[R206]: I heartily agree. [R68] here.
I am so grateful I got sober whenI did. (Actually, I officially came out of the closet and got struck sober on the same night, New Year’s Eve 1985. Therein lies a tale...)
Back then, some of the founders were still alive. I saw Lois in person at the Bill W. Dinner in 1986, and I had a few conversations with Dr. Paul (writer of the notorious, “Acceptance is the answer, etc.”). I used to think that getting sober back then was similar to becoming a Christian in Rome in about 50 A.D.; some of the founders were still alive, and there was a general zeal to recovery.
In years since, though I was slow to realize it, I gradually came to see many AA meetings become inundated with meth addicts, the mentally ill, and fundamentalist Christians. Sadly, I’ve seen many mentally ill people get sober, then expect that to cure their mental illness, and, when it doesn’t, they often disappear. Often the same happened with the meth addicts, many of whom would often talk about how much they missed that drug.
The Christian influence has become the most pervasive, perhaps because there is more public support outside of AA. (I still wouldn’t be surprised if in, say, another 500 years or so, AA will actually be an organized religion. Already, you can see portraits of Saint Bill and Holy Bob on meeting room walls, and pious AA’er’s make frequent pilgrimages to AA’s sacred sites, in Akron and Bill’s grave in New Hampshire.)
I was lucky. I realized that AA gave me the gift of sobriety, but I was the one who had to maintain it, which meant a lot of additional work on myself as well. I cannot pray away an abusive childhood. And the only responsibility I can take for it is to let go of that dysfunctional familiarity in adulthood. I have done this with workshops and one-on-one therapy. And I still do.
When it comes to outside help, of any sort, I always encourage people to read the Big Book of AA, page 133, second paragraph up from the bottom (It’s the only Big Book page I can cite LOL):
“But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures. God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health problems to such persons. Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us, we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist. Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following his case afterward.”
So, AA is only a tool to recover oneself. But many people persist in claiming they can do it all on their own, with no help from anyone. And maybe they can; I don’t know. All I can honestly is that AA continues to work for me.
