Here is a bit of AA heresy.
I read this an issue of the Grapevine, some time ago “the official AA meeting in print” that approximately 60% of people who want to quit drinking and meet with success, do so without the help of AA. 60%, that’s a pretty impressive number.
If drinking is interfering in your life, and you decide that quitting is what you want to do, and you are successful in doing so, I personally am very happy for you. You have joined that 60% who get and stay sober on self knowledge.
I think it’s important to understand the physiology of alcohol addiction. I think it’s also important to understand the triggers that start us drinking. And I think it’s also most useful to understand that for some of us, once we start drinking we have little if any inclination to stop.
If one can stop, and this is the more important part, stay stopped based on what we can know about ourselves, good and good. Thank the powers that be for that gift.
But there seems to be another class of alcoholic that knowing all that there is to know about how and why we drink, and knowing that everything we love will be taken away if we drink, we still drink. And we watch all that we love wash away and we can’t stop it and we can’t stop ourselves.
It seems this class of drunk is suffering from a disease that only a spiritual experience will conquer.
I didn’t believe that when I first heard it.
So if you don’t believe it either, you are not alone. But if you sadly find yourself in that latter group, total despair may change your mind.

On the road to the good stuff
Richard S.