I failed to get sober for years using the techniques described by Kalhoun, and it was horrible for me and my family.
When I was desperate enough, I finally just did what my sponsor said: worked the AA steps, and never had to take a drink or drug again. That was over 16 years ago.
QtM, agnostic whose higher power is the fellowship of recovering addicts and alcoholics who give me good orderly direction via meetings, chats over cups of coffee, quiet personal reflection, and many phone calls.
Well, a big part of the AA message is “if you have something that works for you, by all means go with it, and best of luck. But we’ll be here if you need us”.
And I tell my patients “find what works for you and stick with it”.
For myself and many like me, AA worked and continues to do so.
Thats great! I am happy for you and your marriage! If he can do it without going to an AA meeting good on him. I know you are not knocking the people who have been helped from AA, I do think however, that you would love the knock the organization as a whole as being deeply flawed…and that is where those of us who have been in the program for so long, and who have good solid sobriety feel it is our duty - I speak for myself only - to inform you that the program does work wonders…Even to those of us who are atheists…
I agree with what you said here 100%. Clearly seeing the contadictions and shortcomings of AA and having EVERYONE who is an “expert” insist that you are simply arrogant or not open minded is a horrible place to be. Especially when you are desperate for anything to help! Finding out that many people have gone through the same realization is very conforting and heartening.
If I went to the doctor and 3 different ones said I needed the same operation. And one did it and I was told that I had to walk 3 miles every day or I would die. And for some reason I could not get myself to walk 3 miles every day and died. ( they told me and I still did not do what they said to do because I did not like the words they used or I thought it was dumb or my SIL told me it was not necessary ) Would that mean the operation, the doctors, the hospital were all bad and at fault for me dying?
Is it not up to me to do what I am told, all of it? AA does not force anyone to do all the program. Those that claim they are but are not really doing it, crash and sometimes burn. If they live, they are very quick to point out that AA failed them.
I do not know what your SIL was doing or not doing or where her attitude was. But to blame others for any addicts failure to follow a program or whatever is not correct. No addict will get into long term recovery without wanting to.
Even someone in solitary confinement will go back to smoking, drinking, drugs or whatever as soon as they get out even if it has been years unless they want to quit that behavior.
I knew I was right when I told all my friends that Q the M rocks! Do you assist them in finding another program if the AA thing falls short of their needs? I think the addiction profession really needs to address this.
Yes, because *as an organization * AA misses the boat in a number of ways, in my opinion. Their plan is too vague. They ask you to do things to achieve sobriety that are not only foreign, but forever unattainable for many, many people. The groups take over as individual “franchises”, if you will; free to pick and choose how they run their operation. And within those franchises, each person creates their own plan. Of the 5% who achieve sobriety, very few do it as laid out by AA The Organization, so I cannot see how even those of you free-formers who have (so far) maintained sobriety can attribute it to them.
However, as someone who was severely abused by a violent alcoholic, I’ll take his sobriety any way I can get it.
My SIL had booze…and only booze…in her life. She went to AA a number of times, got her marker coins, was in and out of rehab a dozen times (each time she was told to go to AA). While she was sitting in her house trying to “hand it over to god”, she should have been seeing a shrink, learning how to leave the house, learning a hobby or skill. The one thing she was getting was medical attention, but that didn’t help as she had NOTHING else in her life but drinking to obliterate the emptiness of her existence. She truly believed in god, but had no self-esteem. She was identified as an alcoholic in her early teens, and as an adult drank 1/2 gallon of vodka a day for 15 years. She didn’t get dressed, she didn’t knit, she didn’t read, she didn’t work. She drank. Period.
Now…I’m the first to admit that some people are lost causes with regard to achieving sobriety. If being drunk is all you know, walking away from it would be frightening, indeed. In retrospect I believe that she was probably one of those people. There was no way AA and its non-professional members could fix this. She needed to rebuild her life from it’s very foundation. But something more concrete makes more sense to me than trying to navigate some vague principles. What seems perfectly sensible to one person may look like a foreign language to another.
Her detox people really had no idea who she was or what she needed. The pat answer was “go to AA.” What she needed was rehabilitation in the same way a brain-damaged person needs to start from Square One. But they told her to “keep coming back.” Of course, being non-professionals, and having varying degrees of success within the group, this is what they thought would be the best thing for her. In reality, it was the last thing she needed.
Kalhoun I have seen such unfortunates as your SIL, people searching for that ever elusive entry point into their own personal future without alcohol. Many people enter the gates of socriety trying in vain to change their futures without learning to accept what the future is presenting…fighting the whole way until they eventually give up and accept the DT’s, the depression, the haunting memories from the past they they blissfully drank away. When sobriety hits the flood gates open and in comes all the emotion that some people are not ready for, many people are not ready for. People spent years pouring booze on their feelings, and when they finally get sober all those feelings come back like some unwanted phantom. They come back when you are standing in line at the Grocery store, or late at night when you are sleep alone in your bed…Frightening? no, no, thats too nice a word, pathetically catestrophic is a better phrase for when this happens.
Your SIL was and is not alone, she is a sad fact of this horrible thing called alcoholism. Whether you want to admit it or not, your SIL represents the very reason AA exists, yet, as you painfuly know, AA does not work for everyone. There is a paradox there, no? I know, and I often wonder why AA helps some and not others…I know what the old timers say, and I know what people like Q t M say…find what works. This is closer to the truth than doing nothing at all right?
I have no idea where your SIL fell into the scheme of rehabs and professionals, where she fell through the cracks, or why she couldn’t stay sober. I don’t know why, as I don’t know why the husband or father continues to beat and lie to their loved ones when he’s drunk…In the end the child who is being harmed or the wife who is being beaten then told she is loved wonders when will they stop - Oh God please do something - comes out of some peoples mouths because the have reached the end of their line and don’t know what else to do or say. Anything is better than nothing…if it makes them stop.
MANY can stop in AA. Others cannot. You choose to knock the whole system because of your individual experience, where I gather you are not an alcoholic, you can find the time to crusade against the organization that has helped hundreds of people STOP their alcoholic ways and stop the violence, the neglect, the torture. You know all too well people die in AA, well people die in alone in their rooms with a bottle too, and on the street, and in high society and the ghetto. Whats your point? You cry for your SIL who died. I feel your pain, but I cry for my loved ones who entered AA and made it. Saved their life. Everyday we go to an AA meeting, it starts with a moment of silence - you tell me what we are doing in the moment? And I hope you don’t mention GOD.
Phlosphr, she is by no means the only person I know who didn’t find relief in AA. My point is that the organization and it’s members, as well as the addiction community, DO paint it as “the way” when all it is is one option. “Stick with it” and “keep coming back” is a complete waste of time if it’s not working for you. Yet those who are acutely aware it’s not working are encouraged to give it more time, more time, more time instead of being pointed toward other techniques.
Exactly how long is a person supposed to beat the dead horse? When does someone step in and say, “it’s pretty obvious this isn’t the program for you. Here’s a list of other options.” The grip the program has on the treatment community is such that few professionals bother to direct people to other options. Even if AA isn’t working. Persisting down a dead-end path doesn’t seem to me to be helpful for either AA or the addict.
AA in and of itself does not have a “grip” on anything. Of the thousands of professionals, hundreds of Dr.'s, thousands of rehabs across the country, and more and more entering the field each year fresh out of college…They all have it wrong by pointing people by in large towards AA??? That is a whole lot of people, smart people, fresh minded folk, people in recovery and not in recovery who are pointing to an organization that is clearly not making a difference in peoples lives… I have trouble believing that. You say black I say white, but it is clear to me through the people - real folk not stats I read on a webpage, that this organization or YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION OF IT - works. How you get to sobriety is an individual thing.
Thousands of people do their own thing when they walk out of an AA room, yet they still come into the rooms weekly, to share their experiences, strengths and hopes…to find that common good that helps us all.
Grumble, Grumble - I’m decently grumpy this morning and should hold my tongue. I would like to see a new set of stats done by an outside source, with more rigid guidlines.
The afore mentioned folk steering people to AA must have a different set of stats, as why else would they send more and more people to the rooms of AA? Damn I wish I had a better cite! I have a friend getting his CDAC (Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor) I must ask him these questions…
First, be aware that statistics are extremely slippery when talking about treatment and recovery. Success is often measured by a wide variety of factors besides total abstinence. Measures like job attendance, lack of being arrested, decreased frequency of using/drinking are often used.
BUT: cutting thru all that, one can generalize a few things.
First, left untreated, alcoholism/chemical dependency has about a 10-20% spontaneous remission rate over time. That is, a few people eventually just seem to get over it.
Second, the three most common types of treatment approaches, (Cognitive Behavioral Coping Skills Therapy, Motivational Enhancement Therapy, & Twelve-Step Facilitation Therapy), each have about a 50% success rate (measured by total abstinence or significantly reduced substance use at both 1 and 3 years).
Third, each of the mentioned methods of treatment has a somewhat higher success rate for selected patients with certain traits (see one of my earlier posts in this thread for elaboration on that).
Fourth, this disease is progressive and fatal. There are 3 possible eventual outcomes for a person with this disease; institutionalization (prison or chronic care facility), death, or recovery. Sadly, despite the best efforts of many people, all too many folks still have institutionalization or death as their outcome.
You keep repeating this false claim in every AA thread. AA never claims it is the only means of recovery, not that it is the best means of recovery. They only claim it is the “easiest”; which is a pretty subjective standard you would be hard pressed to disprove.
