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 ...
Just so you know, it's not the "official" opinion that people cannot stop without AA. If anyone says that, it really is their personal opinion.
My philosophy is that you should do whatever works. And for me, I am very comfortable with the 12 steps and the 3 legacies.
WHOA! to you. That has been my experience aswell. Just a baby ——9/18/1996
You are absolutely 100% wrong. Some folks in AA may have that attitude but the program found in the book says otherwise. Since that has been the successful model, I follow that ——and it says we do not have a corner on the market
"That's a good start. But after 30 years, I would expect that he would have developed a deeper understanding of God. That's what the 11th step is all about. It sounds as though his spirituality ended at step 2."I know people with as much sobriety as Ebert who still have a problem with the whole God concept. They have as good a sobriety as anyone I have ever met in the program.
But as I tell newcomers, when you work it the way it's written, it gets even better than you could have imagined."Amen to that!!!!!! It has been my personal experience and I wouldn't trade my sobriety for anyone else's. God works in a myriad of ways in peoples' lives. I'll take my own experience "warts and all."
A "dry drunk" is someone who is an admitted alcoholic, does not go to meeting after having been exposed to AA, then goes on to live life without a drink and does NOT work the AA program.
In other words, they have quit drinking but have done nothing to change the person they were while drinking. It can be something obvious (anger, depression, etc) or something less obvious.
A "dry drunk" is not easy to quantify unless you have had a lot of experience with the person and know the person personally.
And I hope the 12 traditions as well
You’re an old-timer:
01/19/03
Actually the book refers to it in another manner. It talks about the nature of the alcholic mind. The story of the man on a business trip who decides it is a good idea to have a whiskey with milk in it, the director who insists that everyone do things his way and only his way.
I have seen dry drunks who go to meetings and are still so grandiose that they must bring their’posse’ with them wherever they go. They always having a ‘burning desire’ to talk and when asked to limit their comments to X number of minutes they most always go 2.5X.
Did George Bush admit to being an “alcoholic”? Or did he just say he drank too much at one period of his life?
I think AA just wants to keep their membership up so they invented this term.
You too. Staying sober today is the only key. Was told early on that all I had to do to become an old timer was 1) don’t drink and 2)don’t die
Congrats to you. It is a big friggin deal
11th step isn't the only place he might need to do some work, guy also seems to have a problem with the 11th tradition.
Not that I'm taking his inventory or anything...
Since you have NO IDEA of what you are talking about why do you feel the need to make stuff up out of whole cloth?
In my case I tend to be pretty much a loner by nature and not very social. Drinking was an attempt, I think, to loosen inhibitions but it was not successful at changing anything for the better. Mostly it was just a lost decade. After I quit, life got increasingly better as each year passed.
Other posters have joked about waking up and knowing that this is the best you may feel all day. I actually appreciate the fact that I will never suffer another hangover.
YOu cannot judge another person's program. I personally don't see how you do it without a firm belief in God, but my experience is that some do it quite well. Growth in a spiritual life does not automatically translate to a stronger belief in God...again in my experience with others I know.
You are quite right.
One of the dangers of this type of anonymity break is that it does lead to confusion about what the program is and what it isn't. We hear of someone and we think we know them, or we think that if we disagree with them it's because of their program. But we don't really know much of anything beyond our own experience.
I am far more intrigued by the recovery/conservative line of discussion. Knowing what I now know about addiction, I can't imagine that anyone in recovery cannot recognize the similarities between the Democratic Party and drug dealers.
They make promises of easing their pain, all the while making the pain last longer. They create a dependency that only they can fill. And if you try another method, they turn on you like your a leper.
So......... that reply tells me it is a real condition and one that you are familiar with. Why don’t you tell me about it?
Recovery - 12 Steps
Unity - 12 Traditions
Service - 12 Concepts
In my case, I don't think I ever had or could have an ability to "control" drinking short of abstinence. One of my motivations for quitting drinking was that I wanted to quit smoking. There was no way I was going to accomplish that while drinking. One drink would wash away any desire to give up smoking.
I have actually decided that part of my drinking was an attempt to prove to myself that my alcoholic father should have been able to quit. Since that time I have decided that he was haunted by demons that I have never met.
I think those who were liberal when drinking tend to be liberal when sober and vice versa. The amazing thing is that cons and coms really CAN get along in an AA meeting because politics seems irrelevant next to the life and death battle against “the ism.”
(p.s. I have no idea, but this could explain how Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel became friends).
AA is so disorganized they don't even know how many members they have!
**The AA model wasn’t for me. I went with a self challenge model for me and I did it on my own.**
GOOD FOR YOU. In the Book Alcoholics Anonymous, in several areas it alludes to the idea that we have no Monopoly on Recovery, and if you find a way that workse for you, our hats are off to you.(don’t have my book at hand to get the Exact Quotes)
Anyone tells you that AA is the ONLY WAY... RUN AWAY ..those people can be DANGEROUS!
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