⫸STICKY⫷ Drug Addicts Anonymous

[4DQSAR]

You would fit right into DAA. It's actually a lot different than AA, because I can relate to those that huffed gas or shot fentanyl like me, and it isn't NA.
It wasn't the drug honestly, it was more of the fucking drug. Whatever it was, it had to be more of it.

You know, I met a guy who described himself as a 'wreckhead' because he didn't really mind what drug it was, he just wanted to alter his consciousness all of the time. Very intelligent guy, very nice guy but he just couldn't handle feeling 'normal'.

For such a long time I've only taken prescribed medicines for serious medical conditions but I feel just as trapped. Heck, if I forget to take my dang mitrazipine I feel ill. Edgy and not right. It comes to something when you take the medicines just as you are told to do only to find out that a few years later you feel just as bad but now you NEED the pills.

BTW I'm severely disabled so I'm sat in a room staring at the walls 24/7.

But I AM slowly reducing the doses.

 

[Deleted member 290563]

For such a long time I've only taken prescribed medicines for serious medical conditions but I feel just as trapped. Heck, if I forget to take my dang mitrazipine I feel ill. Edgy and not right. It comes to something when you take the medicines just as you are told to do only to find out that a few years later you feel just as bad but now you NEED the pills.

BTW I'm severely disabled so I'm sat in a room staring at the walls 24/7.

But I AM slowly reducing the doses.

. I don’t really know what to say because words fall short. But this really touched me. Hugs.

 

[emkee_reinvented]

. I don’t really know what to say because words fall short. But this really touched me. Hugs.

Feel the same following 4DQSAR posts and 'severely disabled'.
While coming over more sane then most humans i know.
Active on HR and providing top info as well, remind s me of my own quote.

We all are disabled the only difference between disabled and non disabled is.
The last have not found out their dis-ability, like disabled s have.
But 4DQSAR goes beyond that.

So hugs too, and good morning or moaning.

 

[Psynaught]

It sounds cool, but I get out off by sponsorship and I imagine that’s still a thing.

Just too many experiences of them acting like I’m their bitch or something. One tried to put himself in my marriage. It’s like, dude, I didn’t ask.

I do not like people giving me “suggestions” yet used like “you have to” in regards to my marriage. I only came to get sober. I didn’t ask for marriage advice. There are specific situations that will trigger episodes in my wife because she is extremely mentally ill. And he was trying to force me to tell her stuff that would do that to her because “I have to”.

And I had one, yell in front of others at ne that he’s the teacher and I’m the student. And we weren’t even talking about anything pertaining to that and I am a polite and respectful person generally. What I’m saying is it’s as if he was trying to show off in front of his buddy. He’s lucky I was cool and didn’t break his face.

So yeah, you might say I have a little bias against it. I do think the 12 steps are great. And yeah there are some good sponsors out there. The problem is wading thru the shit.

The biggest thing that AA offers that works imo is the community and support. Aside from places like BL there just isn’t a lot out there for us and we are pigeon holed into AA or far worse NA.

I went to an NA meeting and you are not even allowed to speak unless you are l6 months clean or something I forget. And it’s just not well structured ime. It’s just hard finding a good NA meeting for some reason in Columbus Ohio. (Please don’t dox me) can’t really anyway, I have no social media with my true email or name or phone number attached.

But I have considered going back to AA just not interested in sponsorship so perhaps there is something to this DAA. Not really sure what the difference is.

I drank 15 beers a day every day until age 27 and devoted 20 years of my life completely to AA. I don't go anymore but have not had a drink in 36 years.

AA is a phenomenal program and works 100% but you must give it 100%. That means getting a sponsor and following their instructions 100%. My sponsor made me read a step every day for 30 days and then gave me a "test". If I failed the test I had to start over again. Sounds brutal...but it kept me sober.

I don't qualify for NA because I have have every drug imaginable in my safe and except for .5 mg of Xanax to sleep only get high once a week. I don't know why I don't abuse, but I don't. My friend teases me because when we go out (with our wives) to the club dancing, I only take 3/4 of an X.

But my point is that if you are truly an addict you will need to get a sponsor.

 

[4DQSAR]

@Psynaught - I haven't done the calculation so don't know which is more but for almost two years I was drinking two bottles of gin per day. Pint glass, ⅓ gin, ⅔ tonic, two slices of lemon.

I wasn't offered any kind of help because after going to see my doctor and having a blood test, he stated that nobody could be drinking THAT much and have a normal AST/ALT ratio and normal GGT. Quite odd. I couldn't work out why anyone would lie about such a thing.

But I DID want to stop so was lucky in being able to acquire Heminevrin (clomehiazole) and did a 12 day detox. You start with twelve capsules a day so you sleep most of the time but you go down to nothing in, you guessed it, 12 days.

Then nothing. But man, when did the world get so loud and so intense? Nobody warned me about that.

But even 25 years later I STILL occassionally have nightmares in which I am drunk. I asked some others who were recovering alcoholics and it seems common. Is that my subconscious reminding me how bad it was?

So, totally different routes but the same results I guess. It's not like I've not touched a drop but age means more than one means a 24 hour hangover ;-) Not worth it. I couldn't tell you when I last imbibed. Had none over Christmas so some time last year, I would esttimate.

If AA worked for you, that's great. It wasn't for me so I suppose it's another YMMV thing.

 

[TheUltimateFixx]

I drank 15 beers a day every day until age 27 and devoted 20 years of my life completely to AA. I don't go anymore but have not had a drink in 36 years.

AA is a phenomenal program and works 100% but you must give it 100%. That means getting a sponsor and following their instructions 100%. My sponsor made me read a step every day for 30 days and then gave me a "test". If I failed the test I had to start over again. Sounds brutal...but it kept me sober.

I don't qualify for NA because I have have every drug imaginable in my safe and except for .5 mg of Xanax to sleep only get high once a week. I don't know why I don't abuse, but I don't. My friend teases me because when we go out (with our wives) to the club dancing, I only take 3/4 of an X.

But my point is that if you are truly an addict you will need to get a sponsor.

Total and utter bollocks. You've been brainwashed by the recovery ideology.

I'm going to throw some hard data at you to make my point :


Research of alcoholics given a list of common tenets such as 'loss of control' or 'genetic pre-disposotion to alcoholism' , showed that those who most strongly believed those things were the most likely to relapse into compulsive use. This was AFTER controlling for any factor imaginable, including the severity of the drinking problem. (Miller, Westerberg, Harris & Toniyan 1996).

Those exposed to these ideas had binge drinking rates higher by 9 x as opposed to those who weren't. (Brandsma, 1980).

"Cultures where people do not believe drugs can cause loss of control, experience very little of it" (Reinarman, 2005)



NESARC (Dawson et al, 2005) sampled 43,000 alcoholics in one of the largest surveys ever completed.

The treated group : 28% still dependent, 72% no longer dependent.
The untreated group : 24% still dependent, 76% no longer dependent.
... Any sane mind would have to conclude that the so-called 'treatment' is ineffectual at best, and directly counter-productive at worst.

Drinkers who enrolled for a 12-week treatment reduced their drinking between week zero, when they enrolled, and week one, when they attended their first session (Luther & Fishbain, 2005).
The participants either completed the full 12 weeks, only completed 1 week, or did enroll but never showed up for treatment.
The reduction in drinking held up for 12 weeks for ALL participants regardless.

The subsequent data found that reduction in drinking started BEFORE treatment, wasn't INCREASED by longer treatment, and wasn't DECREASED by shorter treatment.
In other words, the only thing that made a REAL difference to the subject's behaviour was their own change of mind about their drinking.


Statistical overall likelihood of 'recovery' from alcoholism, 90.6% of all who ever met the diagnostic criteria. Of which the overwhelming majority never set foot in a treatment / AA programme.


Draw the logical conclusions and stop being prevented from getting better by your misguided beliefs about what it takes to get better.


PS "AA is a phenomenal programme and works 100%" ???

Are you trying to make me laugh -? AA / NA has an absolutely ABYSMAL retention rate of an average 3-5%. Mainly because the whole shtick of convincing you that you're a morally degenerate piece of garbage puts most normal people off (the ones that have some self-respect left). Same goes for the pushing of 'surrender yourself to a higher power' stuff to those who are not religious.

 

[NY2soFlo]

I drank 15 beers a day every day until age 27 and devoted 20 years of my life completely to AA. I don't go anymore but have not had a drink in 36 years.

AA is a phenomenal program and works 100% but you must give it 100%. That means getting a sponsor and following their instructions 100%. My sponsor made me read a step every day for 30 days and then gave me a "test". If I failed the test I had to start over again. Sounds brutal...but it kept me sober.

I don't qualify for NA because I have have every drug imaginable in my safe and except for .5 mg of Xanax to sleep only get high once a week. I don't know why I don't abuse, but I don't. My friend teases me because when we go out (with our wives) to the club dancing, I only take 3/4 of an X.

But my point is that if you are truly an addict you will need to get a sponsor.

I think most of us have gone through the stages of not wanting to be in AA, not open to it, critiquing it, etc... hell, who really wants to do that. I resisted it for 10+ years. All 10 of which were a shitstorm.

I truly believe the critiquing ends when you are truly broken. The few times I've come back into the rooms after being truly at rock bottom... I just shut up and did what I was told. Or, I didnt have the will to resist, and I think that's kind of the whole point. I wish I could just be down for it all well before being broken. Having said that- that's just my experience. And any real clean time I've had (that wasn't miserable) has always come from working the program.

Also, if you don't like your sponsor- just get a new one lol. Sponsors are merely other addicts/alcoholics. To think everyone in AA has it 100% together is a wildly ridiculous thought. But there are a lot who do! Go for someone who has what you want!

 

[NY2soFlo]

Total and utter bollocks. You've been brainwashed by the recovery ideology.

I'm going to throw some hard data at you to make my point :


Research of alcoholics given a list of common tenets such as 'loss of control' or 'genetic pre-disposotion to alcoholism' , showed that those who most strongly believed those things were the most likely to relapse into compulsive use. This was AFTER controlling for any factor imaginable, including the severity of the drinking problem. (Miller, Westerberg, Harris & Toniyan 1996).

Those exposed to these ideas had binge drinking rates higher by 9 x as opposed to those who weren't. (Brandsma, 1980).

"Cultures where people do not believe drugs can cause loss of control, experience very little of it" (Reinarman, 2005)



NESARC (Dawson et al, 2005) sampled 43,000 alcoholics in one of the largest surveys ever completed.

The treated group : 28% still dependent, 72% no longer dependent.
The untreated group : 24% still dependent, 76% no longer dependent.
... Any sane mind would have to conclude that the so-called 'treatment' is ineffectual at best, and directly counter-productive at worst.

Drinkers who enrolled for a 12-week treatment reduced their drinking between week zero, when they enrolled, and week one, when they attended their first session (Luther & Fishbain, 2005).
The participants either completed the full 12 weeks, only completed 1 week, or did enroll but never showed up for treatment.
The reduction in drinking held up for 12 weeks for ALL participants regardless.

The subsequent data found that reduction in drinking started BEFORE treatment, wasn't INCREASED by longer treatment, and wasn't DECREASED by shorter treatment.
In other words, the only thing that made a REAL difference to the subject's behaviour was their own change of mind about their drinking.


Statistical overall likelihood of 'recovery' from alcoholism, 90.6% of all who ever met the diagnostic criteria. Of which the overwhelming majority never set foot in a treatment / AA programme.


Draw the logical conclusions and stop being prevented from getting better by your misguided beliefs about what it takes to get better.


PS "AA is a phenomenal programme and works 100%" ???

Are you trying to make me laugh -? AA / NA has an absolutely ABYSMAL retention rate of an average 3-5%. Mainly because the whole shtick of convincing you that you're a morally degenerate piece of garbage puts most normal people off (the ones that have some self-respect left). Same goes for the pushing of 'surrender yourself to a higher power' stuff to those who are not religious.

Are we striking a nerve here? Not a great advertisement for the point you're trying to prove...

Don't like AA?- don't go!
Like AA?- go!

Not sure, and asking BL for input? - you're going to get all types of opinions!

 

[Psynaught]

Total and utter bollocks. You've been brainwashed by the recovery ideology.

I'm going to throw some hard data at you to make my point :


Research of alcoholics given a list of common tenets such as 'loss of control' or 'genetic pre-disposotion to alcoholism' , showed that those who most strongly believed those things were the most likely to relapse into compulsive use. This was AFTER controlling for any factor imaginable, including the severity of the drinking problem. (Miller, Westerberg, Harris & Toniyan 1996).

Those exposed to these ideas had binge drinking rates higher by 9 x as opposed to those who weren't. (Brandsma, 1980).

"Cultures where people do not believe drugs can cause loss of control, experience very little of it" (Reinarman, 2005)



NESARC (Dawson et al, 2005) sampled 43,000 alcoholics in one of the largest surveys ever completed.

The treated group : 28% still dependent, 72% no longer dependent.
The untreated group : 24% still dependent, 76% no longer dependent.
... Any sane mind would have to conclude that the so-called 'treatment' is ineffectual at best, and directly counter-productive at worst.

Drinkers who enrolled for a 12-week treatment reduced their drinking between week zero, when they enrolled, and week one, when they attended their first session (Luther & Fishbain, 2005).
The participants either completed the full 12 weeks, only completed 1 week, or did enroll but never showed up for treatment.
The reduction in drinking held up for 12 weeks for ALL participants regardless.

The subsequent data found that reduction in drinking started BEFORE treatment, wasn't INCREASED by longer treatment, and wasn't DECREASED by shorter treatment.
In other words, the only thing that made a REAL difference to the subject's behaviour was their own change of mind about their drinking.


Statistical overall likelihood of 'recovery' from alcoholism, 90.6% of all who ever met the diagnostic criteria. Of which the overwhelming majority never set foot in a treatment / AA programme.


Draw the logical conclusions and stop being prevented from getting better by your misguided beliefs about what it takes to get better.


PS "AA is a phenomenal programme and works 100%" ???

Are you trying to make me laugh -? AA / NA has an absolutely ABYSMAL retention rate of an average 3-5%. Mainly because the whole shtick of convincing you that you're a morally degenerate piece of garbage puts most normal people off (the ones that have some self-respect left). Same goes for the pushing of 'surrender yourself to a higher power' stuff to those who are not religious.

People who don'y have success are the people who did not give 100%. Of [people who actually try, 50% get sober. And the rest, if they keep coming back and trying eventually get sober. You must give yourself completely to the program, and it isn't easy. Who wants to be rigorously honest, who wants to do 90 meetings in 90 days and then go 4-5 days a week in perpetuity? Who wants to do a searching and fearless moral inventory? Who wants to turn their will over to a higher power?Who wants to allow a sponsor to direct their life. What an order, and I understand why you could not do it, and why you now disparage it. But there is a reason why doctors, judges, and everyone else with the power to do so send people to AA. It is one of he greatest creations of the 20th century.

I have been sober for 36 years, may I ask how much time you have?

I have seen many, many people give themselves completely to the program and every one of them got sober. I hold a PhD and can tell you that nothing created by PhD's or MD's has the success rate of AA when it comes to stopping drinking.

 

[Psynaught]

@Psynaught - I haven't done the calculation so don't know which is more but for almost two years I was drinking two bottles of gin per day. Pint glass, ⅓ gin, ⅔ tonic, two slices of lemon.

I wasn't offered any kind of help because after going to see my doctor and having a blood test, he stated that nobody could be drinking THAT much and have a normal AST/ALT ratio and normal GGT. Quite odd. I couldn't work out why anyone would lie about such a thing.

But I DID want to stop so was lucky in being able to acquire Heminevrin (clomehiazole) and did a 12 day detox. You start with twelve capsules a day so you sleep most of the time but you go down to nothing in, you guessed it, 12 days.

Then nothing. But man, when did the world get so loud and so intense? Nobody warned me about that.

But even 25 years later I STILL occassionally have nightmares in which I am drunk. I asked some others who were recovering alcoholics and it seems common. Is that my subconscious reminding me how bad it was?

So, totally different routes but the same results I guess. It's not like I've not touched a drop but age means more than one means a 24 hour hangover ;-) Not worth it. I couldn't tell you when I last imbibed. Had none over Christmas so some time last year, I would esttimate.

If AA worked for you, that's great. It wasn't for me so I suppose it's another YMMV thing.

32 ounces a day....WOW. That is fantastic that you ave been able to stay sober so long. 25 years, amazing! You are probably not as f'ed up in the head as me, LOL.

I finally went to se a psych and he diagnosed me with everything, Homicidal ideation, bipolar...

 

[4DQSAR]

32 ounces a day....WOW. That is fantastic that you ave been able to stay sober so long. 25 years, amazing! You are probably not as f'ed up in the head as me, LOL.

I was dealing with shell shock and survivors guilt at the time. I use the term 'shell shock' advisedly. It wasn't 'combat stress reaction' nor PTSD.

Suddenly there is a wall between me and everyone I knew. So I lost everything and everyone and had to start again from scratch, alone.

So as well as my obvious physical disabilities, I'm deaf in one ear and partially sighted in one eye. Oh, and I also developed epilepsy.

 

[Vastness]

AA is a phenomenal program and works 100% but you must give it 100%. [....] People who don'y have success are the people who did not give 100%.

I know this is just parroting 12 Steps propaganda verbatim, but these are just transparently ridiculous statements.

You can make this exact claim about absolutely anything. I could say, for example, "100% of people with substance use problems manage to attain complete sobriety completely on their own with absolutely no help from anyone! But they must give it 100%. The people who don't succeed did not give 100%!"

See how ridiculous that sounds?

Hell, 100% of people who decide to become a multi-millionaire from sports betting succeed, but you must give it 100%! The people who don't have success are the people who did not give 100%.

You can claim absolutely anything has a 100% success rate if you just conveniently discount every negative statistic as an incidence where someone just didn't try hard enough. But when you're talking about substance use problems or other conditions with a significant mental health component, claims like this become extremely sinister with the potential for significant harm. You have absolutely no idea how much anyone else in the world tried to give to solve any of their problems, so please do not pretend that you do. If AA worked for you, great, be grateful, don't start thinking that when it doesn't work for others it's because they just didn't try as hard as you did.

 

[Psynaught]

I know this is just parroting 12 Steps propaganda verbatim, but these are just transparently ridiculous statements.

You can make this exact claim about absolutely anything. I could say, for example, "100% of people with substance use problems manage to attain complete sobriety completely on their own with absolutely no help from anyone! But they must give it 100%. The people who don't succeed did not give 100%!"

See how ridiculous that sounds?

Hell, 100% of people who decide to become a multi-millionaire from sports betting succeed, but you must give it 100%! The people who don't have success are the people who did not give 100%.

You can claim absolutely anything has a 100% success rate if you just conveniently discount every negative statistic as an incidence where someone just didn't try hard enough. But when you're talking about substance use problems or other conditions with a significant mental health component, claims like this become extremely sinister with the potential for significant harm. You have absolutely no idea how much anyone else in the world tried to give to solve any of their problems, so please do not pretend that you do. If AA worked for you, great, be grateful, don't start thinking that when it doesn't work for others it's because they just didn't try as hard as you did.

I asked you a very simple question that you refuse to answer: How long have you been sober? Everything else is just words obviously driven by anger and frustration.

You cite these sources claiming to debunk AA...but none of these sources have had any success whatsoever getting people sober. On the other hand millions and millions (probably eventually billions) of people have gotten sober using the 12 steps of AA.

All rehabs do is get you in a situation where you are able to start attending meetings, finding a sponsor, and working the steps. Please name another system/program that has gotten millions upon millions of people sober.

 

[Vastness]

^ I think you're confusing me with another poster and/or possibly my post with another post, this is the first time I've posted in this thread. I was just making the point specifically that the statements I quoted are just dumb things to say at best and actually harmful at worst.

 

[Them Witches]

I should be studied medically. It is a waste of medical history to not study all the levels of this.

OUD, pain management, interventional pain management, mental illness. people have somethings to say.

This whole thing should be studied extensively.

 

[RepeatedIgnorance2c-74]

Does anyone here have experience with refuge recovery?

 

[Psynaught]

Does anyone here have experience with refuge recovery?

I do not, sorry. Rehabs are primarily to get you through physical withdrawals and to buy you time. Not saying they don't work, some people need them. When I quit drinking I had some hallucinations but primarily got sober by going to meetings every day and not drinking in between.

However for serious opiod addiction you may need the medical service of professionals, but again I have no expertise here. There is a moderator here named Kief Richards who I have found to be extremely knowledgeable, I would ask him. I read his posts because they keep me terrified of an opiod addiction and that keeps my use (once a week) under control.

 

[4DQSAR]

Had another 'drunk nightmare' again. I was lost somewhere and trying to figure out if I had enough money to stay drunk. Not to find help, not to find my way home.. no, to stay drunk.

So that's after 25 years.

 

[Psynaught]

Had another 'drunk nightmare' again. I was lost somewhere and trying to figure out if I had enough money to stay drunk. Not to find help, not to find my way home.. no, to stay drunk.

So that's after 25 years.

Crazy...but ya got a freebie, drunk w/ no consequences, LOL.

 

[Pitts64]

NA IS a fellowship of complete abstinence from ALL mind and mood altering substances.. It can not be done.. That said I love NA . There was no way I could of rebuilt my life at 36 without them.