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BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards
Has anyone been involved in a 12 step program?
- Thread starter lemongaga
- Start date
fryingsquirrel
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2006
- Messages
- 2,805
Several times, court ordered. Went back to drugs? Hell I've shoot up in an AA bathroom, sold drugs the parking lot, burglarized the building to steal the sign in book so my probation officer couldn't check if I'd been going.
K'd-OUT-in-AZ
Bluelighter
I've been court ordered 12 step programs and when I lived in a half-way house (not because I didn't have a place of residence; long story) I was forced to stay in a 12 step program. I relapsed all three times. I've done better after going through Suboxone maintenance.
Vaya
Bluelight Crew
I was in AA/NA for 3 years; cold, clean sober the entire time. I did, eventually, relapse, and have been using various substances for the past two years. I was at one time a sponsor; I've completed the 12 steps. I have chaired meetings and founded them, too. Please ask your questions, I feel I would have a lot to contribute.
~ vaya
~ vaya
Soap MacTavish
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2010
- Messages
- 293
I've been in and out of there for 9 years. Sometimes out for 6 months, back a few, that's my routine. I just could never stay focused on the whole thing. That's now why I believe I could not succeed. I was never able to succeed at anything in life either, later I find out I have ADD and that's my true identity, and the true cause of my life's suffering, and the root cause of ending up addicted to things. I now have stopped completely since I don't agree with with most of their assertions or religious affiliation with Christianity. They no longer apply to me.
cj
Bluelight Crew
I dont believe in a god or a piece of fuckin paper so rehab and the steps was a non starter for me. I seen it totaly fail this chick I was dating she was into it relapsed got kicked out of her halfway house she still using today and that was a year ago.
Vaya
Bluelight Crew
While it is true that the original founders of Alcoholics Anonymous did have the intention of utilizing the program with a Christian element, that notion has long-since flown. You will find virtually no one in the rooms of AA or NA who truly believes that it is a vehicle for Christian fidelity any longer. So, if you really do need help, please do not let this vice for Christianity dissuade you. This it THE most common misperception of AA.
~ vaya
cj
Bluelight Crew
That may be true in pennsylvania but come to alabama I will show you some things that might shock you. Like how every meeting down here is held in a church. shit like that
fryingsquirrel
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2006
- Messages
- 2,805
So it's OK to be part of a silly cult so long as that silly cult is not christianity?
desaparecidos
Bluelighter
just because they suggest in a higher power i dont really think its a religious thing. it can be for some people but im an atheist and i just took it as the ability to put faith in something other than yourself. but who am i to talk, ive only gone to a 12 step meeting a few times for court, never really gone through any real sobriety.
cryan
Bluelighter
Not tryna bash on meetings, but I think the stigma is that you WILL LIKELY go back to using eventually, "Just for today". Which imo is not the way to look at quitting. And I have seen so many people, myself included, go into the meetings and stay clean for long periods of time, short periods too, and eventually all go back to their drug. to me they are a dark and depressing place and although I enjoyed the community of like minded people overall when I think of meetings I get depressed.
Regarding the religion aspect, at least here in Vegas, it's always been said God or a higher power AS YOU KNOW, which could mean anything, and many people going to meetings are not religious in any way. The meetings are held in churches because you know church people, they always want to do charitable things for the poor folk surrounding them, haha.
Regarding the religion aspect, at least here in Vegas, it's always been said God or a higher power AS YOU KNOW, which could mean anything, and many people going to meetings are not religious in any way. The meetings are held in churches because you know church people, they always want to do charitable things for the poor folk surrounding them, haha.
Vaya
Bluelight Crew
Most meetings in Pennsylvania that I've attended have been in churches. They've also taken place in particular AA clubhouses. Or at people's homes. Who cares if it's in a church? Are you taking communion before speaking? Show me the AA-branded wafers you eat before drinking the (non-alcoholic) blood of Jesus and I'll concede to this.
fryingsquirrel said:
This is quite an ignorant and childish comment. I neither suggested anyone to go join Alcoholics Anonymous, nor that AA is a 'cult.' If you have had a negative experience with it in the past and do not wish to return, then that is fine. Your life is your own, and I don't intend to waste my time treading on it. If you have never truly participated in the activity of exploring your capacity for sobriety in a group setting, don't speak on it; you've got no place and no right, like someone who abstains from voting and spends four years bitching about the president's poor performance. I use drugs today; but AA saved my life and kept me sober for three years; this was long enough for me to even out and grow up enough to be responsible to the extent that it is possible now for me to avoid addiction and overdoses, which I was decidedly not capable of before entering the rooms.
Sure, there have been some folks who have been fanatical about the program, and who spend all their waking hours in AA clubhouses and church basements; there are also those who do the same at liquor stores, malls, movie theaters and strip clubs. If the sense of fellowship is addictive to someone (a likelihood, given the circumstances that probably landed them in the rooms in the first place), then that is their business. But the vast majority of people I have met in AA (or NA) are incredible people - incredible to the extent that I consider those core members of the Bluelight community to be incredible. Strange, wonderful sources of knowledge, insight and personality. If you want to get tripped up on labeling AA members as members of a cult, do it somewhere else, because these forums are places for adults. Does it ever bother you when other people make use of a stereotypical drug user to vilify the entire culture (for instance, the unemployed 30-something who lives in his parents' basement, chronically smoking marijuana and glued to the small television set hooked up to a dying Sega Genesis from the mid-'90s)? It sure does me, and your comment is as every bit as offensive, counterproductive and disrespectful. If you thought you were being witty, you need to check yourself, my friend.
Once more, I am a current drug user (as I assume you are, too). I am, however, a former member of AA. I never integrated Christianity into my AA experience, and neither did over 75% of the others' I knew (and this may vary by geographical location, but the message remains the same - the word 'God' can be replaced by anything and its meaning will retain its power). Consequently, I am not afraid to use the term 'higher power.' Even though I have seen both positive/progressive and acutely negative sides of the AA experience, I have only glowing things to say as to its efficacy in preventing death by addiction. I take this very seriously, and comments like yours nearly infuriate me. I died and was revived twice before I was twenty years old. With a 4% and 14% chance of successful revival, respectively, according to ICU staff. Without AA, I may not be here now (it is very likely that I would not), as an employed college graduate in a steady relationship whilst responsibly using recreational drugs. Grow up; ignorance is only blissful for a short while.
~ vaya