Tag Archives: AA 101

Why People In AA Relapse Constantly…

Posted on by under Addicts/Non-Addicts

     …besides the fact that many people in AA aren’t really alcoholics.

     First of all, our most common error as addicts and alcoholics is to focus on drugs and alcohol. That’s not really our problem. It’s not about drugs and alcohol. It’s not about AA or the even Steps, though AA is nothing without the Steps. The Steps are simply a way to get to God. They are simply tools to be used, spiritual actions to be taken to establish a relationship with God and improve our conscious contact with Him. And if our problem is a spiritual one, then so must be our solution.

     But back to the question – why do people in AA (meeting-makers) relapse so much? For one, meeting-makers only make meetings, and of course, meetings contain about .01% of the power needed to actually fix a broken, shattered, warped, lunatic alcoholic.

     More to the point, meeting makers relapse because the alcoholic who is only sober on a physical basis is subject to suddenly and randomly experience the mental obsession, and once this occurs, nothing can stop him from drinking or using. He has no will. He has no power of choice. He will relapse at any point in time for no reason at all. He is insane. Meetings can’t make an insane person sane. Only God can do that.

     The so-called alcoholic who only goes to meetings and can stay sober is not an alcoholic – he has not lost the power of choice, he is not powerless. And finally, the so-called alcoholic who doesn’t need to rely on the Power of God is either not a real alcoholic or perhaps he continues to suffer from anger and misery, as he is still operating on, or trying to navigate life based on self-will alone, and that is a lonely place to be.

     Finally, people in AA, as well as every other conventional, secular treatment method relapse constantly because they’re not repairing themselves morally and spiritually, so when they walk out of their meeting and someone cuts them off, they become unhinged and fly into an uncontrolled rage, are then left spiritually destitute, and as guilt and shame gnaw and eat away, a switch goes off and they relapse. If we wrong somebody and do not make it right, we will inevitably relapse at some point, probably soon after, if we are real alcoholics or addicts.

     The hoards of meeting-making club members are giving AA a terrible reputation in terms of being able to secure long-term sobriety, not to mention sanity, freedom and peace of mind. If we went to AA to actually work on ourselves spiritually and take Steps instead of going for group therapy or because we are socially inept and have no friends, we’d all recover.

(Also see, Recovery Not A Function Of Time & AA Has Lost Its Way on how AA has become watered down etc.)

God, teach me to embrace and live by Your principles of faith, trust, humility, honesty, courage, strength, patience, tolerance, love, and personal responsibility…

Meeting Makers Make Meetings

Posted on by under http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post

     If you like going to meetings, then great, go to meetings. Just trying to help meeting makers consider the possibility of doing some actual work on themselves… like perhaps take their very own AA’s Twelve Steps… and maybe not wait 10 years, 100 relapses, 10 cars, 50 jobs, and 20-30 more broken hearts before you decide to take them. So if your knucklehead sponsor told you to wait to take Steps or to only take a Step a year, you should probably remove their phone number from your rolodex and consider directing them to the links at your bottom left.

     Meetings don’t actually get alcoholics better. Taking enough spiritual action to induce a psychic change gets alcoholics better. AA was nothing more than a suggested set of spiritual actions long, long ago before it got watered-down into group therapy and snack time. AA is the Big Book. That’s what AA is. Referring to your home group as a Group Of Drunks (G.O.D.) and relying on them to keep you sober isn’t AA. I don’t know what that is, actually. Groups of drunks aren’t God. And people can’t keep real alcoholics sober.

     The slogan goes, ‘Meeting Makers Make It!’ Um, no, they don’t. Why? Because true alcoholics have lost the power of choice. Meeting makers only make it if they’re not really alcoholics, because true alcoholics cannot choose not to drink. They are in chronic relapse until the removal of the mental obsession. It’s just simple math.

     So if for some reason you can simply stop drinking and stay sober just by attending meetings, then guess what? You’re not an alcoholic! Celebrate because you’re not completely fucked like I am. Achieving physical sobriety alone is the equivalent of starting a timer that will at some point go off. So the only thing that meetings makers make is, yup, you got it, meetings.

     Just a few more questions and this will be my very last post on the subject of meetings. Promise. What’s the point of going to meetings if we regress into selfish pigs as soon as we drive away? What’s the point of going to meetings if we never drop our preoccupation with Self? What’s the point of going to meetings if we never “pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet?” What’s the point of going to meetings if we never take Steps and become well enough to take someone else through this life-saving process? What’s the point of going to meetings if we still can’t reach out to our spouses, children, families, friends or colleagues? What’s the point of going to meetings if we end up still holding on by a thread 20 years down the road?

     Trust me when I say that the point of this program is actually not to get all of us merely sober. Nope. Sorry. The point of this program is to get work that should have been done before we ever started drinking to begin with out of the way so that we may serve others and live a useful, meaningful life. We do not have an alcohol or drug problem. We have a selfishness problem. We have a life problem. We have a spiritual problem. We have a developmental problem – a permanently narcissistic, teenage baby problem.

God, please help alcoholics and addicts who still suffer find their way to the Steps and to You…

AA Has Lost Its Way

Posted on by under http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post

     I don’t go to meetings anymore.

     One of the reasons is the guy who came up to me in the gym today and told me that I definitely need to go to more meetings, that I’m not gonna make it, and that I must not be an addict if I don’t need meetings to be okay. If he had done some work on himself, like say, taken Steps, he might have refrained from taking my inventory. To state the obvious, going to meetings doesn’t get people better. Right action does. Spiritual action does. And sorry, but I got better to take care of the people I love and to live the life I was supposed to live, not to go to meetings all day long.

     Most people in and out of AA think that the program of AA is going to meetings, though nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, when people ask me if I’m in AA, they ask me if I go to meetings and how many I go to, to which I reply, “None.” Then they freak out and tell me I’m going to relapse soon. I have been a recovered alcoholic and drug addict for almost 8 years and I am completely okay. They say, “Well then, what do you do?” to which I reply, “I take Steps.” I should also mention (in an effort to dispel all of the dual-diagnosis nonsense, or perhaps hoax is a better word) that I’m totally unmedicated… and I’ve never been more balanced and successful in my entire life. Right action and GOD made me better and fixed my broken mind, not some insane cocktail of brain-damaging and soul-crushing psychotropics.

     Searching other blogs one day, I came across stories of people who have left AA… and I must say that I don’t blame them. They described and summarized meetings much the way I do, but worse. Several of these stories were from women who attended ‘Young Persons’ meetings and saw nothing but disgusting, 50+ year-old losers who were in there to stalk and stare at young, vulnerable women. I have seen this myself in ‘YP’ AA meetings in the Boston area. I have also seen dogma, status, anger, insanity, sickness, rampant untreated alcoholism, and Holier Than Thou nonsense. Yes, AA has most certainly lost its way.

     But we must distinguish between this sick, watered-down AA and the original Twelve Step program, which was nothing more than a spiritual set of actions. The original Twelve Steps teach us to become better people. They teach us to become more honest, loving, selfless and courageous. AA was never intended to devolve into a slew of sick meetings, where the trash and filth of the earth prey on young people, or where some speaker preaches the Steps but is completely nuts.

     I’m sure Bill Wilson and Bob Smith are rolling in their graves. When did it become okay for dry drunks to run groups, repeatedly give advice that contradicts fundamental principles of AA, abuse false power, hand out sobriety chips and incessantly tell their self-aggrandizing war stories, or worse yet, their sob stories? Countless numbers spit out AA slogans and yet, you wouldn’t follow some of these folks around if there was a gun to your head, let alone cop a ride home with them all alone. 

     So does AA need to reassess? Absolutely. AA is getting a bad rap for being a cultish group of nutjobs and moral degenerates who don’t do any real work on themselves and 13 Step young girls. I will, for now, do what I can by teaching others what AA actually is/was (see links on blog), what the Twelve Steps actually are, and how this once mystical and miraculous spiritual program has gone astray.

God, please guide AA back to its original, spiritual, moral, action-oriented self…