Drunks

[regular.joe]

Hi guys. Before I get started I want to emphatically say that I am not out to change any minds, or win anyone over. I'm just putting my views and experience into the discussion. I understand that my view is an extreme minority here in the Cellar. I have been mulling over this topic now since my last post here and for a long time thought I had said enough. I guess not.

I have been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for just over 20 years now. I am definitely an alki. I would like to clarify a few things as I have come to see them.

The meetings and fellowship of AA are an outgrowth of the twelfth step of the program of AA. The program is not an outgrowth of the meetings. Meetings are not the AA program. Many people have this confused. The definition of an alcoholic is this: if, when you honestly want to you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little control of the amount you drink you are prolly an alcoholic. If you have an alcohol problem, the solution is simple...quit drinking! and be done with it. The requirement for membership in AA is only a desire to quit drinking...many people come to AA and cannot or will not stomach the outlined program, we don't have the right to deny any one admittance to the fellowship just because they don't like the program. What you do with the program is between you and whom ever. Parking your ass in a meeting and participating in the discussion is not the AA program. I wish I could count how many people I've ever seen who have gone, and go to meetings to discuss and participate in talking therepy and complain that AA doesn't work....or doesn't work for them. Seriously? I sat in a stick shift car for two months and talked about my problems ....and now I don't know how to drive a stick! Well, yea. So, yep we won't deny anyone admittance to the fellowship, and AA deals with and discusses explicitly the idea of God. To not tell this to new comers is, in my opinion kind of like with holding the truth of what we are about. If anyone can not or will not stomach that idea then my best wishes to you, sincerely. We don't have a monopoly on anything, we do have a program that is working just fine for us who practice the program and offer this as a proven solution to those who can accept it.

I know that I am heavily opinionated, even within the AA fellowship. I don't air my opinion very often outside of that fellowship. I truly believe we have a program of attraction and not promotion. I am joining in the discussion here for several reasons the first and formost is that I am a member of this small community that we call the Cellar. It used to burn my nads to no end when people would come to meetings, outright refuse to embrace the outlined program, and just sit in meetings and talk. And then complain that AA doesn't work. I now know that people who come to our meetings must be looking for something. So what if 70-80% if not more of the population of AA is not really practicing the AA program, most of what a new guy/gal sees is a bunch of people sitting around drinking coffee trying to figure out how to talk each other into not drinking, and passing on some pop psychology some of them learned in a treatment facility. I will say that a small percentage of us are really doing what is outlined in our text on a daily basis and it works great for us.