Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselling Thread

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Missconstrue, you should checkout some of the alternatives to AA. AA doesn't seem to be helping you at all. Don't worry, AA doesn't help that many people, as they claim

Smart Recovery
http://www.smartrecovery.org/
LifeRing Secular Recovery
http://www.unhooked.com/index.htm
Practical Recovery alternatives to 12-Step
http://www.practicalrecovery.com/
WFS: Women For Sobriety
http://www.womenforsobriety.org/
Rational Recovery
http://www.rational.org/recovery/
SOS International
http://www.sossobriety.org/
U.S. SOS
http://www.secularsobriety.org/
Moderation Management
http://www.moderation.org/

My understanding of AA is that it's a poorly disguised way to push religion off onto people. Not that there's anything wrong if that's what people are looking for, but the intent seems a little off. What are they really up to?

Have you seen the episode of South Park about the bleeding Mary statue?

Why does the exercise of discipline and moderation sometimes fail (in reference to the South Park episode)? Must all use be treated as a disease? There's something toxic about this model.

When people totally avoid something they enjoy, they're still being controlled by it. What's wrong with being honest about enjoying a little of, whatever, once in a while? Is total abstinence unrealistic? Does the abstinence/disease model cause people to oscillate between binging and total avoidance? That seems to be the case for some vegetarians, the item in question being meat.

Have you seen the South Park episode about AA? It's pretty accurate. AA is religious in nature, which the members all deny and claim it's spiritual. When I first went, I assumed it was going to be about how to quit drinking. Boy was I wrong. In AA they tell you to just do the 12 steps. The 12 steps teaches you that you're "powerless" over alcohol and you have to admit to this and state that you're an alcoholic, even if you're not. That leads to a self-fulling prophecy, meaning AA has taught you to behave, as if you were an alcoholic, even if you were not.

In AA literature it is stated that Alcoholism is a Spiritual Disease. Spiritual Disease. Means your Spirit is Diseased I guess.

None of the 12 steps or any of their literature ever mentions to just stop drinking. What it does mention over and over is God, Higher Power, and Creator. Here are the 12 steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Notice how there is plenty of references to God and there is only one reference to alcohol in the 12 steps. Step 3 is a good one, there even a step 3 prayer that you do when you "do" the step with your "sponsor" (he the one that you confess your sins to and guides you, even if he is the biggest slime ball. Apparently after step 3 God is in control of your life, but it the AA God. If you relapse you're not allowed to claim that it was God's will for you to drink because the AA God would never do that to you. But, if you stay sober, it's only because of God's will and AA that kept you sober.

Step 4 is where one makes a list of all their "sins" and the Step 5 they confess their sins to their sponsor. After you confess all of your sins, the sponsor typically goes and tells everyone else. Steps 6&7 are about praying to God because only God can save you from your sins and yourself. Steps 8 and 9 are the ones where you have to go around and apologize to people. You don't only apologize for the bad stuff one has done to people, you also have to apologize to people that did bad stuff to you because it was your fault. For instance, if a girl is raped, AA says this girl needs to apologize to her rapist because it was her fault for getting raped or tempting the rapist. Step 10 is just repeating steps 4-9 on a daily basis.

Step 12 is when you get to have your spiritual awakening. Unfortunately you won't get the same Spiritual Awakening AA founder Bill Wilson had. He claimed he met God or God came to him. He was also high up on Belladonna when that happened. Belladonna is a strong hallucinogenic. I've done it before and I literally thought I was a Pirate sailing the high seas.

Oh, Alcoholism is not a disease, there is no evidence of that claim. People just use that as an excuse for pity or so they can get away with being a complete as*hole. AA is also sort of a cult. Also, the USA courts have declared it religious. If you don't know, the USA courts typically try to send people that got arrested for drug and/or alcohol related offense to AA or 12 step program. The courts have ruled that court ordering someone to unconstitutional and violates the person first amendment right.

AA also has a 95% failure rate.

Yes, I believe the AA episode is the same one that has the bleeding Mary statue! That's the one. I think it's my favorite episode, so over-the-top in offensiveness yet containing a large core of secular truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(South_Park)

Just how common is substance abuse, statistically or even relatively speaking, within the community of those diagnosed. I myself seem to always be "coping" in one way or another using my own devices.

Guys, enough with the AA s**t especially right in this Alcohol and Substance Abuse Forum. I know it did work for my dad who had been hardcore drinker half of my life.

I don' t know why it's amusing or funny to you....maybe because you've never had this problem with chemical dependency. I have tried and tried to stay sober but once I drink or get into something I can't quit...no matter how hard I tried to drink like "normal" people. It consumed half of my life....not that I expect you to understand or even try.

Experience is the only way I can define my trouble with alcohol and drugs. Some people love to use that bullcrap that it's all about will power and if you don't have the will power then you're obviously either mentally ret*d or do it just to get a rise. I now realize IGNORANCE really is BLISS and you've proven it to me.

Either STFU or keep antagonizing me till I have to get a mod. You guys and especially you sgrannel have done this joking about before in other threads. I don't know why people like yourselves get kicks off of other people's personal problems and ways they've been able to cope. I guess it's easy to make fun of something you know nothing about or have had experience in.

Anyway, you've already made me uncomfortable so I'm not going to share what I was about to....AND NO IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH AA...but if it did, so what?

As much as I am atheist, I'm also getting really sick of the religious bashing that's been going on here. I expect it in other forums where it begs to be argued but not in forums where people are expressing their own ideologies and beliefs without getting bashed for it. It just makes you guys look just as bad.

Well have fun. I think this is the last time I'm ever going to post anything authentic here. I come here hoping to get support as well as give support. I get so sick and tired of posting here without worrying that I might be coming off as a delusionalist. This is one good reason I tried to stay away from this forum for a while b/c of the bashing and emo labeling. Then I was going through some really bad s**t this year and was stupid enough to post here.

<Rant>

On a slightly different note, it seems to me that people with AS, etc., can have such a multitude of reasons as to why their lives are "unmanageable", so how does one with AS attribute it with any confidence SOLELY to alcohol, as is necessary in step 1? That kind of throws a wrench in the whole 12 step process, at least to me...

And I am not saying this as a "joke" at all. My life got to the point where it felt "unmanageable" and when nothing else worked I was like "well I guess maybe I have a drinking problem" and I stopped drinking. My health improved no doubt, but quality of life in general hasn't exactly skyrocketed, and now recently my therapist tells me out of left field that I most likely have aspergers--it's not easy keeping your mind right if the fundamental reason you stopped drinking or whatever in the first place can be very easily attributed to something (in my case AS) that was totally unseen at the time but now makes pretty good sense.

It's weird too because I didn't intend to "quit" drinking forever or anything, just take an extended break until I could truly get my mind wrapped around a number of things, and gain the perspective to be more responsible in general (which would, at least in a perfect world, in turn rub off on my drinking). Now I'm not sure if I'm ready to rock or back at square one--I'm really trying to just keep the position that ultimately nothing has changed, but that's easier said than done.

FYI it's been 13 months

Mc you should know that glycine is an amino acid that reduces alchohol and sugar cravings.

I've been going to AA for a few months and I've got a lot of problems with it, especially the religious or spiritual aspects of it.
I'm from the UK so maybe the format of the meetings is a little different. A typical meeting starts off (after some prayers and readings) with a 30 minute "chair" or guest speaker who is here to share their "experience, strength and hope" as the secretary puts it. We're taught to listen out for similarities with our own experiences and not to look for differences. Well I'm looking for the similarities and after listening to most chairs I'm mentally ticking off boxes like "that's an aspie trait", "aspie symptom right there" etc etc. And this is from when the chair is sharing their life experiences *before* they started drinking.
It makes me wonder how many AA members are actually undiagnosed Aspies. One of the things we're taught in AA is that alcohol isn't our problem, it was our solution, a solution we found. But a solution to what ? Not everyone in AA is Aspie but I'll bet dollars to donuts a high percentage are. So if alcohol is a symptom, as I'm coming to believe, shouldn't we be looking to treat the root cause ?

I've got a lot of problems with the Big Book too. There's a lot of talk in there about us having "an allergic reaction to alcohol", that's BS. An allergic reaction means your body rejects (usually violently) whatever caused the reaction, you're almost certain to develop an aversion to the substance. What we have is what I call an "abnormal affinity" to alcohol, our body soaks it up like a sponge and craves more, just like most addictions I guess.
There's a lot of guff in chapter 4 (We Agnostics) as well, all this talk about the Wright brothers and how no one expected them to fly but they were the first, which is completely wrong. There's talk about being propelled into "the fourth dimension" which AA tells us is new level of spiritual awareness. Last time I checked the fourth dimension was time.

They preach a spiritual solution to what is a physical and psychological problem, it's very similar to faith healing. If you believe it'll work then it will. But how can I have faith when the Book, which is the core of the AA Fellowship, gets so many things wrong ?
I've attended over 50 meetings in the last few months but I'm getting sorely disillusioned with AA, I desperately want it to work for me but I just don't think it can.

i struggled (still am) struggling with substance abuse, first it was valium perscribed by my doctor for insomnia and just general anxiety and i combined that with alcohol (this was when i was about 16)

from 17 onwards i was given oxycotin and morphine in hospital after i was diognosed with cancer, after that cleared up and i finally got through all the chemo and back on my feet i found myself with an opiate addiction.

since i swore i'd never touch hardcore street drugs i figured it was safer to stick with things from a chemist like alot of codeine and ibprofene found in cold medicine.
since im a musician i try to put it down to "a tool so i can be more creative"
but i've found it helps me in social situations aswell, its a real coping thing.
it sometimes inhances my aspergous but makes me feel less guilty after i say something out of line.

I understood the 'allergy' aspect because I have a very real allergy to poison oak, ivy and sumac. When exposed to any of those plants the oils spread under my skin rapidly and the itching and irritation become virulent. The number one way to stop it spreading and keep the impulse to scratch it manageable is to not scratch it in the first place. That simple solution to not take the first drink and not make the first scratch made sense to me.

I decided to take their religion with a tablespoon of salt, rather than a grain of it. I realized it was written in the 1930's and the slang and physics have changed a lot since then. All I know is the deity of my understanding was willing I didn't take another drink, it was only up to me to also be willing to not take another drink. I liked being in control of it working if I wanted it to work.

(I didn't know I was autistic at the time, so I thought everything that was 'different' about me was attributable to the alcoholism.)

Days turned into months and months into years and years into over two decades and I still haven't had that next drink. The principle works. What you do with your sobriety is up to you.

Lots of folks like to blame all the trappings of AA on why it won't work for them. I was just Aspie enough to strip everything away from it and let it work for me. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Merle

I second merle's very balanced appraisal.
AA and NA are flawed. But it can work if one has the perseverative tendencies to get off the drugs or alcohol.
I have a shedload of problems with NA and AA. there are many zealots who attend and there are many who are so rigid in their cultish mentality.

Has that stopped me from going? No.
Do i mix with lots of NA people? AA people? No.

Do I believe all the old fashioned AA jargon? no.

do i believe in God? no. i am probably atheist.



Do i believe in abstinence a day at a time from drugs and alcohol? YES.
and that is all that really matters. i don;t want to die in the gutter and that is where i was.

and i was a VERY extreme drug and alcohol user.

I also happen to have AS and was undiagnosed for a long time.

Ummmm....I apologize if I came off a bit harsh....

I just get sick and tired of people telling me what I SHOULD or SHOULDN'T be doing with my sobriety and alcoholism has been a very hard battle for me to fight...it still is.

People died in my family from the effects of it. I use to think it was all based on will power and I get to the point where I want to scream everytime someone tells me I can drink....I just need to know my limit. That's all I use to do is try and limit myself...but it never worked...NEVER.

As far as AA's concerned, I don't go much but I don't look at it as some silly cult unless I have to join hands in a prayer. Other than that, there's been some pretty good people in my program. I will have to say, there's always going to be some religious fanatic and yes it can be annoying. But I've had members tell me the same thing Merle said which is "You take what you can, and leave the rest behind."

Anyway, that's all I can say. If it still comes off rude I apologize. I've never been good at articulating myself before getting emotional.

ah, MissConstrue, when ever I get this twaddle from folks I tell them to try will power on diarrhea, and they usually shut up. . .

helpfully,

Merle

i don't think you were rude MisConstrue.
I think it sounds like you are sorting out for yourself how you want to approach a life without alcohol. i respect that.

AA is a funny old thing.' i go and i don;t even say the Serenity PRayer because it irks me so much - and the hand holding? ugh - too close for me.

the best prezzies can come in the yuckiest wrapping papers.

good luck on the journey.

some of the groups I was in never held hands. This was old school AA, and those grizzled old men were meaner than hell, too. We did the serenity prayer, but 'each man stands alone with their God' was how they put it. Didn't cotton to those young folks (I was in my later 30's!) being in AA, as we had not experinced the 'bottom' as yet, and there fore had plenty of drinking in us left. I was also told being a woman it was harder for me to get sober because they had so few women in the group. Later I learned that statistically there were fewer women because most of us true alcoholics were dead long before we got to AA. Alcoholism ravages women's bodies much faster than the guys.

(shudder) Soon after, insuance in the the States started paying for 'treatment' and we had a lot of (by their standards) very young people coming through and their 'stories' (it wasn't called 'sharing',back then) really raised the eyebrows of the older guys. And of course, time took away the older generation and AA changed again.

Merle