Expert: Rebos - 5/10/2007

Question
Hi - Thankyou for taking my question. I am an alcoholic who is attending AA. I dont have a long history of drinking, but in the last year or less I have drank about once every 3 weeks - during the last 6 months of that time I certainly drank like a true alcoholic and got into the usual trouble that alcoholics get into: fights, driving drunk,casual sex. I havent "Lost" anything: friends, job or ever gotten arrested, but I realize that if If I ever drink again it is certainly a possiblity and is almost garunteed if I continue to drink since the disease is progressive. My PROBLEM is this. Since starting AA three months ago, I havent had the urge to drink at all - but the group members INSIST that you have to go to a meeting a day or you will most definately start drinking again. I have cut my meetings down to three times a week, and am getting a lot of pressure to go everyday (even being ostracized by some members). The other problem is that since drinking was never a daily thing or a big part of my life and only lasted a year or less - I was never really obsessed or compelled to do it. But when I attend more than 3 meetings a week - I hear so much talk about it that it makes me want to drink - it actually gives me the urge to drink. Going to AA every day makes the whole idea of drinking a daily think for me and it makes me feel like it is a constant battle I have to fight when It never felt that way before. Dont get me wrong - I AM A TRUE alcoholic - I can tell by the way that I drink when I do drink. But Making AA my Life is just too much stress for me and lately is causing more stress and more of a desire to drink than it is helping me. What is your opinion - the AA NAZI'S (as they are called) tell me I am looking for excuses not to go and will inevitably start drinking - but I had a happy life before and drinking was infrequent enough not to cause much of a problem - now I dont see my kids as much, cut out of work early to go to meetings and dont see my friends (who are NOT drinkers - I was a solitary drinker) anymore. AA has taken over my life and I was happy before AA and just want to make AA a PART of my life - NOT MY WHOLE LIFE. I need advice. Thank you.

Answer
Good afternoon Pete, and thank you for your question.

I am at a loss as to how I should begin to answer your question. First, let me say, “Half measures will avail you nothing” as quoted from the Big Book of AA. No I’m not a Big Book Nazi but it happens to be true. Alcoholism is cunning, baffling and insidious and I believe that what you are going presently going through is that the addiction is talking to you “that it’s ok to drink”. The first drink disguises itself in many different ways! It seems as though you have all the answers, even though you know what will “surely” happen to you if you are an alcoholic. Trouble is just waiting for you. Anyone of the things that you did during the last six months of your drinking “could” have been a disaster for you. It seems as though you are willing to wait until you are faced with the real trouble that you have heard from others at your AA meetings. For sure they are only YETS that will happen to you if you continue to drink! Are you waiting until you kill some poor soul that happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when you’re driving drunk!

You say that you are an alcoholic… I can tell that you are, because you are talking like an a dry drunk alcoholic whose “white knuckling” his sobriety. Self will run riot, and if you can’t practice the program the way you want to practice it then you’ll show “them”. It seems to me that you haven’t been hurt enough by alcohol, and that “when you get that bad then you will make AA the most important thing in your life”. Boy, if that’s not an alcoholic that wants to drink, and will drink if you don’t change your attitude. However maybe you are one of those poor souls that do not have the capacity to be honest about their situation. Do you for a minute think that the drunks (doctors, lawyers, employed and well off people, famous people and politicians etc.) that are on skid row looking for a handout in the soup lines would have ever thought that booze would bring them to where they are at? Talk about stress; it’s apparent that you don’t know what real stress is. Real stress is when you are unemployed and blacklisted from the industry that you once thought that they couldn’t do without your talent, or sitting in a courtroom being tried for manslaughter that you caused in a fight or ran someone over when you were drunk, or when that girl that you loved divorces you and takes your kids away for their own protection. I could go on and on, but I don’t think that you are capable of listening.

I don’t think that you are giving the AA Nazis enough credit. You are looking you’re your nose at sober (I assume) members in good standing of AA. Their program has taught them if there is someone who does not want to listen… that they should move on to someone else that wants to listen! I’m just guessing but I would say that to haven’t joined a group and became active in the group, that you don’t have a sponsor and use him, that you haven’t been going to step meetings and working on AA’s twelve steps of recovery, in fact you are a part from AA rather than a part of it. You can work the program any way that you want to but the winners will tell you that you can’t take only what you want to, because it’s an easier softer way for you. AA works when you work at it, and if you think that you have paid your dues to get to the point where you went to AA… the dues are much higher to stay in AA because you have to change and that’s not easy.

I’m trying to help you save your life… that’s why I’ve come down on you so hard. If I have offended you I am sorry, but what I have written may or may not apply to you, but if you are an alcoholic as you wrote the odds are that you will have to suffer a bit more until you realize that you are a high bottom drunk and there is no shame in not having to go to the bottom of the barrel. You didn’t get sick overnight and you won’t get well according to your timetable. It will take lots of discipline and hard work on your part, but if you’re not up to it try it your way and see what happens.

I would be pleased to answer additional questions that you may have. Thank you, Rebos.