Positive or Negative Experience with AA NA?

Rant away.

I don't think I will get much response given this section is so inactive and that people who have been in or are in 12 step programs and use online support probably go to other sites on the ole interweb.

No rant here...AA has been successful in helping me stay sober one days at a time. While I was scared to death the first few meetings I went to, all it took was some shopping around to find some meetings where I felt comfortable. It was the same in finding a sponsor...I just went to meetings until I found a person whose message struck me. He & I are more best friends now than just sponsor/sponsee. There are all kinds of people at meetings & many different styles of meetings. It's just a matter of finding the people/groups among whom you feel comfortable.

i have had both positive and negative, in the end it just wasn't for me.
the structured environment was nice, the religious overtones were a bit much for me. lots of cool people though, & liked hearing the stories of the *** they've done. each meeting is different, maybe i just never found the right one for me, also at the time the courts forced me to go, i didn't go on my own

The ole nudge from the judge. That does make a difference between being forced to go and choosing to go. I am so rebellious if they had forced me to go I probably would have never went back. Who knows though lots of people choose to stay after a nudge from the judge.

AA has big meetings where the rules are enforced and it has smaller meetings which are more intimate. The only meeting I experienced was big, and I didn't like it.
So AA wasn't for me (based only on 1 experience) but, I have 2 uncles who swear that AA saved them. How does a person argue with success.

I think the important thing to do is to go to different meetings. Look for one that you find agreeable and participate. Participation, I believe, is key.

Attending 1 meeting is not a sufficient sample for me (probably for anyone) to say that it is no good.
One uncle is a doctor, the other was a lawyer. These are smart guys and they really believed it helped them.

I think the rigid rules of AA made it hard for them to intellectually wiggle their way out of quitting. Again, it is only speculation.

Here is a couple of online meetings from reputable recovery sources.
The e-AA Group ? Index page for AA
Self Help Addiction Recovery | SMART Recovery®
for SMART recovery.
There are more but these organizations are pretty well known and not on the fringe of mainstream recovery thinking.

I was a natural remission case but I think participation is more important than everything else. Just do it. If you don't like one meeting go to another.
Call the help line. If you tell them about your personality they may be able to steer you towards a group suited to you.
Go to the AA board and ask people if they can help you find the right group for you in your hometown. someone from your city will most likely be on the board. Ask them?

I was a very heavy drinker and drug user for 17 years. I tried countless times to quit under my own will power. Failed miserably each time. I really sincerely wanted to quit. I didn't want what it was doing to me and my life. The longest I ever made it was six months but I was smoking pot heavily to get through it.

One day after getting fired from two jobs due to my using and in a severe depression, I decided that I just couldn't do this alone. Alcohol was my best friend and the scariest thought I ever had was to think about going without it my whole life. All my self worth was tied up in my career. So I had hit my bottom.

My wife and family had been urging me for along time to get help. But at this moment the decision to get help came from deep inside me. I wasn't going to do it to get anyone off my back. I knew I was going to die a long horrible death if I didn't.

The moment I made that decision and looked up the phone number for a treatment center a huge psychic shift occurred in me. A spiritual shift in my view. I went to treatment and was a model patient. I already knew they were going to tell me to got to AA and I wanted to go. They had AA and NA and CA and even MA meetings come in from the outside.

When I got out I was gung hoe recovery. I was not able to go back to work for a couple of years after and that is another long story as to why, but I went to three meetings a day for along time. Went to all the step studies, all the big book studies, and all the things you are supposed to do. I took to it like a duck takes to water. I wanted very bad to stay sober and have a better life. Slowly the fog lifted and the more I read and went to meetings the more the book and the steps made sense to me. Slowly more and more was revealed about the absolute wisdom of the program. It was a philosophy I could believe in and it worked. I have rarely rarely ever had the urge or desire to drink or use again ever since I made that decision. So AA was a very positive experience for me. Total true story.

When I say the absolute wisdom of the program of AA I don't mean at all it is the only wisdom out there. I love philosophy and there is tons of wisdom out there. I went to all kinds of outside groups and new age spiritual stuff. I have a lot of respect for the wisdom of AA though. It comes from many years of experience and is highly successful. As the saying goes it works if you work it.

I also suffer from severe depression so I had to seek outside help for that. All the work I have done in AA and working the steps, and applying the steps to my depression didn't put a dent in it. So AA is no cure all. But it can get you sober and keep you sober, that is what it was designed for. It worked for me and I was hard core drinker and user of drugs.

Verdict - Positive

While I go to a Big Book meeting every week, I'm not a big reader of AA literature...at least the first 164 pages. My favorite meeting of the week is a Grapevine meeting that has contemporary readings about being sober. In my opinion, much of the Big Book is dated...even if the experiences in the stories are the same as the symptoms & problems I hear around the tables. I get much more out of meetings than I do out of the literature. A link to the Grapevine follows:

http://www.aagrapevine.org/stories

LOL! nudge from the judge! i like that! very funny, i'm surprised i never heard that before, love it..hilarious!

I agree. I have read those first 164 pages so many times I can't really stomach it any more. I like the 12 x 12 much better. It is all dated. A lot more is understood now. I wonder if they ever consider adding to it. I guess they figure if it ain't broke don't fix it. They come out with new editions but I think all they ever did was maybe add a few stories.

Well, I was wondering if people were going to post to this thread. I did not because of the same thread still going on that was right below it. So, I don't think there is a need for me to come up with an original post for this thread--below is my post from the other thread. I want people to know there are ways other than AA and AA can be a dangerous environment.

I was only 15 when I first became involved in AA and I was around the tables off and on for many, many years. The groups in my town were horrible and the members caused me a lot of pain and suffering...it changed the course of my life for the worse. Some people benefit from AA and that's fine for them. Personally, I wish I would have never reached out for help from AA because in the long run it created even more problems for me that I had to eventually overcome to get sober.

I've been sober over 9 years now...I think its 9, I've lost track. That's the nice thing about how my "recovery" works for me now--I don't have to work at it all the time. Being sober is how I am now. It feels natural to be sober so I don't even think about keeping track anymore. In the beginning, especially that horrendous 1st year, it was something I had to work hard on and it was constantly on my mind 24/7. At first, I had to learn how live sober, then I practiced at it and eventually, as the years passed, it just became a way of life.

For the most part, I consider myself to be free from the chains of addiction. I'm no longer controlled by my addictive impulses or tormented by the thoughts of an alcoholic mind. I've fully realized and accepted the consequences caused by my past alcoholic behavior and no longer feel guilty about it. It took a long time for me to get over the regret I felt for all the lost opportunities and for wasting so many years of my life.

Am I still an alcoholic? Well, in some sense, yes, because I know that I would revert to alcoholic behavior and thinking if I decided to drink again. But, in some ways, no because I don't think or act like an alcoholic anymore. Maybe, I'm more like a "alcoholic-potential." The good thing is that today I have the choice to drink or not....and, I no longer want or need to drink. My life is not perfect but its sooo much better...

glad you got better , congratulations!!

I had posted this in another discussion and was asked to add it here. I feel I should add a bit to it for the purposes of this thread. I have been sober just over 9 years, but my first experience with AA was about three years before that. I knew I had a problem with alcohol (plenty of other chemicals; you name it and I've done it; but only developed a dependency to alcohol), but I hadn't 'hit my bottom'. I went to a few meetings and managed to string together about three months without a drink. It was a living hell, and my first drink was blessed relief. I barely had a sober moment for the next 30 months or so. I drank 24/7, started each day with the bottle I had passed out with the night before, lost my job and home and everything that I had once listed off to convince myself I was still in control.

I resigned myself to an alcoholic death. I didn't know if it would be from liver cirrhosis or swelling of the brain, an overdose on whatever pills I was using to enhance my buzz or a car accident possibly taking out a family with me; I just knew I was going to die a drunk. I got to a point where my reaction to alcohol was completely unpredictable. I have been knee-walking drunk on four beers, and I have have been cold-stone sober after a quart of potcheen (Scottish Highland moonshine that's about a thousand proof, part wood alcohol, and could be used as jet fuel).

This went on until I was at a buddy's one New Year's Eve. We were drinking moonshine and Bacardi 151. Eventually, the only two people not passed out were me and my friend's wife, who doesn't drink anything stronger than Dr. Pepper. And she started telling me about his drinking and how it was ruining their marriage. I told her I would talk to him and see if I could get him to go to an AA meeting. It didn't work for me, but it might him. The next day I didn't have to say anything; he brought it up and told me the same thing she had: if he didn't stop he was going to lose his wife. I told him about AA and he said he'd go, but he made me promise to go with him.

There was a meeting the following night, and we hung out until then, babysitting each other and not drinking. I went to that meeting to get him to go. No other reason. I had every intention of getting drunk afterward. But something was different. Or I was different. I knew it before I even got in the door. People greeted me with smiles and open arms, something I hadn't seen in a very long time. They told me they were glad I was back; I had had family members tell me to leave and never come back. It was a discussion meeting, and I don't even remember what the topic was, but everyone who talked said something that hit home. When I spoke, I introduced myself as an alcoholic, and I believed it for the first time. I had a sponsor before I left the meeting, and I started reading the Big Book that night.

A couple months later, my friend's wife left him anyway, and he eventually started drinking again. But I didn't drink. A couple of years later, my sponsor had a relapse, which threw me for a tailspin. But I didn't drink. I went to more funerals in my first two years sober than I had ever been to before, but I didn't drink. My dad had a heart attack when I was five days sober, but I didn't drink. I fell in love, got engaged, found out she was cheating on me when she told me she was leaving me for someone else, but I didn't drink. Somewhere along the way, I stopped saying, "but I didn't drink", because somewhere along the way drinking was no longer something I even thought about. I've been on steering committees, served as GSR for my home group and DCM for my district, started a Public Information Committee to distribute literature and PSAs throughout the community. I've worked with doctors, psychiatrists, and clergy members. I've spoken at treatment centers, nursing schools, juvenile detention centers. And I've never forgot that what got me sober, and what has kept me sober every step of the way, was simply one alcoholic talking to another.

I've seen groups grow. I've seen groups fall apart. For me, I think the single best statement on the power of the program comes from a guy I sponsored. I was actually his temporary sponsor because he was my uncle, and when he asked me to be his sponsor I told him it wasn't a good idea, but I'd do it until he found someone else. On the night I gave him his 3 month chip, he told me he had been diagnosed with mesothelioma the previous day. By the time they found the cancer it had already spread to his liver and upper intestine. It was inoperable. He didn't live long enough to get his 9 month chip, but he spent the last few weeks of his life with his son he hadn't talked to in years. On that night he told me about his diagnosis, I told him I was sorry. He said, "Some people get sober to learn how to live. I guess I got sober to learn how to die. Don't be sorry. I'm not." There was a light in his eyes I had never seen before, and I knew he meant every word he said.

Sometimes insanity is a perfectly sane reaction to an insane situation.

I had a mixed experience. On the positive side I really needed AA at the time, I needed a support group and a lot of reminders not to use. I met some interesting people in AA and learned a lot about myself. My life improved.

On the negative side I feel like it intensified my compulsive nature. Almost everyone chain smokes and drinks coffee all day in AA, I became a caffeine and nicotine addict (mind you, smoking kills like booze.) I chanted everyday about how powerless I was, and that yes certainly, if I ever used again I'd spiral out of control until death. Also, there were great excuses to keep smoking cigarettes and binging on caffine, anything God forbid, but drink the poison that will surely kill me if I ever drink again. And, I was hooked on meetings and social support.

In the end I stopped going to meetings, but I still don't drink (they have been telling me for years now I'll drink any day.) What I ended up discovering is all my "friends" and social support for the most part liked me miserable, they liked me powerless and suffering. Seeing me out of AA, not drinking, not accepting that I am fundamentally damaged was too much for them.

it can be like that, when i went i too met some interesting people. a lot of them had some pretty interesting stories, for me the religious overtones were
a bit much for me, i'm not much of a coffee person, but i found when i was working out every day it was easier to stay away from drinking