Posted on 08/28/2009 1:31:53 PM PDT by RKV
In August 1979, I took my last drink. It was about four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the hot sun streaming through the windows of my little carriage house on Dickens. I put a glass of scotch and soda down on the living room table, went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn't take it any more.
On Monday I went to visit wise old Dr. Jakob Schlichter. I had been seeing him for a year, telling him I thought I might be drinking too much. He agreed, and advised me to go to "A.A.A," which is what he called it. Sounded like a place where they taught you to drink and drive. I said I didn't need to go to any meetings. I would stop drinking on my own. He told me to go ahead and try, and check back with him every month.
The problem with using will power, for me, was that it lasted only until my will persuaded me I could take another drink. ...
A.A. believes there is an enormous difference between bring dry and being sober. It is not enough to simply abstain. You need to heal and repair the damage to yourself and others. We talk about "white-knuckle sobriety," which might mean, "I'm sober as long as I hold onto the arms of this chair." People who are dry but not sober are on a "dry drunk."
...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.suntimes.com ...
What..wake up every morning and know that you are never going to feel any better
I believe that phrase was first spoken by Oscar Wilde.
What LITTLE Organization AA has works from the bottom up. As AA considers it’s mission to help the individual who still suffers
too much paperwork and too much money to try to find out HOW MANY MEMBERS there are! So, the best they’ll ever come up with is only a “Ballpark”figure.
AA is not like AARP
You don’t join. You just show up at meetings. There are no dues (except the ones that got paid drinking) or membership fees.
Each group is pretty much its own entity. There is a national org. but the local groups can pretty much do whatever they want.
Not interested in doing so. Have already told you more than you will ever comprehend.
Go back to watching animals in the other part of the zoo
If Roger were a drunk it would explain some of the movies he recommended.
I am always amazed by the stories of the compassion for our parents who battled on so many different levels.
Hope you have a long and successful path
I don’t want to hear politics during a meeting... it’s an “OUTSIDE ISSUE” and I’ve told MANY that Politics won’t keep me sober.. so save it for after the meeting.
“if you want to discuss POLITICS, that’s what 24 hour DINER’s are FOR!!!”
I actually read the whole thing, it isn’t bad.
That said, there plenty of sober assholes in the world.
Not that I know of. I don't care either way.
I think AA just wants to keep their membership up so they invented this term.
LOL! Membership. You say that as if there are dues or something. Membership means going to meetings, staying sober and helping other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. How can you have disdain for that?
BTW, I think the people called Bush a "dry drunk" were simply were looking for any pejorative to with which to tarnish Bush.
Bush, in the end, didn't need any pejoratives about being a drunk from the left to describe how poor a president he turned out to be.
In today’s society you would have to go live on a mountain like a hermit to avoid contact with alcohol.
Almost every gas station, grocery store, restaruant, and most hotel rooms have booze.
Hmm... I can see how one would resent the implication, but I don’t think that is what is meant. The Big Book itself says that AA is only one method for sobriety. In my own life, I’ve found nothing else that effectively helped me sober up and stay that way besides AA. Yet, each time I’ve had long term sobriety I’ve moved into other domains of maintaining spiritual health. Many would say see, that’s your problem, but I can’t really see myself hanging out with newly sobered drunks. Just can’t. I don’t operate well in that environment. I go to meetings, prn, but am not very active. More of a religious guy now.
But Religion doesn’t have a very good track record of GETTING people sober.
I agree on the dry drunk theory, I know a few of them and I kind of like drunks better.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Self-identifying AA “members” are not representative of the program as a whole. The program has helped MILLIONS get sober and stay that way. Many, probably most, slip and get drunk at some point. And some don’t come back and some don’t come back for a long time. But many of them wind up getting sober again and staying that way.
dass some back bacon.
Speaking as an recovering alcoholic, there is NO place I can go to escape contact with alcohol. As the book says, the main problem of the alcoholic is his mind. The mental obsession, which, in my case is kept in check by the maintenance of my spiritual condition.
I can go anywhere on this planet and not fear drinking/drugging. That’s not saying that I go to frathouse keggers and stripclubs, but the obsession to drink has been removed in my, again, by a spiritual experience which came as THE result of working the 12 steps.
FWIW...I was every bit as conservative before I got sober!
I am not having a tough time at all. It is apparent from so many of your comments that you have no idea what you are talking about. I do not consider FR to be the zoo but you seem to be overly fascinated with us alkies. Go to open meetings if you wish or not. For the record I do not hate alcohol nor do I avoid it. Fatc is my life is better than anyone could ever have imagined.
And the desserts at all sorts of restaurants -——usually eat dessert at home unless I know the chef
When I had finally had enough and told my husband to pack his crap, he promised to quit drinking...LOL. I laid down the law and part of the law was attending AA, he said he’d do anything if he could stay and NOT go to AA.
I just told him, “If you ever take a drink, don’t come home...ever, don’t call, don’t write, don’t send money, cuz I’m done.”
It has been almost 25 years and he did good, he was pretty unbearable the first year but as time went on it got much better.
That’s a fairly well-known symptom of “the family disease”. Sometimes in families with significant sobriety I’ve heard the drunk say he’s damn glad to be the drunk and not have to go to those “other meetings” because those women are CRAZY!.
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