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13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Just wanted to say hi

To those in the Foxman/total abstinence camp - at the rate I'm going I'll be drinking zero soon because booze has lost its appeal on many levels now

Scott,

I am glad that you made it through. And please stick around and post your progress. I just wanted to share some information from the book called AA. In AA they categorize the drinks into three varieties. The first the normal drunks. One or two drinks occasionally. And then there are Hard drunks. But,

If a sufficiently strong reason ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention.

Probably you belong to this camp.

And then there are the real-alcoholics. Who can never quit on there own resource. Only a spiritual solution could help.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Question about AA

Dear Jbblue,

I will be glad to share my experience with AA. End of September I would have completed 4 years of freedom from bondage to alcohol. It was 4 months into just going to meetings, still crazy I ran into one of the most inspirational speeches ever heard (from a drunk). His name is Chris R he had then about 21 years sobriety. And the speech highlighted the dilution of the message of AA (today) and modern meetings of AA turning into therapy session, instead of helping the suffering alcoholics find a power so they can remain sober and lead a serene life. You may google for 'xa-speakers' and find several speakers among them you will find many of this persons speech. He was the one who turned my attention to the actual program prescribed in the book called Alcoholics Anonymous. Also helpful was the workshop (also available at the same site) by Joe and Charlie. I went through the Book with the aid of the workshop. It was so enlightening. I just followed the instructions laid out in the book. I attend few meetings (not a whole lot like modern day people propagate) but I stay connected, try to be of maximum use to fellow drunks.

Please start reading from the Preface, Forwards.. then the Doctors Opinion....... Bills Story... (basically from left to right) preferably listening to the workshop. They read key paragraphs from the book and offer there opinion/experience. Together they had about 100 years of sobriety before Joe passed away couple of years ago after helping so many people around Arkansas.

I would be open to leave my email/contact info here but, i am not sure about the policies of this forum. The other forum I belong to has a feature so we can send private messages. Not sure about this. May be the instant messenger could help.

Anyways, please read the book and if you any questions, you may post the questions here. We all can benefit from your questions.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Question about AA

In AA, we call it obsession of the mind. After a few days of abstinence, the mind tricks us into thinking its going to be fine this time and we take that first drink. There is a key paragraph in the book:

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.

Then the physical craving kicks in. This happens only with alcoholics. The body asks for more and we end up drunk. I used to sneak out on Saturday mornings for a tall bottle of beer. But after the first one, I usually get drunk in the afternoon.

And the most important piece is that an alcoholic is restless, irritable and discontented during those gaps.

Once we start working the steps of AA, we will be placed in a position of neutrality. Where we will not be interested in liquor anymore. That is one of the promises of AA.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Question about AA

Being certified as a border line alcoholic (based on my lies about the qty of liquor I consumed) by my counselor, I continued to manage my life without quiting and seeking help. But the day arrived I couldn't read my own document during a walk-through. I knew I was done. I sought a psychiatrist. Looking at my history, he wont give me Antabuse (because my brother had died drinker after that). He recommended I go to AA and seek a spiritual solution. I was desperate so I went. Hanging around the fellowship I finally ran into the speaker tapes I mentioned earlier. Because I was befogged, i had to listen to these tapes over and over again. Finally I realized, alcoholism is not about drinking too much alcohol. Its the condition that exist if we don't drink.

So the book says Selfishness and Self-centered-ness is root cause of all our problems. So, I had to look at my character defects. Look at my past were I have been selfish, dishonest, fearful, sarcastic....AA calls it moral inventory. And had to pick a sponsor and share those defects with him and pray to my higher power to get over with these short-comings...

Some of them don't go away but we keep trying..Then the restitution. Going back to the people I have hurt. The main thing is not to repeat the behavior again.

Somewhere during this phase, the fear that I will pick up another drink went away.

Then we have the step were we continue to watch for these characters every moment and we seek the protection of our higher power (In AA nobody thrusts anything on you, you can have you own conception of GOD that is the beauty of it) thru prayer and meditation.

I meditate a lot, recently I included chanting of some mantra too into my schedule..This is all to observe and cleanse the in-space.

And then i try to be of maximum use to fellow alcoholics. In the AA meetings I don't share much but, i watch for new-comers. I carry these CDs handy and give them away to those coming in. And I am member of another board where the moment a new comer joins, I send them an email about these speaker tapes... I strongly feel the moder AA meetings have diluted the message of AA.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Question about AA

Jbblue,

I see you have a sincere desire to recover. Please try to read the Doctors Opinion and try to see if you can identify with the book says about alcoholism. The mental obsession, we all make firm decision not to drink ever again but later in the evening we change the mind and pick up a drink. After which the physical craving kicks in and end up drunk. Then the spiritual malady: restless, irritable discontent...when not drinking.

That is the powerlessness over alcohol and the un-manageability (spiritual malady) the book talks about. Once we are convinced that we are alcoholic, then we become ready to look for solution.

If you are an atheist or an agnostics, there is a chapter called "we agnostics" which talks about how most of the people who walk into the fellowship are in that state, confused. Actually the co-founder Bill W had a bit of struggle accepting GOD and his friend suggested for him to come up with his own conception of GOD..

There are many promises in the big book, there is the 9th step promises and the 10th step promises i am going to leave here. So you can have some hope:

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half

way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the

past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things

and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon

life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively

know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is

doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes

quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have

returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot

flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically.

We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or

effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it,

neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a

position of neutrality safe and protected. We have not even sworn off.

Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither

cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Question about AA

The baffling nature of alcoholism is that, the will power is totally non-existent when in comes to making a choice whether to pick a drink or not. We may employ the will power in all the other aspect of our life situation, however when it comes to booze we succumb to the desire to take that first drink and then the craving kicks in and we end up drunk.

The doctor who helped Bill W has this to say:

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.

On the other hand-and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand-once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Question about AA

Reason being I've noticed by reading some other posts there is some skeptism about AA.

Dear Jbblue,

There are people who enter fellowship and just hang-around the fellowship without even understanding what alcoholism is. They keep going to meetings but would have never even opened the book and read about it. Some of the meetings make the matters worse, they don't even discuss and share what alcoholism is. Gradually the fellowship is going towards a therapy oriented path. If you are lucky, you will find meetings in your area which focuses on the Big Book (aka Alcoholics Anonymous). Then one would get to hear what actually alcoholism is. In the book you will see a common description of the Alcoholic. Inability to Control Alcohol and being miserable (restless, irritable discontent, anxious, depressed....) when not drinking.....Its not about drinking too much alcohol, Duis, jail time, institution....

The person has to accept that he/she indeed is an alcoholic otherwise there is very little chance of recovery. Once you admit, you accept the fact that one has to abstain from booze for ever and then we look for recovery.

I like what Eckhart Tolle talks about in "Meaning of Surrender" in the book Power of Now:

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is. Inner resistance is to say "no" to what is, through mental judgment and emotional negativity. It becomes particularly pronounced when things "go wrong," which means that there is a gap between the demands or rigid expectations of your mind and what is. That is the pain gap. If you have lived long enough, you will know that things "go wrong" quite often. It is pre-cisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind.

Surrender is a purely inner phenomenon. It does not mean that on the outer level you cannot take action and change the situation. In fact, it is not the overall situation that you need to accept when you surrender, but just the tiny segment called the Now.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

I NEED HELP.

Even I used to be quized about not being able to stop after I took that a drink or two. Later after a bit of struggle came to the awareness this is something unique to Alcoholics. There is something physical craving that happens after an alcoholic puts a drink in the body. But that is not the only issue with the alcoholic, after a few days of abstinence, the mind tricks him/her into believing that it will be alright this time and we pick up the first drink. And during that absence, the alcoholic is very miserable: restless, irritable, discontented, remorseful, depressed........

The only solution is to have a total psychic change so we can have different out-look upon life.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

How To Rid Yourself of Stress!

I like what Eckhart Tolle talks about Stress in his book Power of Now:

Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being "here" but wanting to be "there," or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It's a split that tears you apart inside. To create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn't make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, work fast, or even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without resisting the present. As you move, work, run - do it totally. Enjoy the flow of energy, the high energy of that moment. Now you are no longer stressed, no longer splitting yourself in two. Just moving, running, working - and enjoying it.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1562

Everyday pledge

Sept 27th marked my 4th year of Sobriety. Living the AA promises.

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