all 20 comments

[–]wuzizname 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

That’s pretty fucked up. You can’t be a sponsor if you’re not sober so it sounds more like a social club than an actual aa group.

Every aa group I’ve been to doesn’t care if you sit there and listen. There are a lot of people who aren’t alcoholics that go to aa meetings who are spouse or children of alcoholics or in al anon groups. The only criteria in being allowed into meetings is an honest desire to be sober and showing up even if you don’t want to talk is a win.

[–]MisandryFTW 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

One side of my family is super into AA and they basically treat it like a cult. They're constantly pressuring me to attend meetings despite the fact that I don't drink at all (interferes with my medications and makes me instantly ill) nor do any other drugs. I never really saw my dad drink around me, and he initially joined AA for job connections, but now constantly talks about his sobriety, sponsors lots of people, and attends several meetings per day. He also freaked out when someone was cooking pasta sauce with a small amount of wine.

Out of curiosity I sat in on a virtual alanon meeting and they took turns reading from a book then tried to get me to admit that I was powerless before a higher power. I'm an athiest and I have hard-won control over my own life finally. This is not for me and gives me serious cult vibes. As cults go it seems relatively harmless and I'm happy it's good for some people to make friends and keep themselves accountable, but it's definitely not for everyone.

[–]duckduckgo 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

i find it interesting that you dont remember seeing your dad drink, but now he goes to AA and believes that he is an alcoholic.. i have seen many cases like this.. i saw one man in that los angeles group where he had thirty years of sobriety, yet he has never tasted alcohol.. he basically read the big book, and said omg i have quit my job before and i tried to invest in the stock market like bill wilson... omg, maybe i am an alcoholic and maybe i better read more...

i have seen sponsors pushing big books onto people that openly state that they do not even like the taste of alcohol..

many people that are in AA never were and never will be alcolholics.

it is a cult that sells big books, period.

AA loves this "higher power" model..

i have seen people that think that their laptop is their higher power, lol..

one guy that i met carries a potted cactus in the saddle bag of his motorcycle, thats his higher power, and he thinks that it will restore him to sanity.

110%, this is a cult.

it is a dumping ground for the treatment centers, and the ones that stay are pretty much crazy... the normal ones move on with their lives.

btw, the reason that AA is terrified to be classified as a religion, even tho the supreme court has determined that AA IS a religion, many for profit treatment centers use the big book as the foundation of their treatment program and you cant submit a bill to an insurance company for religious services rendered. the insurance would deny the claim. but an insurance WILL pay a claim for treatement of a "disease".. this is, in my opinion, why AA sticks firmly to disease model route and firmly denies that they provide religious services.

just to clarify, i am the OP.. i change my username frequently.

:)

[–]mommysexsworker 2 insightful - 4 fun2 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

my recipe for homemade wine:

ingredients: fruit, white sugar, water.

1) fill container with apples, blackberries, etc..

2) pour water into container, up slightly above the fruit.

3) slowly feed white sugar to the container of fruit/water for almost four weeks.

someone explained to me that the bacteria from the fruit eats the white sugar and when the bacteria "poops", it poops wine.

a hillbilly told me that, how true it is i do not know.

he also explained to me that after four weeks when the wine is ready, if you take the container of wine and put it out in a snow bank that the water component will freeze but the alcohol component will not freeze. pour the alcohol from the jug into another jug. you have just removed the water from the wine which leaves you with a stronger form of alcohol.

happy drinking.

[–]Canbot 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

How do you have time to go to three meetings a day?

[–]duckduckgo 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

i found myself homeless a few years back and so i took four years and studied alcohol and addiction issues.

i was attending that meeting in los angeles for eleven months and one week, and then i went to san francsico.. when i arrived in san francisco, i walked around with one dime in my pocket for three months.. i was befriended by one of the more well known street meth dealers and i had permission to sleep in various meth camps and did just that for at least two years.

i learned things that you will never learn by sitting in a chair at the university and studying addictions and counseling.

i can promise to you that working the steps of AA does not relieve one of depression.

i contemplate suicide every single day of my life.

do have a nice day.

:)

[–]SaidOverRed 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

Thank you for sharing.

So you're at 3/900 or a .003% rejection (99.996% success) rate. That's good for a group of ex-drunks, right?

[–]duckduckgo 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

AA really is not the program of honesty, it says that there is only one requirement to be a member, but in fact there are six requirements.. 1) desire to stop drinking. 2) get a big book. 3) get a sponsor. 4) work the steps. 5) get a higher power. 6) say that you are an alcoholic when speaking in meeting.

one bit of trivia about AA is regarding that issue where they say that there is only one requirement to be a member, which is complete bullshit today, lol.. it used to be that the only way that you could get banned from a meeting is if a "group conscience" meeting is held and they all agree that someone is a danger to the group and then they ban him or her. but today, they have changed the way that a group is formed. typically they will form a corporation of some sort and the corporation will rent or buy the building or space or whatever and then that corporation will "rent" individual meeting rooms to individual meetings.. this means that the corporation controls the patio and the lobby and the restrooms and the coffee pot, etc, and the corporation will directly post literature inside the building that says that we are NOT AA and that they have several other rules besides that you should have a desire to stop drinking and THEY CAN AND WILL CALL THE POLICE AND BAN YOU FOR ANY FKNG REASON THAT THEY WANT TO.

if some old timer doesnt like you and he wants to call the police and have you removed, he can.

the pre-amble that is read before every meeting that says that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking ONLY APPLIES TO THE MEETING ROOM SPECIFICALLY and not to the lobby or the front door or the restrooms, etc..

the corporation usually encourages the meetings to turn over 100% of the dollars in the donation baskets from the meetings directly to the corporation, which gives the corporation control of the money.

AA is now a private FOR PROFIT/NON PROFIT.

i think that i have gone over my three to five minutes.

AllahuAkbar.

[–]JasonCarswellMental Orgy 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Excellent until the last line.

[–]duckduckgo 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

just fyi, in my journeys thru life i found myself having taken my shahada(conversion to islam) and i prayed with wahabis for a few years and i have spent a little time with tablighi jamaat and i have spent a little time with a few very much terrorist classified groups.

in the end, when i stopped going to prayers i was told that i should be executed for not going to prayers.

AllahuAkbar is simply arabic for "god is greater or greatest", something like that..

alhamdullilah is arabic for "praise god"...

i wish that i knew the arabic phrase for "be aware of god".

one of the more interesting lessons that i learned from tablighi jamaat men was that "when islam controls an area, no muslim will ever be charged or convicted or jailed for killing a nonmuslim".

sharia law is coming, in fact it is already here and most nonmuslims are blinded and can not see this.

you dont know what i learned and so you dont know what i know.

[–]duckduckgo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

truth is, AA has a horrible success rate.. as a cult, it has a pretty good success rate.

AA actually convinces non-alcoholics that they are alcoholics, which is a bit odd..

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

Shit, you're a fellow Houstonian and a fellow alcoholic. A lot of us don't like AA. I'd recommend r/dryalcoholics on reddit. Fappingatwork is the mod, he's also a local. Good guy, doesn't like me but I can't blame him for that. Feel free to talk to me if you want too. I'm not sober now but I was mostly for a year over my liver so I know how it is. And I'm 40 so it's not like you'd be talking to some kid.

[–]duckduckgo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

i put on my clown hat and troll a lot in the forums, but that is not the real me, and i dont mean any harm when i am trolling but instead i am just using my very very dry humor to be funny.

i am actually a fairly effective counselor.

truth is, i am not an alcoholic, not in the literal sense.. i had several other problems in my early life and other issues going on and together these issues almost sent me to prison for forty years and it came really close to sending me to death row.

at the tail end of my drinking and crime spree, when i got arrested the detectives opened my briefcase and found a dozen blank cashiers checks that i had designed and printed on my deskjet printer and they also found a brochure for a metals distributor that had a quarter million pounds of copper in their warehouse. i was fully prepared to take no prisoners and i meant to kill everyone in the metals company and everyone on my crew.

i was not a very nice young man and your life meant nothing to me and my life meant nothing to me.

there is an absolute difference between someone like me that enjoys alcohol a bit too much and didnt know when to quit and someone who upon tasting alcohol goes batshit bananas with their cravings and simply tasting the stuff makes them unable to stop drinking.

probably once a month or every two months i will enjoy having one or two beers, and i have absolutely no problem stopping drinking. but for example, like when i bought my boat a year ago, i drank wine and smoked about $400 to $500 of weed per month for several months and i foolishly drove my car to walmart a few times, omg.. that little mistake can land a person in prison if he gets into an accident and kills someone. when i get high and drunk, my common sense goes out the window.

a pure non-alcoholic would never do such things.

one statement that i hear in the AA meetings sometimes is someone will tell me that "i dont really like the taste of alcohol"..

that is a trigger statement for me, it tells me that they are not at all alcoholic.

laters.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Well.... that's ever so slightly disturbing dude. It's not every day someone writes me about a murder spree. I ain't one to judge but that's a little fucked up. Shit though, you wanna go fishing?

[–]duckduckgo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

yeah, my story is whacked, and that is only about ten percent of my story. things that i have done, few will forgive me for those things, and many will condemn me all the way.

i have never really enjoyed fishing, but where do you go fishing?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Last time I was out we went out on the Gulf for red snapper. It's been a while for me. I been wanting to go again.

[–]duckduckgo 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

btw, if you havent noticed, i change my usernames several times in this thread alone.

i use tor to access this website and it doesnt save my login info, so i just register a new username.

[–]kytheon 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm sorry about your experiences.

My group is very open and understanding, pretty much the opposite of what you've described. But mine is in a pretty rural area, so there's more of a small-town vibe, and I've heard that it used to be a lot less open. I've heard plenty of bad stories about other groups.

[–]duckduckgo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

just fyi, i am the OP.. i change my username a lot..

i appreciate that you enjoy AA.. really, i do..

My group is very open and understanding

i am sure that they are, as long as you adhere to the six requirements of AA.

1) get a big book. 2) get a sponsor 3) work the steps 4) get a higher power 5) say that you are an alcoholic when speaking in meeting 6) have desire to quit drinking.

for me, going to AA was probably psychologically damaging more than it helped me.

have a nice life.

[–]duckduckgo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

when i went to a club in southwest houston, one man had badgered me for approx two months and would not let me have a moment of peace at this AA club, he insisted that i need to work the steps over again, in order, one thru twelve, like it says to do in the book, and then he finally offers to buy me lunch and just orders margaritas like that is an every day thing to do in AA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKwl7Cmzpwc

they treated me so badly at this group, i was sleeping in my car at the time, i was waiting for a small court settlement and so i was in no hurry to do anything productive.. they told me that because i was homeless that i couldnt just come in and sit down, they said that if i didnt get a book and get a sponsor and get into the steps that i could just get the fk out.

and so here i sit tonight re-evaluating my life and considering bringing things to closure.

everything that i read on the web says that for a first time user that less than 100 milligrams of morphine is fatal, so i do have access to get twelve hundred milligrams of the stuff, thats 1.2 grams or twelve times the fatal dose.

i have attempted suicide before and obviously i fkd it up and i dont want to fk it up again.

i did go over to my friends place, he is a mafia guy that sells opiates, i took a few milligrams as a test and omg it is sure a peaceful way to go to sleep, that is for dammed sure.

so, according to my best calculations, if i just go visit my friend and get the 1.2 grams of the M, i expect that i will be unconscious within less than three minutes.

i love all of you, everyone.

:)