The craving for alcohol goes when there is no more left in your body - alcohol is the thing that causes craving. The obsession to drink remainsd in us until we work through the Steps.

AA is not able to stop anyone from drinking other than to be supportive as indivduals to someone who is trying to stop. It is often not safe for an alcoholic to stop suddenly and, as we are unlikely to be able to wean ourselves off it gradually it is often best to try to arrange to get a detox.

What AA does is offer a solution to the problem of alcoholism - you do not have to have reached a 'rock bottom' - if you are ready to quit for good and all then you qualify for AA!

The next thing you need to do is to find a sponsor to take you through the steps; this is how the obsession is removed.

Feel free to pm me if I can help at all

lyn

I believe you're not understanding of the AA program. AA cannot make anyone sober. If it were that easy we wouldnt have any
alcoholics. The cravings will go. Thats our mental and physical addiction to alcohol that keeps those cravings alive.
There is no time frame,personally I stayed in a recovery home for about nine months before the obsession was lifted. A lot longer than most and up until that obsession was lifted it was all I could do just not to drink. Once that obsession was lifted i became teachable. Thats where the program of Alcoholics Anonymous came into play. I was no longer trapped in the mental despair . At that point in my sobriety I was like a sponge .Soaking up all the guidance and direction from my God that I could get. I havent looked back. Greg

I found AA to be a blessing !! Because I believed I drank alcoholically from the get Go!! I think the secret for me was to embrace, identify and address the things I heard that reminded Me of Me in AA and the spiritual literature I've been exposed to since I got sober !! I hope you can too ,As it sounds like your life Depends On It!
Billy

For me the cravings stopped completely (the physical ones) a few months in. The first month was brutal. The first few weeks the worst. Up and down roller coaster.
I've quit for a few years, or a few months without AA and that part was similar. The HUGE difference with AA is that I got into the steps, and into a program of recovery that included acceptance of alcoholism (mine), daily prayer, meditation, 12 steps and principals to live by, inventory and off loading of all the BLECHY things I'd been burdened with, amends, and so forth. A sponsor, fellowship and on and on. Its amazing.

I never him a 'rock" bottom persay. No DUI, no horrible event. I went into my first AA meeting on a Monday night after my typically drunken Sunday night at home with a bottle of wine. I was done. I had quite a few spiritual LOWS but no real single rock bottom. I don't believe you need to hit anything specific other than the willingness to keep an open mind, a desire to STOP drinking (for me this was a desperation).

Good luck.

angie,

We can tell you what we did, and then it's entirely up to you to decide if you want sobriety badly enough to follow our lead. If you're waiting for us to DO something more than that to help you, then I think we have a serious misunderstanding of what the word "help" means in AA.

For me, I white knuckled it for the first few months in AA. I was like you. I felt I didn't fit in. I thought those people were different. I knew I wanted not to drink, I knew I wanted to be like them, yet how did I do that? Each week I wanted to arrive on time and leave straight after.

Then I became open. I voiced what was going on. I became part of the meeting. I got a service position and began to talk to others and I remember one of the 'old timers' using my name and I was like 'whao'.

Then I got a sponsor and started to go through the 12 step program with them. This means you meet regularly and start to read through the Big Book (the blue book you see in the meeting).

Then the quality of my sobriety changed and today I have inner peace and the obsession to drink was removed. It is a good life :)

PS. Re rock bottom....two sayings I have heard:-

1. You can get off the roundabout anytime
2. You dont have to go all the way to the bottom in the lift.

For me, I was a functioning alcoholic. My bottom was very low emotionally yet I did manage to keep my job and home etc. Alcoholism robbed me of me.

Interesting Angie that you were sober for 11 years. How did you get sober? Did you have any help or support? I was unable to get sober by myself. When I first went to AA I decided to be open to all the suggestions and did get a sponsor who suggested I look for the similarities rather than differences. I attend all women meetings and find many similarities with the smart, attractive, high achieving women alcoholics who attend! :D We support one another, share our struggles and achievments and have pretty good success at maintaining sobriety.

I can't identify any one single component of AA that has kept me sober....its probably my HP which is the "spirit" of community that seems to exist in my home group.

AA may not be the best for you. The original format was to surrender unto God. That is how it works-its through God.
You don't have to follow the steps. They are guidelines.
I quit drinking on my own...I decided God gave me a brain to use and to not ruin it with drugs or alcohol.
Alcoholism is NOT a disease!
What disease makes you drive to the liquor store?
It's an affliction that can be overcome with God's help.
I still have an affliction with coca cola, but coca cola isn't going to cause me to get drunk and hurt someone. I have one a day.
Good luck Angie73!

Hello angie73,

In the early days of AA most members were people who had lost everything and who had little to live for they had been considered to be hopeless skid row alcoholics. Then women and young people and people who still had a good job and two cars in the garage started to turn up at meetings and they were just as alcoholic as the no-hopers. It was necessary to raise what had been considered rock bottom in order to accommodate these new people.

If those changes had not taken place I would not have belonged in AA and would still be drinking. I have never lost a job or relationship or driving licence because of drinking and have never been to a hospital or treatment centre because of alcohol. Yet, I know that I am as much an alcoholic as those early AA members. I can still experience all of those things that did not happen yet all I have to do is to believe that I can drink like other people. Therefore, rock bottom is something that is particular to your own situation. Thing about it as being on a train that is destined to crash at the end of the line. There are many stops between here and disaster and you can choose to get off at any one.

An understanding of alcoholism may help you. Despite what some people maintain, alcoholism is now recognised as a disease. It is an illness of the mind and body. What drives you to take that first drink is a mental obsession for alcohol and once you take that first drink a physical craving develops that causes you to keep drinking.

Some people can stop drinking on willpower alone but many others cannot. For very many alcoholics the obsession for alcohol will have become so strong that willpower will be of little or no use the element of choice will have been removed. If you belong to this second group of people, be very careful about believing that you can do it on your own. Decades of experience has shown that such drinkers need some sort of outside help in most cases. Part of this help can be a belief in some sort of power greater than yourself. In AA, that power can be the people at the meetings because by going top meetings people can do what was impossible to do before.

However, in many cases meetings alone will not be enough to remove the obsession for alcohol. For these people a fundamental change in the way of thinking is required. This change can probably be brought about in more ways than one but the AA method is through a programme of recovery called the Twelve Steps. Somewhere along the way as you work through those steps the urge to drink will leave you. The AA method is to help you to identify the reasons why you drank and to work on ways of dealing with life in future so that those drinking triggers will not return.

The physical craving will stop as soon as you stop drinking but the mental obsession will still be there. Willpower may allow you to stay sober for days, weeks or months but unless you tackle the mental obsession through taking the appropriate action it is likely that you will drink again.

AA only offers you suggestions. There are NOT rules. It is a simple-not religious-program. The precursors are that you be Honest, Open Minded and Willing.

Are you willing to go at any length to stay sober? If you say yes, than AA is the place for you. Don't give up before the miracle happens.

No part of AA is supposed to stop someone drinking.

The only way to stop drinking is to stop (with medical detox if necessary)

AA then offers a way to stay sober - through the 12 step program.

Hello,
As it says in the 3rd tradition of AA, The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.
Stick around long enough it could happen that you may start to hear somthing similar to you, instead of the differances of them.

I don't think AA is really about drinking. It is a program that shows ya a better way of life, and a better way to live

I know that some people are not fond of doing "90 meetings in 90 days." When I first started going to AA in the early 80s, they didn't use the 90 in 90 terminology. Instead the oldtimers would say "Give us 90 days. If you still don't want what we have, we will gladly refund your misery." It wasn't about making a meeting every single day. It was about being willing and listening to what was being offered.