You seem to think ! I am here to just knock AA ! not at all just because the arrogance of its tenets makes it an easy mark!
But I must ask have you, have you really been through a twelve step program? Your flowery presentations blow me away, its been a while but I.ll never forget some of the degrading, belittling sessions I've witnessed!
But besides that I guess my real point is the ongoing unexceptence of any alternitives to to the religious type beliefs of evangelical proponents of AA! And the continued myths that AA is the word and you nust follow this light to find your spirituality only AA can show you the way and nothing will ever change my mind! Hmmmm sound familiar?

Hi
i'm Joe. Was a drunk for 36 years. Got to AA in 86 desperate to stop. Honestly I couldn't have stopped without AA and the people in it have at times almost driven me crazy. But ,it got me sober or at least showed me the way to do it. I'm living here in the middle of a rice paddy miles from an AA meeting,been living here for about 10 years. I get to Bangkok couple of times a year and get a few meetings in. So mostly I get to observr AA folks from a distance and can at times feel pretty peeved by the crap that I hear. ''If you don't go to meetings you will drink again'' That one drove me nuts for a few years,like why was I staying sober. I also find that when I do go to meetings and mix with members I find myself being treated with a fair amount of suspicion. Let me point out that I'm not on drugs,mood changing that is. I understand that there is a fear of people like me. I remember after I stopped drinking /drugging I had a tremendous fear that I would return to that life of hell.
If AA folks are a bit above themselves ''we need to remember that most folks are doing the best that they can with what they have to work with and that some of us don't have as much as others'' The thing that peeves me most about 12 step folks is that they tend to talk from the head and not from the heart or from a gut level. I find myself continually being quoted to out of books and although that might be ok for new members there comes a time that one needs to remove oneself out of the kindergarten.
When I was lying sick on a bed in the detox ward back in 86 an old AA guy was sitting on the side of my bed and he said ''AA is to get you back into the mainstream of life without the necessity of picking up a drink'' It has done that for me. I will continue to attend AA meetings when ever I get the chance simply because when ever I do I always learn something that I won't get out of a bottle of castor oil.
Regards to you all Joe Strawberry