But shouldn’t you issue yourself a Moderator’s admonishment as well? 
BTW, someone who was very close to me, was very close to bottom, entered AA, and remained sober for the remaining 30 years of her life. Perhaps I’ll post (in IMHO) a tribute to this woman who saved many other lives as well as her own.
I have been thinking a lot about this whole negative sentiment against AA. What it seems to come down to is people just wanting to not like alcoholics no matter what they do. Hear me out.
See, AA advocates personal integrity and responsibility, correcting past harms, addressing present wrongdoing and in general that an alcoholic try to lead the normal life of an upstanding citizen. So, this is contemptible how? Really. I would love to know. Because it seems to be a situation where you want to hate the active alcoholic because they are terrible people who are destroying their lives and the lives of others, and then the moment that they try to get help and turn their life around you want to disparage that as well. Frankly that attitude is pretty lame.
The other thing that I see tossed around a lot is this business of courts sentencing people to AA and that AA is a religion. One big point here is that AA (the organization) did not go on some sort of a crusade to get courts to do this. People just started showing up at meetings that had been sent there by the courts.
So what would you have the meeting do? The whole point of AA is to get sober and to help others to do the same. And to be all inclusive. Should they start turning people away? If you want to be pissy about that be pissy at the court system.
Around here, I think it’s more a matter of anti-religious prejudice. The militant atheists here are driven batshit by a program that is premised on a relationship with a higher power.
…How often do you have to change the cat?
My point was that when people talk about AA “working,” the thing that actually works is the abstaining from alcohol part. The rest of it— the frequent meetings, the higher power shit—if that actually had any particular value in itself, you’d expect to see, on average, better results among people who attend AA than from those who don’t. If the statistics are to be believed, this isn’t the case.
It isn’t about laying blame; of course it requires sticking to a commitment. But if you’re statistically as likely to succeed quitting on your own as you are devoting your life to AA, what’s the draw?
Vinyl Turnip, the thing about addiction, of course, is that there is not any one formula that will lead the addict to stop and stay stopped. AA itself states that is has no monopoly on this and admonishes its members to be quick to see where others are right (referring to clergy, doctors and so forth).
The thing is, though, that AA indisputably has helped a great many people get and stay sober. So if you are thinking that you may be an alcoholic why not investigate it? Nothing bad is going to happen to you (chances are that you will find the people surprisingly friendly and helpful) and it may be that you are one of those people that it can help. Why write off any potential help for a condition this serious?
I was with you until your final snark. Everyone but me? Are you speaking for everyone now?
You broke a rule in the forum that is your responsibility to monitor for rules breaking, but in the heat of the moment somehow you forgot the rules? And no other mod happened to notice? Even when the post was reported? I’m not buying it. I think there are two sets of rules.
She should acknowledge that a rule was broken, rather than say that she did something she shouldn’t have. That could mean anything.
The Truth is Out There! I Want To Believe!
Your mama wears combat boots.
If this were true, it would be great, even if the theatrics had nothing to do with it. But since I doubt it is true, what’s your point?
Alcoholics try all kinds of ways to not drink to excess, like only drinking at parties, or every other day. These are attempts at sheer will power, but addiction is not about will power, contrary to popular belief. So when they try these techniques, they usually fail, and when not, they’re miserable, because what they really want to do is drink a lot all the time.
AA is just a form of group therapy, the goal of which is to address the compulsion to drink, not the act of drinking itself. Many people end up there who like the idea of not drinking to excess, but they can’t deal with the causes of the compulsion, so they fail.
Contrapuntal, either take this to ATMB or shut the hell up immediately. This is an important personal issue for the OP, so stop crapping it up by whining about the rules. twickster already apologized and her meaning was clear. If you have any further grievances, move them to ATMB.
Please take it up in ATMB.
Interesting.
Not really. 
DangleYourModifier, I don’t know whether you count as an alcoholic or not. Regardless, you have some personal issues you need to address and it sounds like you should stay away from alcohol until you figure out how to handle those issues and what role alcohol plays in this equation. You don’t have anything to gain from continuing to drink and it sounds like you have plenty to lose.
AA has a strong religious component. Anyone who denies this has disregarded a significant portion of the key text. The chapter in the Big Book targeted to the atheist and agnostics is a laughably weak dodge that ends up reading, “It’s okay if you don’t believe in God. It’s not too late to believe in God.” If a judge were to sentence a drunken drive to bible class, people on this board would be shitting themselves at the opportunity to express their enlightened rage.
I will be candid, my experiences in AA were not net-positive. There were some good people and being around others who’d struggled with alcohol was reassuring in the early days,* but there were a lot more egos and idiots. Questions were frowned upon, debate was discouraged,** and there wasn’t a trained counselor (i.e., someone whose relevant experience amounted to more than waking in his own vomit) in sight. My first sponsor sponsored something like four or five others. When did this guy find time to work? Eventually, I just quit going to meetings. Suprisingly, I did not immediately start drinking myself sick every day. In fact, I have stayed away from everything but communion wine for almost 18 months***
Maybe it works for some - though the stats seem to suggest otherwise - but in my opinion, there is nothing about any of the twelve steps that is a necessary or even helpful means of accomplishing the true goal - not drinking.
*I think the group therapy component of AA is about the only thing it has going for it.
** I know why, AA apologists, save your breath.
*** Cue AA old-timer to chime in how: that’s not much time; I’m headed for a relapse; bullshit ad nauseum.
But we don’t have those statistics–it’s so problematic to get a sample which could truly show this comparison, it’s not possible to say. The statistics cited above do not show this, if you actually go through them and pay attention to the sampling. As I’ve said above, AA is not a treatment, so it can’t be compared to treatment anyway.
This.
What you’re describing is what I learned to call “Epsilon Alcoholism” back in my psych undergrad days, and it can be every bit as devastating as chronic daily alcohol abuse. If it were me, I’d abstain, and I’d talk to my doctor or EAP if I wanted more information. Then again, I do abstain, so we’re coming from different places.
One very large thing your accounting misses is that AA provides a structure for personal change. Yes, you may be able to do it all on your own, or with a different group, or a different philosophy. All those are secondary to the point that within the AA structure you are made to be personally responsible for your decisions which is something drunks are loathe to do.
If you are not really, truly physically addicted to alcohol, but binge drinking or general drinking to excess is more of a situational or behavioral issue, AA is probably going to seem somewhat useless or beside the point as you can usually quit drinking to excess by simply avoiding the social contexts, decisions or behaviors that put you in harms way of over consuming.
On the other hand if your body is jonesing for alcohol that’s a whole different animal, and group support and a moral/philosophical structure to reinforce individual responsibility is vital to being able to get the monkey off your back.
What indication is there that AA helped anyone get sober? If the figures cited to date are correct, whoever joined AA and got sober would have had an equal chance at sobriety if they had simply quit on their own.
Again, it doesn’t appear so far that alcoholics are divided into two groups - those that can be helped by AA and everyone else. Assuming that the first type are randomly distributed throughout the population, one would expect to see some difference of outcome for AA vs. non-AA. If we don’t, then that argues that this is a distinction without a difference.
Regards,
Shodan
“Not only that, I’ve started attending daily Mass!”