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Sick and Tired of AA/NA

K

K12

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 21, 2010
Messages
472
I am court ordered to go to AA twice a week for a year. I sit there, listen to these pathetic stories and wonder wtf I am doing in the meeting. We all go around the room, each person is supposed to tell a story of how their life is going, blah blah blah... this guy next to me has his head down, looking ashamed to face the counseler and says, "I relapsed - I had a beer last night to celebrate." Another guy was depressed because he ate some spaghetti as a gift from a friend and later found out that the sauce had some alcohol in it and that he should have thought to ask about this before he accepted. Then some guy across the room is irritated, calling him out because he says it's BS the alcohol would have been burned off in the cooking process... WTF? A young girl is upset because she had a beer and now after 5 months clean, has to start all over and go back to step one, lol. Another guy, one that made sense (to me) , mentioned that he did not have a problem with alcohol because he uses in moderation, and was QUICKLY SILENCED by the counseler/teacher who says 'THE ONLY THING THAT WORKS WITH US IS COMPLETE 100% ABSTINENCE! WTF! US? US!? Then the counseler goes back to bobbing his head like a chicken during each story told.

I don't even like alcohol. I got a DUI and am forced by the court to be in these pathetic meetings and I don't enjoy it one bit. I feel as though if I don't admit I'm an alcoholic the belief is somehow FORCED upon me like a cult. It's ridiculous.
 
K12 said:
I am court ordered to go to AA twice a week for a year. I sit there, listen to these pathetic stories and wonder wtf I am doing in the meeting. We all go around the room, each person is supposed to tell a story of how their life is going, blah blah blah... this guy next to me has his head down, looking ashamed to face the counseler and says, "I relapsed - I had a beer last night to celebrate." Another guy was depressed because he ate some spaghetti as a gift from a friend and later found out that the sauce had some alcohol in it and that he should have thought to ask about this before he accepted. Then some guy across the room is irritated, calling him out because he says it's BS the alcohol would have been burned off in the cooking process... WTF? A young girl is upset because she had a beer and now after 5 months clean, has to start all over and go back to step one, lol. Another guy, one that made sense (to me) , mentioned that he did not have a problem with alcohol because he uses in moderation, and was QUICKLY SILENCED by the counseler/teacher who says 'THE ONLY THING THAT WORKS WITH US IS COMPLETE 100% ABSTINENCE! WTF! US? US!? Then the counseler goes back to bobbing his head like a chicken during each story told.

I don't even like alcohol. I got a DUI and am forced by the court to be in these pathetic meetings and I don't enjoy it one bit. I feel as though if I don't admit I'm an alcoholic the belief is somehow FORCED upon me like a cult. It's ridiculous.
Click to expand...

I feel for you man, but this isn't the right place to post this. Either put it in your journal or maybe the dark side forum.
 
Yea 12 Steps are bullshit. What's the success rate for AA? something like 2% I think
 
Good call, dok. I'll see how it fairs in TDS for now.

There aren't reliable stats on 12-step effectiveness due to *anonymity*. Furthermore, poor outcomes aren't solely due to program ineffectiveness but more so due to the prevalence of people coerced to be there or otherwise unwilling to truly work the program. We see the same in the treatment world... Its unreadiness to change more so than ineffective treatment.

Take care, man.



--->TDS
 
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I feel you man. I'm glad it works for the Olivia Moanings and all those people. I'm glad it works for some people, because alcoholism (and addiction) is a dreary, mindless, inexorable bitch.

But AA doesn't do it for me. It's my own battle to fight (not alcoholism specifically, actually, but I don't want to get into that here) and while I do get some support from talking with friends who fight the same battles (amongst the many tools I use to keep my demons in check), the whole structure, the rules and the culture of AA is anathema to me. It's an addictive structure that encourages self-pity, conformism and group-think.

I think the simplicity of the program and the fact that it mirrors corporate and political society keeps it in the pre-eminant position it enjoys with the courts and the media.
 
These court mandated things are the absolute pits . A year - oh dear, oh fuck, it's going to go at a snail's pace .
In my state it's not AA/NA but these sad sack group counselling sessions and the weekly ordeals are not free as in AA but are a financial racket .
 
:\Who wants to be ''in recovery'' for the rest of their lives.

You have an 'addictive personality' just like most folk. The addiction & how you deal with it is entirely upto you;)
 
I attended an addiction/recovery program for three years and really enjoyed it as it did help me to sort through some things. It was not AA/NA, nor was it court mandated. It was a bible based program. But after 3 years I begin to wonder if I was "supposed" to get well, or was this going to be a lifetime deal. As I said, I did enjoy it, but I finally decided I was well enough to leave and that is exactly what I did, only to get postcards and telephone calls telling me I needed to get back as it was not safe to be in this world as an addict w/o being at the program every Friday night. I never did go back.
 
I believe that the first steps are something along the lines of "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable" and "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." No psychologist would ever council you to "admit that you have no control over your life" and correct me if I'm wrong but a religious program has no place in a secular justice system... just my opinions though
 
^^^i was not put into the program I talked of above by the justice system, just did so myself.

But the courts in our county gave offenders the choice of this program or AA/NA.
 
http://www.peele.net/lib/drunk.html

Court cases about AA/NA & separation of church & state are heading towards the US eventually not permitting courts or probation officers to impose AA/NA on people without a more secular option available as an alternative.

People who have broken the law, endangered themselves and others will have to satisfy the court & the public that they are doing something to avoid recurrence. MADD and similar lobbies have not come about for no reason. They aren't going away soon and AA is fairly mild compared to what a lot of those folks would like done when people's intoxication endangers people..

Alternatives to AA/NA are in many cases going to be a lot more expensive so I bet the court promoted influx into AA/NA won't really be diminished much.

A tangent on courts & drugs: I wonder how much the courts avoid conflicts of interest with the people doing drug & alcohol evaluations? If someone evaluates a person's addiction status for the court the evaluator should not have a practice or be part of a program that will benefit from someone's being deemed alcoholic or addicted. I really don't know how that all works and am curious.
 
rollingstoned! said:
Well I'm sure you learned the same thing I learned from those meetings.

Break the law, but don't get caught.
Click to expand...

Amen...

Tell me about it... Why would anyone that is court-ordered to be there want to "fit in" and "admit" they are an alcoholic when they are not? AA/NA is just plain wrong imo.

However, people are fanatic about it, lol. One of the female sponsors goes to AA meetings in several different areas, goes to AA picnics and other functions. It's funny. Totally devoted to the AA social scene.

One thing that is NOT so funny imo is right after the last meeting, the whole class, like one big breathing living organism, walks outside and everone is talking, smoking cigarettes. Everyone is free to go, but I would conservatively estimate that 8 or 9 out of 10 decided to smoke cigarettes in unity. OK, so the alcohol is under control but everyone thinks it's ok to smoke cigarettes as if they are not harmful? Why aren't the sponsors trying to get everyone to quit smoking and clean up their lives, lol.
 
I used to go to NA meetings for one reason alone..... it was easier to score good junk at them, than from the street dealers.

Of course I had to sit through them to score my dope; the hour or so of listening to pity-party stories, plus the group leader's utter banality, left me wanting to snap necks and coconut-crunch things.

Hmmmmmmm
 
I've had to sit through my share of meetings as a teen. God awful when you see people that are addicted to the whole aa/na social scene and have adopted the lingo like a second language. Nothing like watching the old timers working on the 13th step when a newbie shows up.
 
A tangent on courts & drugs: I wonder how much the courts avoid conflicts of interest with the people doing drug & alcohol evaluations? If someone evaluates a person's addiction status for the court the evaluator should not have a practice or be part of a program that will benefit from someone's being deemed alcoholic or addicted. I really don't know how that all works and am curious.[/QUOTE]

Here is how evaluation worked for me. Tell me it's not a racket ! The ''list'' provided by the court had 1 ONE evaluator . The pompous asshole is listed as Doctor so and so .
The guy is a psychologist not a fucking doctor other than having a PHD .

I call him and he says send $150.00 because I have no fucking means to travel the sixty miles to see the fucking eejit . So he sets up a time for a phone consultation . 10 minutes for him to tell me the obvious, the only state recognized program in my teeny county . He had no idea of what the toxicology report stated . No idea that it was seratonin syndrome brought about by a clash of rubbish that the Veterans Administration quacks had prescribed .

Now, in order to satisfy the court, I have to attend these fucking 12 sessions alongside mopes of every description and the sad sack woman running them, spends all the hour talking about her medical conditions - hope she dies soon.
 
You're goddamned right it's a racket.... the local courts make bank with the proceeds from fleecing poor fuckers like us, and then snag all kinds of state & federal funds for worthless "social worker" programs. They'll say yeah we're running this and this and this program for helping our community, and they line their own pockets instead.
And when some poor sad-sack addict can't pay his fines or make it to his mandated "social work" programs (which are usually run by the most inept and sadistic social "servants"), or does what drug-addicts tend to do as per their natures, they send em off to county, in which case the courts and counties get even MORE money from the state & feds to lockup and feed said sad-sack.
The narcotics industry is like an ass.... the dealers and the judges are on the outside and get all the lovin', but we dope-fiends, losers, homeless, and just plain fuckin unfortunate fall into the shitty crack down the middle.
 
At AA, a majority of the people look like shit, act like shit, talk like shit, and their stories are shitty. It is not a group of people that I would want to integrate myself into. What does this reflect on me?

However, there are always 3 or 4 people out of the 30 or 40 people in the meeting that aren't a sad sack. Still, the majority are pathetic.
 
yes AA does set up a strange sort of false dilemma. that is, you are able to go out and get drunk and probably die (or live a life full of drunken, heart-crushing regret), or "try something different." this something different is of course AA.

but of course this dilemma is not forced upon you - its only implied by AA members describing their situation as this sort of dilemma.

there are many other contradictions in the literature.
 
The fiercest collection of anti-AA material out there is the orange papers. http://www.orange-papers.org/ I'm not going to say this guys every point is fair or put in a civil way. Its value is for me is that it is well put together and I find it congruent with my AA/NA impressions. Anyway if you enjoy a well put together rant about AA you might go check out the Orange Papers.
 
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