Drug Rehab Options Blog

A.A. Thought for the Day

In Alcoholics Anonymous there is no thought of individual profit. No greed or gain. No membership fees, no dues. Only voluntary contributions of our money and ourselves. All that we hope for is sobriety and regeneration, so that we can live normal, respectable lives and can be recognized by others as men and women willing to do unto others as we would be done by. These things we accomplish by the help of each other, by following the Twelve Steps, and by the grace of God. Am I willing to work for A.A. without material gain to myself?

Meditation for the Day

What is sometimes called a conversion by religion is often only the discovery of God as a friend in need, What is sometimes called religion is often only the experiencing of the help and strength of God's power in our lives. What is sometimes called holiness is often only the invitation of God to be our Friend. As God becomes your friend, you become a friend to others. We experience true human friendship and from this experience we can imagine what kind of a Great Friend God can be. We believe Him to be a tireless, selfless, all conquering, miracle-working Friend. We can reach out to the Great Friend and figuratively take His hand in ours.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may think of God as a Great Friend in need. I pray that I may go along with Him.

Hazelden Foundation PO Box 176 Center City, MN 55012

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting hosted by Texasblind. The focus will be on one of the 12 Steps - TBA.

September of 2007 I found alcoholics anonymous. I was in a very lonely stage of my young life, and had burnt bridges with most of the friends I'd had. I was drinking at a party and offered an old friend a drink, and he told me he didn't drink. We talked about it and next thing I new I was going to AA meetings and had completely renounced drinking. I had no withdrawals. I had no using dreams. To be completely honest, it wasn't that hard for me to quit and stay quit.

I lied to friends I made in the program about the amounts I used, exaggerating it to make sure I fit in with them. I'm sure some of them detected my bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I did my fair share of drinking, and my fair share of drug use. But there is one thing I never identified with in the definition of an alcoholic: the phenomenon of craving.

I feel that I have reached a crossroads; I can't continue the steps if I don't believe in the first step.

I don't want to leave AA because I want to go get ****** up. I honestly just believe that I found AA at a very bad time in my life that wasn't necessarily caused by drinking. why wouldn't I love AA? It was a place where people loved me. I didn't even have to say anything and people acted like they knew my whole story, and they felt sympathy for me.

So now I stand at a point where I feel that going to AA and proclaiming myself an alcoholic is a form of lying.
But for me, to leave AA is to lose my entire social circle. I can't convince one person in AA of my point of view. Every time I try to explain it, they shut down. "You're trying to convince yourself that you can drink like a gentleman."

I dont know. I am VERY young. I am 19 years old. I have never suffered from needing to drink daily and have never drank on a certain schedule. MAYBE it will develop into full blown alcoholism, but at least if that happens and I can't quit, I will know where to go.

i am just scared to lose all of my friends because of this.
but i feel that it's something i need to do,

even if I am lying to myself like they think I am, I'll never be able to work a program fully until I've hit a bottom right? I can't just skip the first step, and no matter how many times I write out definitions of powerlessness and unmanageability it doesn't sit well.

i still believe in god and want to base whatever life I lead around a strong connection with Him. I want to be of maximum usefulness to god and my fellows. I just don't feel that AA is the way for me to get there, considering the rule for membership.

ALSO:
i am in no way bashing on AA. I love AA and love the people I have met in AA. I've met so many generous, hardworking, and honest people that I can't count them all. I fully support the work that 12 step programs do for people.

I was coming back from AA when I heard this on the radio:

Man Gets 50 Years For Killing His AA Sponsor

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) ― A Long Beach man who shot and killed his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor at an AA meeting has been sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.

Jurors convicted Scott Gordon Reynolds of the first-degree murder of 33-year-old Uriel Noriega. He was sentenced Thursday by Superior Court Judge Jesse Rodriguez.

The 29-year-old defendant testified that he snapped after Noriega told other members at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting two years ago that Reynolds is gay, a secret confided by Reynolds to only his mother and the AA sponsor.

Reynolds claimed he brought the weapon to the meeting at St. Luke's Episcopal Church because he planned to commit suicide in front of fellow AA members.

Prosecutor Patrick O'Crowley says "none of that was substantiated" during trial.

"No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.

"Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end. How dark it is before the dawn! In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes."



(All excerpts used are solely from the First Edition of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.)



I read the Big Book before I dared to venture out to my first AA meeting.

This was the passage that changed my life. For the first time, I realized that my alcohol problem is not unique -- and there is a solution.

Thank you all for showing up to those meetings. We need each other.

I have been in recovery for 20 years and I understand that addiction is a disease. I also understand that there is a solution to addiction. The solution is outlined clearly in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the book is clear that in order to recover the addict/alcoholic must WORK, put in the effort, be willing to go to any length, and basically change everything.

It's tough medicine, but it's a solution that works.

I can understand the addict/alcoholic who doesn't know the solution and hasn't worked it and yet still keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over, but the chronic relapser knows better. He or she has seen that the solution does indeed work. I am struggling with how to make peace with chronic and perpetual relapse behavior. These people know what they need to do, but for some reason refuse to "take their medicine."

In the meantime they run havoc over people's lives. They stress our public assistance programs, our prisons, our treatment facilities. They steal from law-abiding tax-paying citizens; they manipulate the courts and families and promise they will never do it again. Many are on SSI, some sort of Medicaid; some just live off family members. Few are capable of sustaining any kind of employment. Many drink/drug and drive and have suspended licenses, no insurance, but wonÂ’t put the EFFORT and WORK into even using public transportation. Many fail to use inadequate family planning methods and have children who are abused and who stand a good chance of falling victim to this illness. These parents can't support themselves, let alone their children.

If they "worked it," they could get better. I find it unconscionable that they won't work it. Yes, the addict/alcoholic is out of control once he or she takes the first drink, hit, etc, and the Big Book states that the addict/alcoholic has no defense against this first drink. BUT, that defense is built by working the program of action. The action is the medicine, yet these people either stop taking their "medicine" after the course of treatment, or don't finish the program of action in order to get the spiritual experience. They make the choice to pick up. It’s a conscious choice, and it’s saying, “I won’t WORK. I won’t take my medicine.”

Are these the ones who, as the book says, "are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves?" What do we do? Just let them run havoc? Rob and assault us and then feel sorry for them and say they have a “brain disease” and then throw more money into SSI, Medicaid, long-term residential treatment, et al? How many must these people harm until society says “no more?” I live in a community where these "unfortunates" seem to be more the rule than the exception, and I am tired of them.

Yes, I'm angry and I know for my recovery I need to quiet that anger, which this post is helping me do, and for my recovery I will work the program of action and work through this anger. I will do what I must do, put forth whatever WORK is necessary.

If only they would do the WORK.

I have been in recovery for 20 years and I understand that addiction is a disease. I also understand that there is a solution to addiction. The solution is outlined clearly in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the book is clear that in order to recover the addict/alcoholic must WORK, put in the effort, be willing to go to any length, and basically change everything.

It's tough medicine, but it's a solution that works.

I can understand the addict/alcoholic who doesn't know the solution and hasn't worked it and yet still keeps repeating the same mistakes over and over, but the chronic relapser knows better. He or she has seen that the solution does indeed work. I am struggling with how to make peace with chronic and perpetual relapse behavior. These people know what they need to do, but for some reason refuse to "take their medicine."

In the meantime they run havoc over people's lives. They stress our public assistance programs, our prisons, our treatment facilities. They steal from law-abiding tax-paying citizens; they manipulate the courts and families and promise they will never do it again. Many are on SSI, some sort of Medicaid; some just live off family members. Few are capable of sustaining any kind of employment. Many drink/drug and drive and have suspended licenses, no insurance, but wonÂ’t put the EFFORT and WORK into even using public transportation. Many fail to use adequate family planning methods and have children who are abused and who stand a good chance of falling victim this illness. These parents can't support themselves, let alone their children.

If they "worked it," they could get better. I find it unconscionable that they won't work it. Yes, the addict/alcoholic is out of control once he or she takes the first drink, hit, etc, and the Big Book states that the addict/alcoholic has no defense against this first drink. BUT, that defense is built by working the program of action. The action is the medicine, yet these people either stop taking their "medicine" after the course of treatment, or don't finish the program of action in order to get the spiritual experience. They make the choice to pick up. It’s a conscious choice, and it’s saying, “I won’t WORK. I won’t take my medicine.”

Are these the ones who, as the book says, "are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves?" What do we do? Just let them run havoc? Rob and assault us and then feel sorry for them and say they are a “brain disease” and then throw more money into SSI, Medicaid, long-term residential treatment, et al? How many must these people harm until society says “no more?” I live in a community where these "unfortunates" seem to be more the rule than the exception, and I am tired of them.

Yes, I'm angry and I know for my recovery I need to quiet that anger, which this post is helping me do, and for my recovery I will work the program of action and work through this anger. I will do what I must do, put forth whatever WORK is necessary.

If only they would do the WORK.

This was sent to me by a friend - I'm on the fence with this one though. When I first started attending AA I use to call myself an alcoholic/addict too, but that lasted for about a year, now @ AA I say I am an alcoholic and at NA an addict despite how rare it is that I go.

AMENDS TO ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
Excerpted from article published in Mirus,
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE MINNEAPOLIS INTERGROUP

I recently completed the Eighth step and have decided that my first amends should be to Alcoholics Anonymous itself, which I believe I have harmed to some extent by violating its singleness of purpose.

I used to identify myself as an alcoholic and an addict. I do not anymore because I believe other addictions are irrelevant at AA meetings. But, aside from that, I used to always insist on talking about my other addictions beyond what was necessary to relate them to alcohol. I justified this by saying that alcohol was just another drug and so it was unfair to expect me not to talk about all my addictions. And I refused to attend any other fellowship because I claimed to prefer the wisdom and sobriety an AA.

I realize now how rude and self-centered this position was. It is not a question of what is fair, or whether alcohol is just another drug. The Traditions and primary purpose of AA are what they are, whether I agree or not.

In the past when I was actively using, I often had dinner at the homes of people who did not use drugs, but who drank. I never considered insisting that I had a right to smoke a joint at their dinner table because they were drinking wine. And imagine if I had and then added insult to injury by saying, “And not only do I have the right to use any drug I want around here if you are going to drink, but I’m going to keep coming back and I’m going to keep using any drug I want in your home because I like the food you serve and your company better than the food I find in the homes of my drug addicted friends, and I have a right to do this because all drugs are the same and I don’t care what the rules or customs of your home are.”

Such a gross abuse of hospitality sounds preposterous, but that is essentially what I was doing by insisting that I had the right to violate AAÂ’s singleness of purpose. I was abusing the hospitality of this fellowship

This is not an apology. I was too sick to realize how selfishly I was acting, and the mere apology is not necessarily an amends. I hope to amend the harm I did by stating clearly what I did, for the benefit of others, and further, by not doing it again.

Excerpt from the First Edition, Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

"The tragic truth is that if the man be a real alcoholic, the happy day will seldom arrive. He has lost control. At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.

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 non-existent. We are unable at certain times, no matter how well we understand ourselves, 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.

The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy, and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.

The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, "It won't burn me this time, so here's how!" Or perhaps he doesn't think at all. How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth, pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, "For God's sake, how did I ever get started again?" Only to have that thought supplanted by "Well, I'll stop with the sixth drink." or "What's the use anyhow?"

When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he has probably placed himself beyond all human aid, and unless locked up, is certain to die, or go permanently insane. These stark and ugly facts have been confirmed by legions of alcoholics throughout history. But for the grace of God, there would have been one hundred more convincing demonstrations. So many want to stop, but cannot.

There is a solution."