It is IMHO to recover from some forms of addictive behaviour patterns. However this almost always requires specialist help and is dependent on the cause of the symptoms. As AA is specifically design to avoid specialist involvement as much as possible it can be difficult for people to move beyond the behaviour control and modification system that this program establishes.

AA is good, it helps lot of people there are however alternative that may b better for an individual, they all however cost more.

Hmmm. Bit of both, here. I tried AA, but couldn’t get behind some of the basic premises…like “I admit I am powerless over alcohol.” NOT TRUE. the only way to get sober is to overcome that powerlessness. And the thing about “higher powers”…whenever I questioned that (being an agnostic) I was told the “higher power” could be me.

It all seemed rather disingenuous, plus I don’t agree with the disease/denial model of alcoholism. I don’t have any cites, but I have read more than once that quitting cold turkey has a lower rate of recidivism than AA. However, clearly AA is of extreme value to many people; one can’t dispute that. Doesn’t work for me, though. Am I an alcoholic? You bet. Have I slipped? Yes. Do I consider myself a recovering alcoholic? Absolutely.

Is someone who goes to a few AA meetings & then finds themselves able to drink in control an alcoholic? NO. That is the definition…there is no control over alcohol, if you are an alcoholic. None. If you can regularly limit yourself to a certain # of drinks, you are not, IMO, an alcoholic. You may have a “problem”…you may be working up to being an alky, you may be in some pre-alcoholic stage, but you are not a full-blown alcoholic.

In my younger years I took on a regular basis pot, acid, speed, angel dust, heroin & alcohol. The only thing I got truly addicted to was booze. Go figure.

AA isn’t for everybody just like peanut butter isn’t for everybody - it works for some and doesn’t for others.

There was an article in Timeweek a while back about people who were NOT alcoholics, in the AA sense of the word. IOW, the article talked about people with drinking problems who, with hard work and therapy, could go out and have a drink or two with dinner, and then go home. AA subscribes to the theory that alcohol, no matter how much or how often, is wrong.

In a similar vein, I read another similar article regarding ciagrettes - that is, people who can smoke 3 or 4 cigarettes a day or a week or a month and don’t become addicted. Anti-smoking activists don’t know what to make of them, was the gist of the article.

That being said …

My sister recently celebrated her third (AA) birthday, and I couldn’t be prouder. When she drank she was a COMPLETELY different person.

it works and it doesn’t.
when i was 12 i started doing hard drugs. that led to a regular habit of drinking and smoking pot. i did this at least three times a day, everyday, for 3 years. me and my friends decided that we needed to stop, so the three of us started going to AA meetings together once a week. when we weren’t there, we hung out with eachother and kept sober. after a year and a half, we stopped going, but still kept sober for a while. one friend started drinking at parties a few months before his 2 years, then turned this into a regular habit. he eventually started getting so drunk at parties that he couldn’t remember to not smoke pot, so that became a habit for him again. not too long after, the other friend started smoking alot of pot again. still does. i am the success story. i have been sober for almost 6 years now, and have not faltered. i have something to keep me sober, though, and the other two don’t. now i don’t know what to think, if it works or not. they’re way too up on the higher power thing though…

I went to AA as a younger man. Not for alcohol, but for drugs. I was living in a halfway house, so I had to attend meetings. I grew up in an AA family. It was awful. I’m glad it works for those it works for those it works for, but I was really put off by the pettiness and judgementalism. There was so much gossip and backstabbing. I understand that it need not be that way, but that was my experience.

As far as going back to drinking, I imagine that there are a few who successfully swing it, but most folks will end up in situations which are similar to what brought them to AA in the first place.

It’s hard to get sober if you’re a person for whom AA makes sense. I wouldn’t suggest going back to drinking if you’ve made some headway against your own vices. For almost all drunks, returning to drinking with the idea that you can handle it is nothing more than denial.

If you go back to drinking without abusing it, keeping it within the narrow realm of social drinking, then you were not an alcoholic to begin with, but probably an alcoholic dependent. If you have been to or considered AA, then you probably have some of their pamphlets describing the average drunk. Do you match?

To make it simple, a real alcoholic never recovers, never is able to actually drink again though legends and stories have gone about concerning a very, very few who have. Now, a few might be able to control their drinking with an iron will after going to AA, but, if so, they are probably less than 1/2 of 1 percent.

You do not have to follow the AA 12 step program, but you need a Higher Power and any Higher Power you choose will do. You do not have to have a sponsor, nor join any ‘group,’ nor read every page of the Big Book by Bill W, nor agree with the various opinions and methods AA has to keep sober.

But, you do need a desire to be sober and stay that way. You do need to go to some meetings and there are so many that you can find one which suits you. AA is full of people and none are perfect, and do not expect them to be all knowing and cooperative in the area of staying sober but they help each other out.

There are many nonalcoholic reasons why a person might drink far too much for too long, then, with help or by themselves, sober up and go back to social drinking. A true alcoholic cannot do that because eventually, he or she will go right back to being a sodden drunk no matter how many years they stayed sober in-between bouts. It might take them only 20 minutes from the first drink in 10 years or they might manage to control it for several months, but the inevitable will always happen and they will return to being a drunk.

KING RAT has a good post because AA will not help you until you are willing to help yourself. Nor do many folks like how AA is run. I used to take friends of mine to meetings and it bothered some of them to be in groups of men and women who were in various stages of recovery, some absolutely fanatical about AA and some, understandably, argumentatively questioning it, then those who were there by police order could be picked out by their attitude and looks. There were quibbles between ‘old timers’ who sobered up Cold Turkey, went through the sweats, the shakes, the dry heaves, the heebie jeebies and swore It Wuz The Best Way and the ‘new guys’ who sobered up in DETOX, under heavy tranquilizers, being pumped full of IV fluids containing various additives to replace what drinking had stripped from their system, sleeping through the worst 24 to 48 hours, never going through DTs (Delirium Tremors – a hellish, often hallucinatory state), and waking up feeling run down, but not like death warmed over.

Some folks, like my friends, get uncomfortable in such groups. You’ll probably even see, and smell, people in there who are not only still drinking, but drunk. AA doesn’t care if you show up drunk, because many of them made their first meetings plastered. You just have to want to get sober and stay that way.

But, the simple fact that YOU ARE NOT ALONE
in your misery and that so many people have done what you have done, gone through what you have gone through and faced the awful process of sobering up, helps tremendously. AA has helped a whole lot of people get sober and stay that way without going through the whole process of Sponsor, Group and 12 steps.

AA-er’s have seen it all and been there. They know that 90% of the recovering alcoholics from their first meeting will probably ‘slip’ and go back to drinking. Some do it within weeks, some do it after years, some do it several times, some keep on doing it, with long periods of sobriety in-between. Mostly, they go back to sobriety and AA within a short period of time. The main thing is, they have to have the desire to stop drinking.

You are not looked down on if you have slips. They understand. Many develop acquaintances there who will help one and another stay sober and there is a hotline for a drunk who is getting ready to start drinking again and help is provided if he calls.

You do not have to be a registered member to benefit from AA, for, if you really want to stop drinking, and it might take several trys, you’ll get what you need to help you along. They, being boozers and smokers, even have many smoking meetings where you may smoke as you participate without being bitched at and lectured.

From what I have learned, the only ‘drug’ harder to kick than booze is tobacco. All the rest are pretty easy in comparison and the alcohol taste can flare up at any time, no matter how long you have been sober, but you control it and it goes away. Several AA people have good naturedly (I think) griped about how after they sobered up, suddenly every place they go into it seems are stocking these new beers in flavors and brands they never even heard of and never tried and, now, they never would.

You know, they’re restricting the tobacco industry but letting the alcohol producers ‘push’ their addicting drugs with little control and alcohol kills almost as many people a smoking does.

The temptations are real darn high for recovering alcoholics because not only is booze everywhere, but you are urged to drink it because it will make you have fun, feel good, be manly, cool, sexy, and an all round better person. They came out with Lite Beer, and people guzzled it, especially women, thinking it had less calories. It doesn’t. It has less carbonation so you don’t get too full and you get to drink lots more! (Clever, isn’t it?)

Then Ice Beer. Most of them taste kind of dull, but they freeze the beer into a slush, then scoop out much of it which is mainly water. Alcohol will not freeze and chilling reduces the loss of carbonation so when they get done, you have a beer with a higher alcohol content that will get you blasted much more quickly. (Also clever.)

Drinking penalties are going up and the companies are churning out new drinks like crazy. Beer coolers now have beers in them from Microbreweries and flavored ones, ‘hard’ lemonade, ‘real hard’ cider, coolers, and at least one popular bar and grill brews their own beer on the grounds.

It gets rough for a newly recovering alcoholic because this legal ‘drug’ is not hidden, not becoming socially unacceptable, no one produces commercials telling anyone how stupid, devious, greedy and selfish the makers are or how rotten it is for you to use the product and every store allowed to carry booze in various forms has great, tasty looking displays of the stuff, begging one to just drink up!! And, tastier forms of booze keep showing up.

AA helps one avoid the temptation. Usually, though, the alcoholic has to hit bottom before he or she is finally ready to make a genuine effort to sober up.

I know. I joke about knocking back beers in my posts, but I’m a recovering alcoholic, seven years sober this time. I was 10 years sober, without AA, when I slipped and became a drunk for a year, and paid for it, and decided to sober up for good. I figured I could drink again, and started with a glass of wine after work. Within a month, it was a bottle of wine after work, then most of a gallon and then sneaking it into work in my attache case and being drunk all of the time. They say that each time you stop drinking and go back, it gets worse and they were not kidding.

I chose wine, thinking since it was not whiskey, I could handle it better. I was real damn wrong. I no longer attend AA meetings and I did not use the Big Book nor have a Sponsor nor do the 12 steps, but they helped me anyhow and if the urge to drink gets too strong, they’ll be there if I need to attend some meetings to keep from drinking again.

It gets easier the longer you are sober, now, try to take my darn smokes and I’ll have to fight you over that! :slight_smile:

Alcoholics are, we have learned, genetically addicted to booze and most of us have addictive personalities, so we have to be careful of drugs also. Many of us smoke, which is an alternative addiction and some will coffee by the gallon, which is another form of it. Many of us are under treatment for depression and other psychiatric disorders.

We’re not all bums either, but politicians, doctors, lawyers, bankers, psychiatrists, builders, reporters, land lords, rich, well off, average and poor. We come in all colors, all ages, both sexes and all religions.

Well, I’ve said enough. Much more and this post will have to be printed, bound and sold by the volume. :slight_smile:

Just because you show up at a 12 step meeting doesn’t mean you’re an addict. Many are sentenced to 12 step meetings(in LA, offenders usually have to attend 30 meetings).

I’ve known about a dozen people who were actually in the program, decided later they weren’t addicts and went back out there.

2 are still alive.

It’s not for everybody, but my mom has nearly 25 years of sobriety. Apparently I scared her into AA just by showing up on the scene. Looking back, I can understand; barely 22, here’s this baby who wasn’t exactly planned, and knowing damn well you have a drinking problem. I will happily take any credit she wants to give me.

I don’t think much of sending people there via court, though. I always the whole point was that when the individual got to a point where they were ready to deal with the problem, THAT was where programs can be helpful. Not just because Joe Schmoe has 47 DUIs and clearly IS an alcoholic does that mean he’s going to get anything at all out of AA.

AA’s take is that you are an alcoholic if you say you are. No one else can make that decision for you.

The VV article is misleading. Most AA groups are not intolerant of talking about other problems…but let’s face it: there are 12-Step groups for everything now, so why not stick to the subject of the meeting you’re in?

I am an alcoholic by anyone’s definition. I, too, used & abused many other substances for many years, including IV cocaine & heroin…but alcohol was always my primary drug of choice, caused the most problems, and has been the hardest to quit.

I have tried to control and/or abstain from my drinking in many ways, including: will power, education, nutrition, exercise, meditation, psychotherapy, medication, religion, rehab/treatment centers, substitute addictions, behavior modification, AA, and infinite combinations of the above. AA has been the MOST help to me, although I haven’t been entirely successful with that, either. My personal observation is that those who follow AA suggestions 100% do stay sober. I don’t know why it works; it just works.

IMHO, true alcoholics are never cured. It’s like diabetes: you can treat it daily and keep the disease at bay, but you’ll always be diabetic. Alkies like me might stay sober for a while without outside help. I have. We might even drink responsibly for short periods of time. I have. But sooner or later, untreated alcoholism rears its ugly head and all control is lost. That’s me. YMMV.
P.S. I’m 9 months sober and attending AA meetings. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And another thing…

Don’t let the “Higher Power” stuff give you the wrong impression. Despite what a few would have you believe, AA is NOT about religion or anything else but staying sober. What Alcoholics Anonymous (the “Big Book”) really says is that an alcoholic needs to believe in something, anything, that is more powerful than himself. That can be God, Goddess, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, AA, Good Orderly Direction, one’s full potential, Mother Nature, The Universe, any damn thing.

I came into AA an agnostic and was quite hostile toward all religions. I’m still nonreligious (but much more tolerant) and I have my own nonconformist views on spirituality. Wanna talk about it? I’d love to-- but that’s another thread entirely.

The point is that my ego tells me I can do it alone. For years I believed that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. With surrender comes victory…I don’t have to fight anymore.

TN, Neon & other FOBs* ~ I want to congratulate you first of all on your sobriety, yay for you!

I didn’t want to sound too negative in my first post about AA. Sometimes it’s the destination, not the journey…It’s a wonderful program that has probably saved millions of lives, whether it becomes a life long habit, or a temporary resource.

I’m an on-again off-again member of AA, with over 8 years’ sobriety.

I’ve been to meetings in many different parts of the country, and I think geography has a lot to do with how meetings are conducted and what gets discussed.

In Texas, where I live now, IMO, there’s more sharing about what’s going on and how people are feeling, and less about treatment or rehab or who’s working what step and how.

For a time, when I was living in Minnesota, I had to stop going to meetings because the people reminded me so much of Stuart Smalley that I wasn’t getting anything out of them except a lot of platitudes and affirmations and no small amount of some very sick thinking and behavior that was justified by the phrase “My sponsor/therapist/counselor/whoever said it was OK”

I think what’s got the most pervasive (and ambivalent) effect in 12-step recovery at this point is the professionalization of these programs. It’s very common now for people to come into AA from a rehab center. Some of these centers are excellent, and do a wonderful job of helping people get and stay sober by offering both mental health and physical health services, or access to these. Hazelden, for example, runs an excellent 12-step based program that is staffed by professional counselors, psychiatrists, social workers, and regular medical doctors and offers extensive follow-up programs for its graduates. Many of their staffers are themselves in recovery. Programs like this help make AA accessible to those who might not find it on their own.

Unfortunately, the dark side to this is the fact that all too many rehabs are run as profit-making enterprises, with focus less on the patient than on the bottom line. I worked at one that refused to accept insurance because accepting insurance meant having to subject themselves to review by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO), whose scrutiny they didn’t want. Consequently, they had to drop their fees to attract patients, their facility went into disrepair, and they laid off their staff because they couldn’t attract patients.

Many “counselors”, too, milk the profit machines for all they’re worth, often pushing some agenda in the process. Pick up the recovery newspaper in any sizable city, and you’ll find articles and ads touting the latest and greatest in addiction and behavioral theory. Note the use of the word “theory”. Very few of these have any kind of reliable research backing them up and almost none of them would withstand scientific scrutiny; it’s almost as though this comes to these people in a dream. Sadly, these people can cause long-term psychological (and occasionally physical) damage in their clients. Many of them make their money off AA’s success by linking themselves to that organization.

I would strongly advise anyone looking into AA to 1) if necessary, check out a GOOD rehab program. Your insurance company will often cover these and can give you names and addresses; 2) to weigh what is said in meetings against your own common sense and NEVER take anything said personally or literally; and 3) don’t do everything someone tells you to do. Find and keep a good sponsor whom you trust to walk you through the steps and don’t listen to the advice freely given in meetings; it’s not worth it.

Robin

I come from a big family of alcoholics. I was 12 or so when I tried pot, and booze and drugs went hand in hand until I was 31. Blackouts every night were the norm for me. I went to one AA meeting. I didn’t like it. I got lucky and met a very supportive man (whom I later married) who helped me to overcome my active alcoholism. But it was my desire to quit that got me through. I’ve tried “social” drinking since, and felt the out-of-control feelings beginning to return and stopped again. I’ve been sober 11 years now, no booze, cocaine or pot. Woo-hoo!

Hmmm… I’ve been clean & sober for almost 13 years now. No one in AA told me that I was an alcoholic; they simply told me their stories, offered me literature and let me draw my own conclusions. I’ve never been told I had to do anything nor have I been told that I could never drink again. I have, however, been warned that alcoholics don’t ever learn to control their drinking and it has been suggested that I follow certain steps to help maintain my sobriety.

Every person I know who has gone back out drinking has taken up where they left off, regardless of their time spent sober, and a lucky few have managed to come back. Some died and others simply vanished.

You can contact the AA General Office in your area or the headquarters in New York City for more information.

It is important to understand the difference between the opinions of AA members and those of AA itself. AA members have a multitude of opinions on many subjects, AA has no opinions on other recovery programs or indeed whether any particular person is or is not an alcoholic. The “Big Book” of AA does in fact say that there are some people who are “problem drinkers” who can stop drinking on their own given sufficient reason to do so. It is up to each individual to decide whether he or she is an alcoholic.

I have been sober for 11 years now, and I have known a small handful of people who didn’t really belong in AA, but it is an extraordinarily small percentage of the hundreds of people I have met over the years. Almost everyone who thinks they might have a problem with alcohol, does. There is a very simple reason for this: People who are not truly alcoholics can stop on their own; people who are, can’t.

I do go to AA meetings, and that’s because that’s what works for me. Whenever people come to me with questions about their own drinking, I tell them about my experience and suggest they try AA if they truly think they have a problem, to see if it will work for them. One of the problems I see sometimes is some folks get into AA and it’s like they “got religion;” they try to shove it down everyone else’s throat, and that’s just not the way AA is supposed to work. One of AA’s guiding principles is “attraction rather than promotion,” meaning that the best–and only–advertisement for AA is someone living a sober life.

For more information, check out the AA website: http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/

Thank you all for your well-considered replies. They are appreciated.

Not a lot of statistics are available out there on long-term recovery, but what are out there fall out something like this:

Nearly 50% of those to achieve long-term abstenence do so thru a 12-step program (AA, NA, etc.)

The rest manage it thru many other approaches, including faith-based, the Secular Organization for Sobriety (SOS), and at least 2 dozen other described methods.

The success rate for true alcoholics who just stop cold turkey, and eventually achieve long-term abstenance by this method is about 4%.

These are the figures I recall from ASAM, the American Society for Addiction Medicine. Their members are not all 12-steppers, but quite a few addictionists, psychiatrists, and psychologists, who advocate multiple approaches.

FWIW