AA
AA isn't bullshit.
Simply going to meetings to listen to grizzled drunks tell unconvincing stories of redemption isn't gonna help. Simply praying to God to cure you of your addiction ain't gonna do nuthin'. There are plenty of people in meetings who are full of shit, pretentious, or who are clearly miserable despite their alleged sobriety. Go to the wrong meetings, its easy to get a bad taste in your mouth. That doesn't mean that the whole thing is worthless.
Most addicts and alcoholics don't like AA because it's based around the premise that there is something wrong with them on a spiritual level. It forces you to take a hard look at your life, and accept the fact that you are essentially at the utter mercy of your addiction, that you are broken as a person. It forces you to confront your failures head on rather than make excuses for them. It forces you to confront the damage you've done to your loved ones, and eventually to make amends to them.
It demands a complete change in the way you approach life. Many hardcore addicts, whether they are able to accept it or not, live selfish lives, constantly fixated on how they feel and trying to control every aspect of their lives. The 12 steps demand that you surrender yourself to the idea that you can't control much of what happens in life, and that you simply find the courage to change what you can in a selfless manner. That means confronting the damage you've done and doing your best to make it right.
You need to find someone that has a real message of recovery. I was lucky enough to find a sponsor who had something to offer. He had an ivy league education and was a member of a well-known local punk band before heroin addiction cost him everything and he ended up in prison. He wasn't deluded or religious, but he found that a spiritual solution and a life of honesty and selflessness was the only thing that helped him get clean and live a happy life.
I found that I wasn't capable of being honest with myself at that point, and relapsed as I was making amends to family members. It was immensely difficult and the stress was too much, i couldn't handle life without drugs. Since that relapse, I've seen jails, detoxes, methadone clinics, mental wards, and overdoses. I however did see countless hopeless addicts recover to live happy, meaningful lives. I wasn't one of them, but I had a glimpse of what it looks like.
It isn't for everyone, and it shouldn't be mandated by the courts, because it's something that needs to come from within you, you can't be forced to do it. Most meetings have nothing to offer because most people in AA don't actually work the steps and have not undergone this transformation. You need to get to the point where you are utterly broken and disgusted with yourself and are willing to do anything to get better. Most people aren't at that point. Personally, I think I'm getting there.
The traditional conceptiom of God and religion has little to do with it. You do need to be able to turn your will over to a higher power, to surrender to the idea that there is a greater purpose to life than hedonistic self-gratification and pleasure. Unless you truly believe that life is meaningless, that there is no underlying beauty or divinity to the universe, that we are simply bags of chemicals without free will, hurtling through a pointless existence, this isn't really a difficult thing to do. Personally I've smoked enough DMT, dropped enough acid, and experienced enough drug-induced psychosis that I know for a fact that there is an underlying divine principle behind all of existence, so this was never an issue for me.
It's too bad there are so many misconceptions about the 12 steps. If you've reached the point in your life where nothing else works, it offers a solution for those willing to be honest with themselves. Of course these issues don't apply to some addicts, the steps are kinda like a last resort when nothing else works, and many people dont reach that point.
