Twelve Step Heretic - carried forward from a Help topic

[pj]

To read the post that spawned this reply, go here. What I discovered is that those organisations are a cult of sorts. The mechanism they use to keep "members" is the brainwashing and implantation of the idea that you can never, and never will, truly quit the habit. And, indeed, they don't: not really, that is. Because they end up surrounding themselves with it. They never break free from the bond. There are people who haven't done drugs or drank alcohol in YEARS - I'm talking 10, 20, 30, 35 years - that attend the meetings like it's their church. And, in many ways, it now is. I decided to get sober when I turned 21, after spending my teen years first immersed in drugs and the drug culture, then briefly cleaning up before diving headlong into alcohol. The end result was me using alcohol like any other drug I had my life enveloped in, and my descent into alcoholism was rapid. I would not have sobered up if not for AA. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions are many things, and the depth of each of them is such that they can be revisited again and again to continue finding profound new meaning and implication. The year I finally got sober, 1982, I had just drank myself out of a job in which I was making more money already at 21 years old than my father had ever made in his life. I was unemployed at a time that the economy was terrible, which made for a great time to immerse myself in Alcoholics Anonymous. And immerse myself I did. I attended two and three meetings a day, and then hung out at an Alano Club, which was essentially a dry bar, much of the rest of the time. Sobriety stuck, and I made a lot of friends. Soon I found myself going on "12th Step Calls," which are essentially interventions when somebody calls AA and asks for help. I remained on the call list for several years. It became my life for a time. Even my romantic interests were from this circle. After breaking off a second relationship, I realized that the whole lifestyle had become a replacement for the drugs and alcohol - which had served its purpose, indeed, but was no longer healthy or resulting in getting on with my life. Before I go on, I need to say that if sober people don't attend meetings, they won't be much good. AA and other twelve-step groups absolutely depend on the interaction between people wandering in wondering whether they have any hope at all with people who are proof that the program works. The program DOES work. Some of us humans are just so prone to addictive behavior that the program itself becomes an unhealthy addiction. I am one of those. So I quit AA. Twenty plus years later, I'm still clean and sober and happy, and life is better than I ever imagined it could be. I still choose not to drink or use mind altering substances, but I'm not afraid of alcohol. Over the years I've tasted wines, and I use alcohol copiously in my cooking. No cravings result from it. I could probably drink if I wanted to - but I like it way too much and would very likely return to my old destructive ways. Sober is better. That's my choice of lifestyle. I have experienced a certain resentment from "program people" when they find out that I successfully quit AA. It is a sort of heresy. You aren't supposed to be able to do it. All I can say in response to that is that AA did what it needed to do for me, and I certainly returned the favor many times over. It was time to move on. I don't need AA to work the program. Being in AA is actually an unhealthy opportunity to allow pride and status issues to come to the forefront, two things that were part and parcel of my addictive behavior. Regarding the church-like aspect of the Twelve Steps; of course it becomes a church for people! The path to sobriety is entirely a spiritual journey. The steps lead us along a path of cleaning up the dishonesty in our lives and then maintaining that state of simple purity. Like churches, AA meetings are prone to the same confusions and abuses as any other spiritually-bound group of humans. You won't find a perfect church, and you won't find a perfect AA meeting or group. It is an individual path, taken with the help and support of others until we can do it on our own. Sobriety - true sobriety - is not replacing one unhealthy behavior with another. It is the complete reconstruction of a person's life, in humility and recognition of the incredible mess that was made of it the first go. The Twelve Steps are amazingly powerful tools in the path to achieving that goal, so long as they don't become the end in themselves.