I'm an alcoholic in recovery, I recovered without AA, however I have friends that are in AA and they tell me that I'm bound to relapse if I don’t "keep coming back", I cant go back. I hate the program with such rage and downright despair that the mere mention of the program can send me into an inner rage that is indescribable.
Somehow I need to recover from the program of AA and am finding it difficult. When I talk about my feelings about AA with AA's they look at me like I'm an alien, and the old-timers shake their heads and mumble stupid little sayings like, go back out, your bottom wasn't low enough. My bottom wasn't low enough? I almost died a couple of times. I was suicidal and unable to stop drinking. I was like many other alkies, home alone drinking nightly by myself and often waking up on the bathroom floor wondering what and how many pills I had taken. I woke up once only to find that I had a sharp blade to my wrist and I knew that I needed to quit, but I couldn't. Oh I tried, and one time after an overdose I quite for 5 days!
I was forced to go to AA daily, I did the steps and I prayed that this would be the end of my drinking. You see I wanted sobriety, and I had hoped that I would be something someday. After 6 weeks of treatment I came home after promising my counselor that I would attend daily meetings, get a sponsor and really work the steps.
I was stupid. I really was just incredibly naive and vulnerable....so away I went to my first AA meeting and that was the beginning of the end for me. The people there were nice enough, but they were all the same. They all kept saying silly sayings and they began to look and talk like robots. When I questioned the steps or *gasp* the Big Book I started to hear things like;
“You're a dry drunk”
“If you actually had a higher power, you wouldn't have any anxiety"
“You are angry, you need to pray to have that anger removed, your anger will kill you”. (Damn rights I was angry, who wouldn’t be hearing all of this shit?)
My favorite:
"If I had your sobriety I'd kill myself"
This was spoken by my big book thumping sponsor, who is now a counselor at the last rehab I went to.