AA Cultists Will Go Ballistic Over This Article

We told you AA wouldn't work, Saffy.

ha ha ha R1 yup

The article basically says that 90% of heavy drinkers are NOT addicted to hootch and can pretty easily cut down..

Anyway recidivism for AA is proof enough of its total lunacy as the premier aclcol treatment program....which BTW is FINALLY being reviewed by major medical centers.personell

I could handle one small bottle a day, and I lived to be 89...with DIABETES and I never lost a leg. Beat that, Mary Teetotaler Moore.

The article is correct. The idea that everyone who drinks too much is addicted is silly and minimizes how scary addicition is.

No, a lot people get accustomed to drinking excessively which is not the same as being a legitimate alcoholic.

Anyone who has been around a real alky knows what that looks like.

Yeah, the idea that if you are over-imbibing you must be an ADDICT! and that the only way forward is COMPULSIVE ABSTINENCE!

Fuck that shit.

I know several people who got their excessive drinking in check, on their own. And I remember how one of them had to suffer multiple entreaties from AA types about "facing your denial" about his true identity of ADDICT. Like they knew more about his true nature than he did. Guess what, "ADDICT" wasn't his true identity after all. He'd just fallen into a stupid and self-polluting bad habit... and he did manage to pull out of it.

AA lost credibility when they allowed themselves to become a diversion program for anyone arrested for DUI.

OMG. Let the whining and over-sharing begin! "I have a disease and no one not in these rooms will tell me otherwise!!" Where else can you get the all-time bad behavior pass of "It's a selfish program!"

My partner and I would easily be classified by the AA brigade as being hopeless alcoholics. We drink every evening, but we don't get drunk, we own our home, no one falls down etc., etc. In fact, our entire neighborhood is made up of drinkers just like us. Glad to see that article calling that shit what it is. And like R4, I've seen a real alcoholic and there is a huge difference.

My father used to drink 15 beers and a bottle of wine every day when he retired from working.

When he was working he used to still find time to drink a dozen beers throughout the day and night.

After a liver scare 10 years ago he gave up drinking and he's down to one beer a day if even that.

He was told many times he was an alcoholic, yet he managed to just give it up.

But, but, but...everything is an addiction, everything is a disease, and the only cure is sworn allegiance to a lifetime of wallowing in addiction culture and meetings in church basements.

If you want to see some hardcore bitches, go to a debtors anonymous meeting. Calling it grim would be adding a festive air that doesn't exist there. And give it up to that higher power or you will be given even more cold shoulder.

Agreed R11.

When I was having issues with money I went to a DA meeting and the guy running the group treated me like I owed him money.

Makes sense, R11 and R12... there's something specific about the underbelly of debt that makes it interpersonally mistrusting and nasty.

Very different from, say, the huggy empathy of an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.

[quot]eVery different from, say, the huggy empathy of an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.

Sarcasm, right, R13?

WTF is AA?

I'm confused about how R15 even managed to turn on a computer and successfully post on the internet.

(Surprisingly enough in a thread about alcoholics, it refers to Alcoholics Anonymous)

What a nasty group of people you are. If you don't need AA, good for you. It saved my life, and that of others I know. We did need it. Its not more complicated than that - if your life is fine and you're in control, good for you - only you can be the judge of that.

R17 my personal issue with AA is that people are not "recovering alcoholics" they are alcoholics with a capital A. There doesn't seem to be any room for progressing beyond the disease and hardcore members seem to prefer to wallow in the disease.

I agree with R17's opinion, if not his tone.

If you don't approve of AA, don't go to AA. Simple enough.

It was what I needed when I needed it, although there were aspects of AA with which I never agreed and the day came when I quit needing it.

Most of the problems I had in AA came from self-appointed gurus and their edicts, not AA itself.

I agree with R6. I refused to sign their attendance verifications when I chaired meetings because it was a violation of anonymity, theirs and mine.

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

There are lots of people out there who drink excessively and isolate themselves from others. AA provides support and hope to lots of people who felt hopeless. Who cares if they're technically alcoholics if the program helps them?

I don't understand why people who aren't in AA get their panties in a bunch over it. Just ignore it altogether.

The article is right, but if you've spent time with somebody who is a truly addictive personality, then you know some people really do need that radical shift in identity. They have to stay vigilant toward themselves each day.

One AA-going "I am an alcoholic" acquaintance discovered Grindr a few years ago when we were all staying together out on Fire Island for a weekend. OMG. He could not put his phone down. For DAYS. I mean he just clicked and clicked. Load more guys. Load more guys. Load more guys. Load more guys...

That's the kind of person who truly needs AA, and who would be dead of liver cirrhosis without it.

That's geographic, R20. The worst I saw that "religious conversion" aspect of AA was in NYC and environs. It's also pretty bad in Texas.

In many other parts of the country, AA is all about live and let live and nonbelievers are welcome.

I have a relative who is AA. That bitch skips the steps she doesn't like, such as saying sorry to those who you have hurt as a result of your drinking. And she sleeps with and pals up with other members and they have very dramatic unpleasant relationships and break ups. The whole thing seems very unhealthy.

Am I wrong in thinking a lot of AA and 12 step people can be really passive aggressive? I recently had an encounter with a longtime friend whom I usually got along great with but in this instance we were working together on a job. She was so controlling but in a really passive aggressive way and she was very defensive about it - somehow trying to cast me as the controlling one while she laid down all of her "boundaries." When I confronted her about it after a few days by just saying, "This is so strange. I really thought we'd have a lot of fun working together but it's not..." she just became more of an passive aggressive automaton just spouting what were essentially "rules" of communication. She kept saying that I wasn't allowing her to speak but I was actually silent. Finally I asked her to just express herself and stop speaking in rules but she wasn't able to and walked away. We have had very little contact since, having finished the job. She seemed intent on casting herself as some victim.

I saw her recently and not knowing if we'd have further communication I thanked her for some personal support she'd offered me this past year for which I was really grateful and she started talking some nonsense about how "we're all just scrambling around in the dark" and I thought, well, I'm not. I don't see myself that way, at least not in perpetuity. I've made choices and have things I want to achieve and am doing the hard graft necessary to achieve them and I'm prepared to accept whatever random consequences come of those actions, either good or bad, and will regroup as necessary.

I did attend a 12-step briefly and though I didn't committ to it, I appreciated it was some place to go. But I could never get past the first step of admitting that I'm powerless because I never felt that. Quite the opposite, I've proven to myself repeatedly that I have the power to change my life.

Doctor: Bad news. Your excessive drinking over 40 years has taken its toll. Your liver and kidneys are failing and your bladder is cancerous. You have 2 days to live.

Patient: oh god...why me??

Dr.: On the bright side, at least you weren't an alcoholic!

I'm a recovering alcoholic in AA. I need it, because I can't resist that first drink and I need to turn myself over to a program that does it for me.

Make of that what you will. Call me weak. Call me indoctrinated. Call me late for supper. Call me unreliable. Throw in undependable, too. I'll own it.

Still, I'm related to, or have known all of my life, the kind of heavy drinkers who can, for instance, on a Sunday morning,have four or five Bloody Marys and a beer chaser following each one after drinking all Friday and Saturday evening.

These people are NOT alcoholics. They're Wisconsinites. Ba-da-boomp!

All jokes aside, they're seasoned drinkers with a shut-down mechanism in their brains; creatures whose existence I've always known of without the lofty NY Times having to tell me about them.

Otoh, my brain doesn't have that shut-down mechanism. I can't have that first drink because I can't stop. I want to be alive so I attend support meetings in the form of AA.

I don't get the slamming of AA. Just because I'm a member, I don't think EVERY person who gets drunk regularly is an alcoholic.

Funny, most recovering alcoholics I know sound more rational and seem like better dates than OP.

I call you a cult member, R27.

After 22 years of AA (I got clean & sober in 1981), I realized that I probably would have outgrown my drug use by the time I was 30 regardless. Current science backs this up.

But when I was an impressionable 22, AA "worked" to convince me that there was something seriously wrong with me and unless I did everything everybody there told me to do, I would die. A powerful threat, no?

AA actually hurt my self-esteem. I was taught that I could not trust my own judgment, and that I had to depend on other people (who, regardless of "time in sobriety," were clearly more fucked up than I) and "work the steps" before I would ever be able to live in the real world. Phrases like "Your best thinking got you here" delivered the message that I could not rely upon myself or my own thoughts, ever.

Getting away from AA and the sick cult members there after 22 years of indoctrination was one of the best things I ever did for myself. I developed philosophies and sayings of my own that worked for me, and I learned to trust my own beliefs and instincts. Those people who told me they knew me better than I knew myself were so fucking wrong... Now I feel sorry for them, such pathetic dependent people.

And guess what? I still don't drink or get high -- and I've been clean and sober for 34 years.

[quote] I call you a cult member,

Then I'm a cult member. Fine.

I'm always pleased to read about people like you who have found methods to maintain their mental, emotional, physical, spiritual health, no matter the means.

Peace to you.

"my personal issue with AA is that people are not "recovering alcoholics" they are alcoholics with a capital A. There doesn't seem to be any room for progressing beyond the disease and hardcore members seem to prefer to wallow in the disease."

Yes!! They constantly talk about how the disease manifests in other areas of their lives. The other thing that is super disturbing is that someone with many years sober will say they can't ever say they will not drink tommorow, or even later that day.. This causes a dependence on AA and NO FAITH IN YOUR OWN ABILITIES.

The system is set up so it is ripe for abuse. Sponsors who take control of the lives of people who are told their lives are unmanageable. If I had taken the program's "suggestions' I would have no career and no life.

Real addiction is genetic.

r32, I agree. The lack of compassion, the cynical, detached attitudes. I don't see a lot of happy people in AA meetings. They look bored and self obsessed.

"It was what I needed when I needed it, although there were aspects of AA with which I never agreed and the day came when I quit needing it.

Then you are a DRY DRUNK according the the members. You can never leave or you will relapse or become a dry drunk...

We are the secretary for the regular Friday night meeting(tonight in a few minutes) here at our local Catholic church.

OP, you forgot to mention how AA members are all autistic.

It figures "Erna" is a Catholic.

I agree, there is a bit of a cult-like atmosphere to the AA meetings/members I’ve been exposed to. I never got the whole “you’re powerless to the disease” - seems like you’re building in an excuse for a relapse. I do know the process works for many, but I don’t think you need the lifelong commitment to meetings to maintain sobriety.

My father was a drunk - a big, heavy, daily drinker. As it got worse (falling down, losing money) my mother gave him an ultimatum-get sober or get out. He tried on his own, didn’t work. He wound up going to a monastery that dealt exclusively with treating alcoholics. They employed the AA methods, but complimented it with one-on-one counselling to get to the root of why you drink. This is what the “you’re powerless” avoids - a lot of drunks are drunks because they’re self medicating in a sense to cover some emotional/psychiatric issues. My father was there for like 3 months, when he came back he did attend AA meetings for maybe another 9 months or so, then just stopped. Years later I asked why and he said there was far too much self pity and not enough taking responsibility. He also cracked wise that if he kept going, they (the others in AA) and their stories would have driven him back to drink.

Except for one drink he had every summer - just to prove to himself I think he could have it and not revert to falling down drunk - he never had a drink the rest of his life. Interesting tidbit - of all the guys he met and kept in touch with from the monastery, he’s the only one who stopped going to the meetings as well as the only one who stayed sober.

If AA works for you that’s great, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

If AA works for you, great. R33 called it. It's genetic. If you have the markers for addiction, you may need real help.

I drank a liter of liquor every day for 15 years. Obviously my tolerance was very high, and I just stayed in a mildly numb stage all day long.

When an event occurred in my life which freed me of my misery, I quite just like that(snaps fingers.) And 11 years have passed and I have never been even tempted to drink since.

What was your misery r41? And congrats on getting your power back.

Well, r27, you are an alcoholic. One of the apparently 10% of heavy drinkers who are addicts. Good for you to stay sober!

Don't get why people act as if no one was an alcoholic, because not everyone is...? Alcoholics seem to be the people AA works for best, what a twist.

What’s the big deal here? There’s nothing wrong with getting sober, whether or not you’re an alcoholic, via AA, or SMART, or other programs.

Here’s my bottom line: when I drink, I isolate myself and fuck up my life. When I’m sober, I become a better person, who has good friends, goals, a job, etc.

I don’t care if I got sober via AA, or otherwise. All I know is that my life is worth living when I’m not drinking and drugging.

OP, get help somehow, somewhere. This internal battle you’re creating for yourself over legalisms will bode you never well.

Just to clear the article and research doesn't claim excessive drinking isn't a public health issue. People still get falling down drunk. They have their own health issues as well as the damage they cause to others. Excessive drinkers will drive drunk. Excessive drinkers need other forms of treatment, not treatment for alcohol addiction.

Considering that advice from their doctor, increase in the price of alcohol or reducing the number of places to purchase alcohol all seem to work there is no reason to conclude a few AA meetings aren't enough to amp up their awareness.

One result of the study is that alcohol dependence is a class issue. Like it or not the most affordable treatment for alcoholism is AA.

We have just returned from our meeting ans the after-meeting socializing. There was a fabulous sister from NYC ..........but also a lot of hot stuff there tonight and it caused us to become slightly 'nervous'..........

Has anyone seen the episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Francis thinks he's an alcoholic even though he barely drinks?

I haven't had a drink since 1983. I haven't had a meeting since 2015, maybe earlier. I don't feel the need for meetings anymore, and I got to hating dealing with some of the people. I can go again if I feel the need. I don't leave on bad terms. I just leave.

I was someone who drank from the minute he got out of work until he passed out at night. I had friends and lovers and a boyfriend who shared these proclivities. Am I an alcoholic? Maybe not, but being one all these years has helped me keep from drinking. I have two exes who have continued to drink all these years. One is a hostile asshole who gets in fights with waiters and store clerks. The other has memory problems I can't imagine. And then there's my family. Yeah, I'll stick with being an alcoholic. If it's a mistake, it's one of the most positive ones I've ever made.

Spot on!!!!

OP should die

I’ve had major problems with alcohol my whole life and I thought it was because I had no willpower or something morally wrong with me. I’ve gone with AA and I’ve gone without. For now it’s best that I go to meetings and practice the program. Who cares - what’s wrong with wanting to better yourself. I also go to therapy because I realized that my drinking was a symptom and self-medication of some mental problem as well. There are some really fucked up people at the meetings but there are also some great, decent people that I spend time with outside the meetings and we live a sober life together - dinners, celebrations, sports, gym, trips away - I’m very glad that I found friends I like and that our social life doesn’t consist of drinking. I’m grateful to have that kind of life now. There’s no self pity, we don’t sit around and talk about our feelings all the time - we hang out and have a healthy, positive time together. It’s nice, so so so much better than how I used to live.

Some wise advice from R44, OP.

Shift your focus from your obsession with AA to yourself and being healthy by whatever means work for you. Are you familiar with strawman arguments? Put this zeal and energy to better uses than berating DL.

R29, elderlez , you rock! So true about AA

R39, great post

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..

A smaller, more humble AA would be better. Stop accepting the DUI guys. Stop dominating the rehab/recovery field. Stop tolerating guru sponsors.

I've been to numerous High Noon meetings at the lgbt center in the West Village, and also Follies on Sixth Avenue. For me, it's the old-timer speakers who are the big draw. Simply put, they tend to be at peace with themselves and living good lives.

AA, the 12-steps etc. is a spiritual program. Aren't the addiction and powerlessness issues perhaps a means to an end? Even Russell Brand wrote a book about the 12 steps for non-addicts.

Speaker meetings are the worst. So many platitudes, such arrogance or self pity. Meetings are BORING!

AA is not the way

I love Della.

I quit drinking without AA. But couldn't give two shits if that's how others get sober. Or if others choose to not get sober. Or if others are heavy drinkers. Or...just do what makes you feel happy. Be kind to others and all that jazz. Everything else will fall into place. Usually.

I also want to say I Love Della. Della "gets it"

The folks I know who have sucessfully stayed away from all substances for a day, times more, are all live and let live, what ever works for you, have a good life, I am doing the best I can and trying to be a better person, people. I like those type of people.

IF you are an addict or alcohol, YOU know it. Many many people drink and drug, and are NOT addicted, even though they may do it for A LONG TIME, AND IN LARGE AMOUNTS. I have no idea what it is like to be like them. I was an addict from the moment I touched my first drug at age 18. Not an Alcoholic only I guess because it did not work for me.

So if you are sober, good for you, good for me, good for everyone who has to deal with us as a positive person instead of a miserable fuck. If you drink and drug, and it is not a problem for you, have 10 for me please! And if you are an addict or alcoholic, and are using now, please try to get help, in what ever form and fashion you can. Addiction SUCKS.