A sad but an all too often accurate experience about the many A.A. meetings that claim to be a 12 step recovery program. What are your thoughts? Does this clip reflect some your experiences with meetings, sponsors and fellowship?
12 Step Recovery from ANY and ALL Addictions
A sad but an all too often accurate experience about the many A.A. meetings that claim to be a 12 step recovery program. What are your thoughts? Does this clip reflect some your experiences with meetings, sponsors and fellowship?
Sounds like someone was court ordered to attend! It only works if you want it to desire to quit is key!!!
Interesting article. Can you define SOBRIETY. There is a difference in being dry and being sober. I lived in a house where my parents went to AA in the 1950 . Stoped drinking and stoped meetings and or working the steps. When I admitted that I was indeed an alcoholic in 1983, I went to meetings for a year and wanted to leave A A because of a lot of what you said in the video. I realized through being honest with myself that I didn’t want to just be dry. I wanted real Sobriety. And AA steps and Big Book has done this alone with meetings. Meetings remind me that denial is always alive in the back of my mind. P/S my mother at 62 had enough of dry drunk thinking and acting and continued AA meetings. At 95yr old she died sober happy and at peace because she worked her steps and made amends
Interesting article. Can you define SOBRIETY. There is a difference in being dry and being sober. I lived in a house where my parents went to AA in the 1950 . Stoped drinking and stoped meetings and or working the steps. When I admitted that I was indeed an alcoholic in 1983, I went to meetings for a year and wanted to leave A A because of a lot of what you said in the video. I realized through being honest with myself that I didn’t want to just be dry. I wanted real Sobriety. And AA steps and Big Book has done this alone with meetings. Meetings remind me that denial is always alive in the back of my mind. P/S my mother at 62 had enough of dry drunk thinking and acting and continued AA meetings. At 95yr old she died sober happy and at peace because she worked her steps and made amends
Aa says clearly it is suggested, never makes you do anything. In fact, it never says you have to be sober to attend, just a DESIRE to stop.
I love the comments on this. In short, I’d like to call BS on this video. ALOT of these statements are NOT in the literature. Ie: take the cotton out of your ears, 90 meetings in 90 days, pretend it’s working , “recruit” people etc. Just silly.
Those are people’s “opinions” & cute ideas. And sayings members have made up. The program is based on the literature & the 12 steps. NOT someone’s opinion. If it’s not working, then your doing it Wrong..
IF and only if you have tried everything and nothing else has worked, AA can. If you have not tried everything else, please try something. If you have found something that works then share your experience and talk that up. That’s a great message to spread.
AA was started as the last gasp for hopeless drunks. It isn’t a place for hard drinkers or those who can stop with other methods. It’s for desperate people with no other place to go. If you arrive at AA before you have lost all the answers for you, you may still need to think about those things and try to make that work. Because I didn’t have any answers anymore, I was too tired to take the sarcastic view that this piece expresses. If I had come in in my 20s, I’d have laughed my head off and run screaming from the place. That doesn’t mean you can’t get sober in AA in your 20s, but I had many other things to try first and I was still full of ideas. I’m not dumb, sadly. So, it took a long time for me to find sobriety, not for lack of looking and reading, Drs and professional counselors, etc.
The book of alcoholics anonymous says we are not the only way. If you read the literature and work with someone who understands the literature, you may come to find sobriety that works. If something else works for you, please spread the word. I am aware of every “fact” discussed about above including the information on Bill Wilson. He may have cried out for a drink on his deathbed, as someone would about a long lost love, but he didn’t die drunk. He wasn’t perfect and we don’t talk about him much as a person. No one idolizes anyone. The superficial answer is that you will hear some of those things said, but what is said and how the program works are different at times. I have been sober over 20 years and work with people who seek me out, as I was shown over time, not indoctrinated. I’m fairly happy in my own skin and I never was, not from the age of 10. I started drinking at age 11, went to treatment in 1986, got sober in 1996. God bless.
Wow thank you . You hit the mail on the head. I came to AA in 1983 before the Christmas Holiday’s. And I am still sober 2022. Yes there are other ways to get sober. But what keeps me coming back to meetings and AA is the way of life it still teaches me. To many people use the word sober when the actually mean dry. With out step work you not really sober nor can you grow up and not just grow old. Thank you
Unfortunately about 75% of what the guy was saying has been spewed off at an AA meeting at some point in time but our literature contradicts it. He took what he heard some members saying and categorized all of AA as having these beliefs. That would be like going into a hellfire and brimstone southern baptist church (no offense), hearing a sermon and labeling all Christian religions based on that one church. Small minded. Hopefully no newcomers watch it. I’m not sure what his service message was. How is that helpful??? Sounded like an ex-AA member with a resentment.
Liz in Michigan
Hello,I’m a member of a 12-step fellowship for emotional and mental illness in a south american country. My fellowship and other ones, since they’re new or literature points to AA, look for guidance and sponsoring at AA. I’ve been regular attendant to AA meetings and shared and worked with AA members, who I am grateful for sharing their experiences with me and accepting and helping me.
I’m latin so I had to listen twice to be sure about the video content. I’d love to laugh at it, if it wasn’t describing my experiences and acquantainces, experiences with the AA groups, sponsors and oldtimers I’ve worked with in my country. AND MY OWN BEHAVIORS with newbies and fellas.
There was a HUGE difference when I found messages from AA members who had been suffering in fellowship for years even when doing everything, until they were directed to the Big Book, followed the directions and experienced a total integral (psychic) change. I also found "that ain’t in the Big Book!" article and both things blew my mind away.
BB directions do not say what most of my fellas say, and what the video says; and of course, it doesn’t say neither things I tried to share, practice and demand from others. I became "suspicious" when I found I could do anything for a recovery fella (N/A, AA, Alanon, etc) but not for my own family, that living with them had become pretty iced polite, and it wasn’t what BB Oltimers’ stories said, nor the last chapters.
Since the last time I shared in this web, I came closer to the instructions than ever. Result: in less than two months, without proposing, nor reprogramming my life, anything else than BB directions, I found myself going to my brother’s family and being genuinely loving, considerate, and patient, thinking on them first. It’s a miracle, specially after being 4 years in step work and having done a 4th and 5 step years ago.
I HAD to quit from the AA group I was attending – I was shut up with "too much literature and BB: it’s Bill’s 12×12 the only one worth it", bullying, and psychological analysis of whatever I was sharing. Even my AA sponsor, a great helping guy, kept telling me not to complicate my mind by following BB, and tried to dissuade me. And I’m reluctant to come back to my own fellowship since they banned my working with BB since it was AA.
Simply I’m putting following BB’s instructions first, and they are working. When I start to lose my mind, I follow the cut clear directions and the pain, the crazy ideas, the shortcomings vanish. Hope no one there had to experience pain and harm from the experiences described in the video, and God direct them to BB sponsors who are practicing program in all their affairs.
It is too bad that much of this person’s rant is all too often true in AA today. As far as the last statements in the piece, I have to say that AA is not the only answer for a drinking problem, but if (and only if IMHO) you have tried everything else, then AA can work. I am living proof.
The AA Fellowship success rate is not as low as 0% (ROFL), but I admit that it is nowhere near the 75% the Forward to the Second Edition claims. I won’t boast a 75% success rate, but more than half of the people I have personally taken through the AA program in the Big Book are still sober today. I am on the firing line, so that is scores of people sober, not because I am their sponsor, but because they followed the program in the book.
Very funny. For something to be funny it has to have some element of truth. I’m glad I didn’t see that before i went to my first meeting!