Sharing and Caring

[honeydumplin]

Your posts are appreciated, and I hope you get well.

There was something that I had received in an e-mail awhile back.
Since it has to do with message, and newcomer, this may be a good place
for it.

AA's Future
I don't know the source, it was forwarded to me.
Makes interesting reading and food for thought.
Whether you agree or not, this is a powerful and
disturbing subject: For all those interested in
the future of our AA fellowship.

What Happened? That question is being asked by a lot
of alcoholics lately. What happened to our high
success rate? 30 & 40 years ago, we were keeping 75%
or more of the alcoholics who came to us for help.
Today, we aren't keeping even 5%. What happened?

What happened to that wonderful A.A. Group that was
around for 20, 30 or 40 years? There used to be 50, 75, 100 or more
at every meeting. It is now a matter of history,
gone! More and more groups are folding every day.
What happened? We hear a lot of ideas, opinions and
excuses as to what happened but things are not
improving. They continue to get worse. What is
happening?

Bill W. wrote, "In the years ahead A.A. will, of
course, make mistakes. Experience has taught us that
we need have no fear of doing this, providing that
we always remain willing to admit our faults and to
correct them promptly. Our growth as individuals has
depended upon this healthy process of trial and
error. So will our growth as a fellowship. Let us
always remember that any society of men and women
that cannot freely correct its own faults must
surely fall into decay if not into collapse. Such is
the universal penalty for the failure to go on
growing. Just as each A.A. must continue to take his
moral inventory and act upon it, so must our whole
Society if we are to survive and if we are to serve
usefully and well." (A.A. Comes of Age, PG 231) With
so very few finding lasting sobriety and the
continued demise of AA groups , it is obvious that
we have not remained willing to admit our faults and
to correct them promptly. Seems to me that the
Delegate of the North east Ohio Area, Bob Bacon,
identified our mistakes and our faults when he
talked to a group of AA's in 1976. He said, in
essence, we are no longer showing the newcomer that
we have a solution for alcoholism. We are not
telling them about the Big Book and how very
important that Book is to our long-term sobriety. We
are not telling them about our Traditions and how
very important they are to the individual groups and
to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Rather, we are
using our meeting time for drunkalogs, a discussion
of our problems, ideas and opinions or "my day" or
"my way".

Having been around for a few years, and reflecting
on what Bob Bacon had to say, it would appear that
we have permitted newcomers to convince the
old-timers that they have a better idea. They had
just spent 30 or more days in a treatment facility
where they had been impressed with the need to talk
about their problems in Group Therapy Sessions. They
had been told that it didn't make any difference
what their real problem was; A.A. had the "best
program". They were told that they should go to an
A. A. meeting every day for the 1st 90 days out of
treatment. They were told that they shouldn't make
any major decisions for the 1st year of their
sobriety. And what they were told goes on and on,
most of which are contrary to the Program of
Alcoholics Anonymous! Apparently, what they were
told sounded pretty good to the A.A. members who
were here when the TC clients started showing up at
our meetings. And a lot of the A.A. members liked
the idea of the treatment centers because the
centers provided a place where they could drop off a
serious drinker, if he/she had insurance. That
eliminated some of the inconveniences we had been
plagued with before; having to pour orange juice and
honey or a shot of booze down a vibrating alky to
help them "detox".

When A.A. was very successful,
the folks who did the talking in meetings were
recovered alcoholics. The suffering and untreated
alcoholics listened. After hearing what it takes to
recover, the newcomer was faced with a decision;
"Are you going to take the Steps and recover or are
you going to get back out there and finish the job?"
If they said they "were willing to go to any
length", they were given a sponsor, a Big Book and
began the process of recovery by taking the Steps
and experiencing the Promises that result from that
course of action. This process kept the newcomer
involved in working with others and continued the
growth of our Fellowship. Our growth rate was
approximately 7% and the number of sober members of
Alcoholics Anonymous doubled every 10 years. With
the advent of the rapid growth of the Treatment
Industry, the acceptance of our success with
alcoholics by the judicial system and endorsement of
physicians, psychiatrist, psychologist , etc. all
kinds of people were pouring into A.A. at a rate
greater than we had ever dreamed possible. Almost
without realizing what was happening, our meetings
began changing from ones that focused on recovery
from alcoholism to "discussion or participation"
types of meetings that invited everyone to talk
about whatever was on their mind. The meetings
evolved from a program of spiritual development to
the group therapy type of meeting where we heard
more and more about "our problems" and less and less
about the Program of Recovery by the Big Book and
the preservation of our Fellowship by adhering to
our Traditions.

What has been the result of all this? Well, never
have we had so many coming to us for help. But never
have we had such a slow growth rate which has now
started to decline. For the first time in our
history, Alcoholics Anonymous is losing members
faster than they are coming in and our success rate
is unbelievably low. (Statistics from the
Inter-Group Office of some major cities indicate
less than 5% of those expressing a desire to stop
drinking is successful for more than 5 years; a far
cry from the 75% reported by Bill W. in the Forward
to Second Edition). The change in the content of our
meetings is proving to be misery-traps for the
newcomer and in turn, misery-traps for the groups
that depend on the "discussion or participation"
type meetings.

Why is this? The answer is very simple. When
meetings were opened so that untreated alcoholics
and non-alcoholics were given the opportunity to
express their ideas, their opinions, air their
problems and tell how they were told to do it where
they came from, the confused newcomer became more
confused with the diversity of information that was
being presented. More and more they were encouraged
to "just go to meetings and don't drink" or worse
yet, "go to 90 meetings in 90 days". The newcomer no
longer was told to take the Steps or get back out
there and finish the job. In fact, they are often
told, "Don't rush into taking the Steps. Take your
time." The alcoholics who participated in the
writing of the Big Book didn't wait. They took the
Steps in the first few days following their last
drink. Thank God, there are those in our Fellowship,
like Joe & Charlie, Wally, etc., who have recognized
the problem and have started doing something about
it. They are placing the focus back on the Big Book.


There have always been a few groups that would not
yield to the group therapy trend. They stayed firm
to their commitment to try to carry a single message
to the suffering alcoholic. That is to tell the
newcomer "we have had a spiritual awakening as the
result of these Steps and if you want to recover, we
will see that you have a sponsor who has recovered
and will lead you along the path the 1st 100 laid
down for us".

Recovered alcoholics have begun founding groups that
have a single purpose and inform the newcomer that
until they have taken the steps and recovered, they
will not be permitted to say anything in meetings.
They will listen to recovered alcoholics, they will
take the Steps, they will recover and then they will
try to pass their experience and knowledge on to the
ones who are seeking the kind of help we provide in
Alcoholics Anonymous. As this movement spreads, as
it is beginning to, Alcoholics Anonymous will again
be very successful in doing the one thing God
intended for us to do and that is to help the
suffering alcoholic recover, if he has decided he
wants what we have and is willing to go to any
length to recover, to take and apply our Twelve
Steps to our lives and protect our Fellowship by
honoring our Twelve Traditions.

There is a tendency to want to place the blame for
our predicament on the treatment industry and
professionals. They do what they do and it has
nothing to do with what we in Alcoholics Anonymous
do. That is their business. That is not where to
place the blame and also is in violation of our
Tenth Tradition.

The real problem is that the members of Alcoholics
Anonymous, who were here when the "clients" began
coming to our Fellowship did not help the "clients"
understand that our Program had been firmly
established since April 1939, and that the
guidelines for the preservation and growth of our
Fellowship were adopted in 1950. That they must get
rid of their new "old ideas" and start practicing
the Twelve Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous as
it was given to us. That until they had taken the
taken the steps needed.

It's so easy to fall into the trap of saying something that can only be based on personal experience. In order to somehow avoid that, and also set a qualifier for my supposed hypocrisy, I'll go out on a limb and jump head first into the trap. Therefore, not only setting it, but setting it off too.

It's also easy for me to look at things much differently now, than I sought help, whereby a sort of self-righteous, pious, and demonstrative attitude has reared its ugly head, replacing the quiet, isolated, desperation that I awakened to every day for those last six months, when I had no idea who I was, or what I was, only that I did not want to be that any more.

And even that has changed so much more than it was ten or twelve years ago when I first walked into a room of A.A. The only thing I knew about the steps is that they were read at every meeting, and they'd taken the liberty to hang them on the wall so we could see them. No one said any specific thing about "working" them, "going through" them, or even revealing how the steps were affecting their day to day life.

The Big Book may has well been under lock and key. I was completely unaware of the fact that people actually had them, much less looked to them for guidance or anything. But there again, none of the above would have done me any good anyway. Sure, I'd tell you that I was an alcoholic, but I hadn't even got close to the unmanageability part of my life yet, nor was I fully convinced that there was that much of a problem with my drinking. I could drink just fine thank you very much. It was you who was having the problem with the way that I drank, not me.

In the most realistic manner of which it could have happened, that was THE most important thing that I had learned in those thirty days of going to that one meeting a week, was the fact that these people, these A.A.'s were seeing me exactly that way. I know this, because I would catch them telling me that I couldn't expect this to work because I was doing it for somebody else. This didn't make any sense to me at all. So I tried my best to fix it, by the only insane way that I knew at that point of how to alleviate the problem, and that was to distance myself from others as much as possible and therefore make it where I did not have to get sober for anyone else. It worked, but I'm kind of slow so it took awhile. Another ten years. I hadn't gone back out. I was never in.

There was no concept, even remotely, of what a bottom was. That hasn't changed either. I still think there's another one of those just waiting for me to redefine that whole scenario if I get insane enough to want to take the next drink. So it doesn't honestly make sense either to share about hitting anything other than what I hit, which for me was leaning out of the car at a stop light on tenth street and watching the scotch I had just drank end up down on the pavement in front of me, wondering what I had become for a brief moment, and then feeling much better, and thinking that I was okay again. I probably drank for several months after that. Hell, I drank two the day before my treatment started, just because they were in the refrigerator. I'm an alcoholic. Why would I have wasted it.

But that's me. That's my disease. Cunning, baffling, and powerful. Not love. Not freedom. Not joy. Not happiness. And yet I so desperately desired all of those, because I could see them in people like you, but much later than those that exposed this recovery to me originally, which were the counselors in what was called "group". I hate that word. Still do. I hated being "in group." Still do. I hated the people who were in the group, what they said, how they said it, and more importantly the attitude with which they said it. I thought they were phoney. One of the counselors was a recovering nicotine addict. She didn't know **** about taking a hit of crack. I guess I hated her more than anybody, and eventually got to the point to where I treated her as if she were piece of the wallpaper that I had to look at once or twice a week. Nothing more, nothing less.

Was I willing to go to any length during this process? Of course not. At that point, I'm sure I had no clue of what going to any length was. It wasn't until a couple of months later when I came face to face with two choices of either working a program, or going back out, knowing that I was going to die if I did, that I knew a glimpse of what going to any length was. But if I ask myself if I was going to any length at all. Yes, I was. I may have just been basically going through the motions in order to simply make it another day without a drink, but for once in quite some time, I was being honest with my own self about the whole thing. I began to listen to people, at times in like this unaware state, of just sitting there and trying to adapt to being in a room with other people without being high on something.

I started to become part of the "group" that I didn't care for, which for me that day, was going to any length. I just wasn't conscious of it. I wanted to be loved so bad, but really had no idea of what unconditional love was. I thought unconditional love was love that had no prerequisite. In other words, I thought it was you letting me do whatever I wanted to do, and loving me anyway. As it turns out, the best love I know of, has conditions, and in turn, expects conditions. In essence, it's conditional love that has no conditions to speak of. For the sake of discussion, I'd rather call it unconventional love, which really isn't love at all. It's more like attachment via proxy or something obtuse, that's for sure.
And this is where I want to conclude. The love that I began to experience for the first time definitely had some conditions that went with it, otherwise I wouldn't have had a desire to meet those conditions in order to experience it. There wasn't anything at all glamorous, or romantic, or even pleasurable about it. It was painful at times. It was working through what appeared to be a mine field in order to get through another day. It was very unconventional, in that it was nothing conventional about the way that it occurred.

It was an attachment via proxy in that, even though the person that I was working with was going to love me if I went out and got drunk, that I was distancing myself once again, by falling down on one of the only conditions he had laid down in order to be one of the closest friends I've ever had, which was to try my best to stay sober. Did I continue to meet those conditions? Of course not. Did it happen again? Yes. But this time, it was even more difficult getting back to square one, which again made me realize how very valuable what little sobriety I had was.

For without the condition of the valley, the peak, which to this day is ever present, could have not been appreciated with the same magnitude, had it not been for the ground work that was being laid, and the unwritten boundaries for the future. I mean this guy was trying to stay sober. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if I were going to insist on continuing to drink, that the "love" that he was extending to me through carrying the message, was going to suffer.

To sum up what I'm trying to say, I'm grateful that I was loved in this exact way by the people that I encountered in A.A. I can say that I wasn't catered to, wasn't coddled, wasn't laid down a red carpet, or offered a coffee clutch of groupies giving me unwarranted advice. Just a warm hand shake, and some words of encouragement that I'd found a home, and that you'd be there for me. Any more, or any less, would have more than likely screwed up my alcoholic mind more than it already was.

Thanks for letting me share this.