Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
I was reading How it Works today, and I noticed that the first paragraph gives the terms of what being "constitutionally incapable of being honest" is.
It calls it being born with a natural inability to grasp and develope a manner of living with DEMANDS rigorous honesty. It doesn't say that suggest honesty, or can include a little lie here or there, no it says DEMANDS rigorrous honesty, not just an attempt to be honest, rigorous honesty.
rigorous means extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate.
Too many individuals have either suggested lying as a means of doing business or think lying doesn't have the grave consequences it does for everything. Lying erodes trust, love, and security.
If you don't have an interest in being honest your odds of change and a greater life are less than average, piss poor to be accurate.
Lying is the easier, softer way. Am I interested in taking the easy and soft way in recovery? Chuck Chamberlain, God Rest His Soul, states in one of his speaker tapes that alcoholics hate weakness, and if we are being honest, most of us seek an easier way because our own will of great strength taking us in the wrong direction is the cause. We think it is the power of our will that is the problem, but it is really the power of our ego that is the problem, that exhaustive and relentless chatter of ignorance that won't be silent. Especially when stress is necessary in whatever life agenda we commit to.
Am I honestly wanting what AA has to offer? What does it have to offer? A means of living life where it isn't necessary to drink. Is that something I am interested in? Without question.
Now that I've proof I am honest, how do I go forward? Do I need a "sponsor" to read the rest of the book for me? Or are the direction right there in black ink to follow starting in How it Works? Honestly, the big book is the best sponsor any alcoholic could ever have. The big book was made in mind that no other recovered alcoholics would be in the areas it was aiming to reach towards initially.
Honestly I don't see anywhere in this book that says it is necessary to get a sponsor, the 12 and 12 talks about it, and it says a sponsor was just a close friend who was participating, most sponsors I've had turned into control freaks way to concerned with their staying sober over mine, which if I am honest is just subtle selfishness using the new person.
Honestly I think the depending on a sponsor thing falls in the category B in How it works that says "no human power could have relieved our alcoholism." Last time I checked a sponsor was another human being. Last time I checked a group full of human drunks was a human power too. Why is it that old-timers stop going to meetings and end up hating them, but can still stay sober and live a life? Honestly I am over these human powers and am kicking myself for depending on them. It is my fault I depend on humans so much, devolving into a realist state is honesty the most peaceful I can become.
Tom Brady Jr. has a great talk on emotional sobriety and you can find it on YouTube. He says that whenever anyone places dependence on things other than God, the emotions suffer and grow negative. He is right, honestly, whenever I depend on anything other than God to create a spirit on the inside of happy, joyous, and free, it never happens, people are just not capable of doing what God can and will.
It's a black and white as men are not capable of giving birth to babies.
If I am not honest in recovery, if I do not commit to a life that includes complete honesty with no fear, I end up sell myself short, create my own shitty destiny that requires manipulation, ignorance, and friction with others, and eventually die from my own lies.
You may want to read Step Five in the 12 and 12, esp starting on page 59. This passage discusses "the difficulties of trying to deal rightly with God by ourselves" which are twofold.
The first difficulty deals with willingness. "Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house in still largely theoretical. When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God."
The second difficulty deals with the tendency that our own thinking tends to "be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking." Working with a sponsor gives one a "reality check", ensuring that our interpretation of God's guidance isn't tainted by the very character defects about which we are seeking God's advice.
"Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous." - 12 & 12 pg 60
I was just saying the general text, makes no reference to a sponsor. Doing anything in self-will is dangerous, what if the sponsor is giving advice that is loaded with character defects themselves?
This whole notion that sponsors are the key to everything is crap, I've had a handful of sponsors who had conditional ways of working with me, is conditional love what AA teaches? Isn't helping or giving advice only if you are getting something in return selfish?
I appreciate the "warning" but if I need a guide, to know the dangers of going into a jungle, at some point I need to learn them, remember them, and move on, I see way too many people depend more on sponsors and less on God, and never end up growing up in recovery, because their sponsors become the higher power, which is stupid, the sponsor is just another human being.
It is obvious to ourselves when we are lying to other people as most people’s conscience will tell them the difference between right and wrong. What is sometimes less obvious is when we are lying to ourselves, for example by underestimating our own part in some problem or wrong done to others.
When I first went to AA meetings, I read the Twelve Steps on a chart on the wall and I quickly ticked off the first three as already done, just because I had read them. It was only when I went through the Steps with a sponsor and watched the Joe McQuany tapes that I grasped the true meaning of those Steps and it was a long way from what I had read on the wall.
The early AA meetings were designed to introduce new members to the Steps at the earliest possible opportunity and in some cases people were not considered to be AA members until they had done the first three Steps with a temporary sponsor. Contrast that with today, where there is often an attitude that the road to recovery is based on attending many meetings and there is plenty of time for Steps at some future date.
In my humble opinion, it would be virtually impossible to do the Steps without a sponsor. I would always take the easy option and avoid the difficult stuff unless my thinking was challenged. On the other hand, I think that a good sponsor should always be fired at the end of the process. The reason for that, and what I think Tailor Sailor is getting at, is that once the Steps have been completed, reliance should now be on a Higher Power and on the principles suggested in the Steps. Having to continuously rely on a sponsor would indicate to me that the person has either not understood the Steps or else, is not putting them into practice through Steps 10, 11 and 12.