Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly.
This means that if our program does not work for you, find something which does. Please don’t change our program though – because it is working for us. How selfish and self-centered you are to think about changing something that is helping such a large number of people and has a proven track record! Our program is working for us, but it is not working for you, so you think you should change what is working for us!
No! Do your own thing. Go to the myriad of other things out there and do them – go to your inner guidance and create your own thing that works – don’t take ours and mess with it out of convenience for yourself! This is your path on earth – to find what works for you! And get other people to join you in it, but don’t mess with what works for others and has worked for others for over 80 years!
Maybe you don’t have Alcoholism! Maybe you have Alcohol Use Disorder! Go to a doctor! Or go to Ancient ways – but if AA is not working for you – don’t be selfish and try to improve it for yourself – go elsewhere and start something new!
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
Bill W. said that if he would change one word, it would be “Rarely to Never.” Our path is not that unusual. The same path is followed by the Alice Bailey Arcane School. Meditation, Prayer, Service To Others. It’s free – made possible by voluntary contribution. You can get the same thing with the Rosicrucian’s, or many other spiritual secret societies, if you don’t like ours. Or maybe you should try A Course In Miracles. That has a rigorous program, is basically free and is all over the country. Or you can try the Initiatives of Change – which was once the Oxford Group – that’s still around.
You could probably round up a bunch of alcoholic Rosicrucians and get them to make up a program that you liked to follow together, because the basis of what we do is common to all Natural Law societies – inner work, relationship with a Higher Power of your understanding and Service to Others. The Rosicrucians even have nightly review and morning meditation but there’s is much more rigorous than ours.
Do what the Washingtonians did – form it in a bar!
Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
My sponsor told me that I had better hope I was a “will not”. And as it turned out – I was.
But there are “cannots” and I know at least one. I believe we each have our own path –
I am not like most of the members of AA around here. For example – one of the bedevilments – “we could not make a living” – I have only recently begun to overcome that after 32 years of sobriety, by finally finding something that I can do as my own business. This is because I am also an artist – and I thought I was supposed to “do that” to make a living – for years. But I don’t have it in me to “do that” – so I had to hit a bottom with it and release it so that I would become entirely ready and willing to do something else – to commit to something else.
This has been an excruciatingly long process for which many sponsors have become very frustrated with me along the way and have fired me over it. I have had to work a plethora of extremely crappy jobs and I have had to seek outside help. Here I am, now age 60 and I have finally found something I can do as my own business – something that didn’t cost that much to learn, something I know works, and something that is aligned with what I deeply know in my heart that I am.
First, I had to be rid of a bunch of selfishness about it as well because I honestly hate working. And to be honest, I really don’t care about other people that much. I had to wade through all that. Also I am a literal thinker, so I had to make peace with my black and white thinking about it. I am now a healer – and I honestly don’t care that much about people superficially, as an alcoholic, I only care about myself. But in the end, I had to find the common denominator of what I am good at as an artist, and being extremely good at sponsoring, to deduce that I would make a good healer. I am 60 years old now – and finally have been beaten into a state of reasonableness about this.
There is a myth in AA that most people can come in, get sober and their life falls into place. Mine didn’t. I had to have outside help for some aspects of my dis-ease –
There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.
Let’s take my friend the schizo-affective for an example. He had a drug induced brain injury at age 20 which left him with a form of schizo-affective disorder where he is literally 2 people. One of them is sober and knows he’s an alcoholic and is calm and reserved and sweet and the other is manic and is an obnoxious asshole and drinks. The 2 of them do not know each other exists, although my hammering it for 8 years has given them an inkling. He does not have the capacity to be honest with himself. He cannot surrender the manic one to God. The brain injury was physical and can’t be changed through any method we know of at the moment. This is just his life. God has provided him with HUD housing and although when he is manic, he doesn’t pay his rent and buys things like a car and drinks – when he is “depressed” the next month, he pays the previous and current month and cleans up the wreckage from the mania. We pray together daily when he is not manic. He has developed a relationship with God and shows improvement, but he cannot consistently grasp and develop a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. He needs outside help, which receives through the VA and he is not continuously sober and he doesn’t go to meetings anymore because everyone hates the manic guy and have seen him drinking and are intolerant of him and his problems. But his life has been greatly improved by individuals in AA and AA itself. He found his own conception of God in AA and that is what helps him today.
Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
AA can’t help people like this unless they can be honest. If they do not have the capacity to be honest, Individually, we can be their friends and help them – I have another gal who was my sponsee who has been on a large cocktail of meds for about 20 years – she has never made it through the steps . Now she wants to get off the meds and I am helping her do that – as of course, no one else will – but who knows if that will work – she is on SSDI also and gets outside help. She has about 4 years this time – I am her friend also in a way – but she lives on the east coast now – so it’s a phone friendship. I am not going to try to sponsor her again. She shows improvement.
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it-then you are ready to take certain steps
The steps are certain for alcoholics of my type – but for others – there is so many other things out there – why should we change AA for all those other people? Again, I have already addressed this. Try all the other things that are available – Something new came out recently that works great similar to a 4th step for childhood stuff – called the Emotion Code – you can learn it yourself also for free and teach it to yourself and do it on yourself as well. This works great on trapped emotions from childhood stuff – there is also a ton of other therapies for trauma if you have insurance or money out of pocket.
AA is for alcoholics of a certain type – but we have no monopoly on therapy for the Alcoholic – please go find what you need and leave us what has worked for us.
Anonymous Alcoholics 