So, I have a (hopefully soon to be ex) sister-in-law that is …well…a nutjob.
She grew up in an alcoholic family and has been an Al-Anon member for a while. Within the last year, she began frequenting AA meeting as an “observer”.
According to my AA grapevine ( my Mom ), she would go into a meeting, announce herself as an observer, and proceed to take notes and ask a lot of questions. Sometimes she would bring her 12 year old daughter. My mother was never at a meeting that she attended but apparently several groups voted to close their meeting to observers after her appearance.
She also made her son (my 17 year old nephew) attend a sex addicts anonymous meeting WITH HER after she found a girlie mag in his room. He was deeply embarrassed and did not want to go.
Now the woman has a multitude of problems that she HASN"T admitted to, she is a high level hoarder and has been out of work for a while. She has some specialized nursing skills but claims her ADD makes it impossible for her to get to work on time and has yet to find a nursing job that will make accommodations for her disability.
But now she has ADMITTED that she is an alcoholic. She just picked up a 30 day chip. The thing is, for all her other problems the woman does not drink or take drugs and hasn’t for at least 25 years. the reasoning behind her newly found alcoholism is that she “drank beer and smoked pot in high school”. She is now 48 years old.
So my question for AA members is " How would you react to this"? I’m sure she is very quick to stand up in meetings because she loves to talk about herself but would you guys be required to validate her? Would you provide support and encouragement for someone that is 30 days sober yet hasn’t had a drink in 25 years? Am I being too harsh on her?
Also,she still drags her 12 year old to meetings ( The AA ones, not the Al-Anon one)s. She thinks it is some sort of preventative medicine but I think it is just inappropriate.
I’ve only been to OA and there you’re not supposed to cross-talk so she could probably prattle on. However, I’ve heard that depending on the AA meeting, they can be more confrontational about bullshitters. However, it looks like she’s stayed for 30 days already.
Yikes. It’s one thing for her to be messed up, but dragging her kids into it?
Nobody will care too much as long as her speaking is reasonable. Some people stay in AA for decades after they quit drinking so that part isn’t alarming. AA doesn’t have any leaders so it takes a lot for someone getting pressured into not returning. There may be more to her story. I don’t understand why someone would want to go to meetings out of the blue.
There’s got to be a woman in one of those meetings who she has spoken to. Seriously, a potential sponsor or just another woman alcoholic. Usually, with newcomers I have seen someone go up to them introduce themselves and at least say hi. If she’s going to a lot of meetings this almost certainly has happened.
I used to work helping alcoholics at a ‘detox’ centre. I would escort them to AA meetings. I found the meetings terrible. Usually all that would happen would be people get up and tell stories about how they had a great time drinking until they drank too much and pissed their life away. But it sounded like advertising for alcohol. I could not see how this could help people. And I think it is a very bad idea for kids to attend. Maybe it is different in the USA…
My sister is a recovering alcoholic. After several years of AA meetings (and lack of success) she said “doesn’t help me, its a bunch of people who sit around and talk about how wonderful it is to drink.” My other sister told this to a friend who’d run a rehab center for a while and he said “yep, it works for some people, it doesn’t for others - unfortunately, it works more often than anything else does.” This is in the U.S.
My sister hit 90 days dry a week or so ago - but won’t go to AA meetings. But they DO work for some people.
This SIL however sounds like someone who has bought completely into a recovery culture and is ever and over vigilent that she and those she loves doesn’t fall into patterns of addictive behavior - if that is a single girly magazine or a drink 25 years ago.
Underlining mine. This is the answer to your question. It takes an alcoholic to help an alcoholic…Outlining, understanding and accepting how that happened to you is the first part in understanding what addiction makes some people do. When everything or damn near everything crumbles because of your doing…it takes time and understanding to begin to piece your life back together.
round here, most AA meetings, or at least the ones I go to, are closed to non-alcoholics. The few times I’ve seen someone bring a family member to a closed meeting, they were asked to leave.
As for Sis-in-law herself, well, if she says she’s an alky, no one is going to contradict her. For the most part I think people would be tolerant of her and her rather questionable addiction, though I’d definitely be rolling my eyes(in my head, not for real). I’ve been to meetings with some rather grouchy old-timers though, who I wouldn’t be suprised if they said something.
Her former activity, the note-taking, would NEVER be allowed at any meeting I’ve been to.
I have been to the kind of meeting you’re talking about, the ones the people still in inpatient treatment are forced to attend. They are indeed terrible. “Euphoric recall” can be ok once in awhile in the context of a funny story, but it’s mostly just not helpful.
I don’t think AA is the be-all and end-all when it comes to recovery, but in contrast to the kind of story you mentioned, the main thing I find useful about regular meetings is that most people talk about just how bad their drinking made their lives. As your life starts to get better once you’re sober, I think it’s helpful to remember how awful things were before, and could be again.
And yet there are still scientists, doctors, lawyers and laypeople attending and staying sober - without the hard number stats. I don’t mean to hijack or sound snarky…no offense, but people don’t need stats to sober-up.
I understand that people stay in AA for years and years but I still don’t get the I haven’t had a drink in 25 years, I’ve been sober 30 days aspect, I don’t know what sobriety means in this instance. I’m sure there is something more going on, there always is with my dysfunctional family. If she had been drinking or taking drugs on the sly though I don’t know why she would go to an AA meeting and claim her abuses all occurred 25 years ago.
Myself, I stopped drinking 15 years ago but did it without AA.
I really am not sure, although my guess is more that she was asking people to repeat things because I know she can’t listen and write at the same time.
I know about the AA meeting crashing because my mother has been in AA for years and is active in the local organization. A friend of hers told her the story about the woman who came to the meeting with her daughter and took notes and about how it lead them to close the meeting to non-members. As my Mom heard the story her radar started to ping and she asked her friend to describe the woman and daughter at which point Mom realized who the crasher was.
Do you have a reason for being so anti-AA apart from the meetings you’ve witnessed at the Detox center, which as I said, are not really typical?
I could see disliking them for the emphasis they often put on religion and you “higher power”, though honestly I’ve been going to meetings for 2 years and never had anyone give me a hard time for being an atheist.
As long as no one is digging on one way over the other, I don’t care if you use the magic mystery tour to get sober. If one alcoholic uses AA and another Rational Recovery and they have the same results then that’s great! I know a lot of people who like AA and a few that don’t. I don’t really fuss one way or another, it’s individual. I know one thing, having other people around who understand and not just empathize but truly understand helps a lot of people. I’ve seen devastating results of people trying to do it on their own…
