Reclaiming control

[Uncle Fester]

There have been a number of posts about not going to AA meetings and I wanted to share some of my experience and views around that. If anyone is pro pro pro AA, as I used to be, and is offended, then I am happy for the site owner to remove this thread if they judge it as inappropriate.

I stopped going to AA meetings around 1995 when I was 13 years sober. I had fully participated in AA. I can still recite chapter 5 off by heart, I sponsered, was sponsered, practised the steps, knew the traditions inside out. I even married a member. I always argued the AA perspective. I felt sorry for normal people who didn't have the AA program. I wondered how they got by in life and was fearful when I imagined myself doing the same. I was utterly sold on AA and the fellowship. I would have considered that a real alcoholic was beyond human help and therefore anyone attempting to stay sober without AA was probably motivated by an unhealthy ego that would not allow them to accept help and also that they would be destined to fail.

Around 10 years sober I had to look at my experience in AA. I didn't feel that I was staying sober courtesy of God's power. I didn't think God was running my life. I didn't think that handing my problems over to God really sorted things out, at best it temporarily made me feel emotionally comforted, but the issues were still there. And when I looked at my fellows I wasn't particularly convinced by what I saw either. There was no internet then, no alternatives. Only fables about the occasional dry and slightly nutty person who stayed sober without AA, but had a quality of life to be feared.

At 13 years sober I decided I wasn't going to AA anymore. To my AA friends this spelled certain failure because we had conditioned ourselves to believe this. I wasn't certain myself. I worried that my ego might be out of control and how I might end up back in AA hungover and with only myself to blame. I remember saying to myself, if this costs me my life, so be it.

Since then the internet has opened up. Alternatives have opened up. All those individuals that previously would have been alone are now aware that others feel the same way.

After 7 years I went back to AA meetings. After 3 months of searching I joined a home group and went every week for 2 years. Some sponsers ordered there sponsees not to attend that group. Some people walked out when I took the chair. A lot of the young ones were grateful to have someone whose example encouraged them to resist the coercion of their sponsers. I was godless, stepless and sober.

I am not in judgement of most AA members. I have been the convinced big book thumping sponser. I was groomed to be that way and in turn I also unwittingly groomed others. When I see newcomers and even people 10 years sober angry with me I do not feel angry back. They believe as I believed. The only people I ever get angry with are some so called oldtimers. It is hard for newer members to resist the coercion to conform. Many oldtimers know that what is accepted as the norm and working in AA doesn't really ring true. Change could be so much easier and quicker if a few more oldtimers stood up and spoke their minds. But they're comfortably reclined in the status of being oldtimers, the respect etc.

It was the fellowship of AA that made the difference between staying sober and not. Thankyou, AA's and non AA's for sharing my journey with me, because I think that in the main, that's all you can do for me and all I can do for you.