AA Is Holding You Back. Why AA Stops Real Recovery

I have mentioned in previous articles that in order to recover and be cured from your prior addiction from alcoholism, one must reinvent his four planes of being. These planes, addressed in my book, are the physical plane, the emotional sphere, the career realm and finally the spiritual plane. I advise people who are at the bottom of an abyss in their lives to analyze their entire being by assessing each of these planes, whether they were alcoholics or not.

Many people besides alcoholics do fall into the depths of the abyss. The once college athlete is now a hundred pounds overweight and can’t do ten pushups. People tumble into the depths of anxiety and depression. After twenty years in a field, one realizes that he not only doesn’t like his career but downright despises it. One lies awake at night, and sees his being as nonsignificant in the universe.

These planes will feed off of each other for good or bad. Improvement in one plane tends to elevate the rest. And the same holds true if one sphere begins to decline. A lack of physical fitness affects the emotional plane. Unhappiness in career affects both. For negativity sucks the energy which will result in just flopping on the couch after pulling in the driveway. The lack of fitness then continues to plummet, taking the emotional sphere with it. Your spiritual self then reflects just floating with the tide instead of navigating toward its proper destination in the universe. The planes can rise together and can just as easily fall if not looked after constantly.

THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK

The recently sober’s planes of being are most likely sitting in the dark bottom of the abyss. They would have to be. Physically he is a wreck. I can remember my own time with John Barleycorn. I doubt I was consistent in the gym twenty percent of my existence. In the last years it was probably under ten. The alcoholic doesn’t exercise and he doesn’t eat much. For years the proper nutrients were missing from his diet, which the main supplements were the hops and barley. His physiology has suffered on and off malnutrition for years, most likely.

The emotional plane is sitting right next to the physical sphere. No alcoholic is emotionally stable. He has spent years in constant agitation from the daily withdrawals as the tide from the night before recedes. Irritation exploded many times to rage in his drinking days. And the second he ends his friendship with J.B., his emotions will upend, spilling into episodic bouts of depression, anger, anxiety and hopelessness. And if the former alcoholic clears six months sober, these post withdrawal symptoms abate but are replaced with a feeling of disconnect from team human race. For he is living in a world in which he is unaccustomed. I don’t think I went out socially for three years after I broke it off with John Barleycorn.

The career for the alcoholic is nothing more than an inconvenient interruption of the consumption of alcohol. Was I jazzed about continuing education courses in physical therapy when I was deep in the bottle? Not really. Luckily, the genre of physical therapy I was in at the time was hospital work, which is pretty basic in our field. But it was only after I quit that I switched into the outpatient arena and began the years-long process of becoming proficient in manual therapy in terms of joint mobilizations and soft tissue release as well as muscle rebalancing techniques. I couldn’t have put that focus into these skill sets while killing twelve tin soldiers every night. Very few can put in full effort when they are hungover every single day.

As far as the spiritual realm: who can see their proper place in the universe when their off hours are spent severely intoxicated? You are far separated from your natural being when you are either drunk all the time or recovering from the hops. You certainly don’t have any peace as your physiology is in a state of constant agitation with emotions that continually fluctuate depending on the tides of barley that ebb and flow in your being.

This is what I address in my guidebook to reinvention of Self. It is a manual that is meant for everyone as it is not just alcoholics who have wandered off into the dark forest. As Thoreau once stated: most live their lives in quiet desperation. But he never said that was a rule of existence. Some people need help in one plane and some several. But the alcoholic has destroyed all four spheres. As said, they are at rock bottom. That fact will only become apparent once the alcoholic quits the friendship with the substance. The revelation of how bad his life has actually become in all four of these planes.

But like a car that has been neglected for years, sitting in the outside garage, these planes can be rebuilt. You can climb out of the abyss. There is no reason you cannot regain physical fitness to a high level, emotional tranquility, advance your career, or even find a new one and see your place in this functioning universe. My contention is the method of Alcoholics Anonymous will not only impede your advancement in all of these spheres but will prevent you from rebuilding them altogether. And I have logical reasons for stating so.

First, there is the physical realm. I describe in my guidebook for reinvention that the physical plane is the foundation of everything. Without a solid foundation, your new mansion of life will not stand for long. As said, the newly sober’s physical plane is at rock bottom. While an alcoholic, you badly mistreated this temple of your body by not only not maintaining its physicality but actually pouring a toxin into it for years and even decades. So now you have to rebuild it.

I state clearly that you don’t jump from doing nothing to exercising hours a day. You simply build a program of high cardio work for forty-five minutes to an hour, four to five days a week. I go two days on and one off. My workouts last an hour and forty minutes only because I also spend thirty to forty minutes lifting weights in my sessions. But lifting weights is not necessary. Cardio fitness is more important for longevity. And some I know engage in just a few strength based exercises after their cardio program for basic muscle maintenance. But no more than an hour should do it.

You can’t engage in this fitness program if you are in the rooms every night. I have said in previous articles that hiding in the rooms may be necessary for the first thirty to forty-five days when the cravings are the worst as well as the emotional upheaval. And I have also said that you should transfer out of AA later to engage in the holistic recovery program.

What do you think is going to make you feel better? Engaging in forty-five minutes of moderate to high cardio movement, which will naturally drop those feel good endorphins or sitting in a circle? The first two years of protracted withdrawal are going to have episodic bouts of anxiety and depression. Exercise diminishes these symptoms. That is why it is a huge part of my recovery program. And the people sitting in the circles five and six nights a week aren’t doing it. And I daresay from my experience with these long time cult members that they would rebuke you for choosing to go to the gym five nights a week instead of their meetings. But I can tell you from the two meetings I went to that I didn’t feel good upon leaving. I felt like I wanted to go back to the bottle after eleven months of sobriety. I can promise you that your general sense of well-being will be far more improved spending your time in a fitness routine than sitting in the rooms.

Not only are the members in AA not engaged in an exercise program, they are putting massive amounts of unhealthy substances into their bodies during these meetings. They suck caffeine down like it is water as well as smoke at every intermission. Usually compounded by sugar intake from all the sweets people bring in to counter the cravings at the meetings. I said quite freely in other articles that these types of additives may be needed during the first two phases of recovery that last to that thirty to forty-five day mark when the cravings are continuous and many times intense. But this shouldn’t be a lifelong habit. For the physical fitness program is matched by clean diet, which doesn’t include smoking—at all. If the fitness is the brick foundation, the diet is the mortar that holds the structure together. You will feel less of the symptoms of the protracted withdrawal phase to the two year mark of cure with a clean diet as well. It’s fine to have a few cups of coffee a day and a cookie or two. But not to the extent of the members in the rooms, who most are smoking as well. Attending those meetings long term is absolutely placing a roadblock in front of your physical recovery.

That barrier also stops your emotional recovery. First, the AA philosophy states you are always an addict. Always sick, always in a state of recovery. What a load of nonsense whose detergent is anti-reason. Two years after your physiology has rebalanced, you are not an addict any more. Telling yourself you are for life is a self esteem killer. You are continually reiterating that you are a damaged human being. And you are living in fear of always relapsing. For it is true you can become an addict again. But there is a simple solution to never venturing back down that road. You keep your contract of never shaking John Barleycorn’s hand again. Do that and you will never be an addict again. That’s it and that’s all. When you reach cure, the damage will be repaired: physically and emotionally. You will understand that you were a damaged human being once. But you are not today. For you have reinvented your emotional plane.

You also can never recover emotionally if you are constantly living in your past. And that’s what AA does inside of its rooms. Going over your story is appropriate in the beginning of your recovery. But ten years later, still talking about how you lost your job, your wife and your friends because of alcohol addiction a decade ago? You shouldn’t even be a part of AA by now. You should be a new human being. Why in God or the Magic Elf’s name would you want to be living in that past dark era and listening to others’ stories that continually remind you of who you once were? I know the stupid things I did while intoxicated in those long ago days. And I can’t undo those liquid lapses in judgement. So I have let them go. I have an entire program on emotional recovery, which includes meditative activities added to the fitness program that will benefit you much more than sitting in negativity most nights. And if you stay in AA, you will continue to exist in that very negativity.

The third plane is career advancement or just plain advancement of Self. This includes progressing in your job with certs, possibly obtaining educational credits or even a new degree or trade. It can also be just like this blog. Or learning to invest on the side or taking up a side hustle like woodworking. Anything that keeps Self progressing forward. All of the above requires time to engage in this progression. And the AA member is spending that time in the rooms most nights. Their job is just their job but their real endeavor is an unending recovery that will last until they are finally under the headstone. They will become sponsors, committee members and spokesmen for the cult. Because their focus of life, their master status is a forever alcoholic.

Which leads directly to why AA prevents you from advancing the spiritual plane. The spiritual plane I describe in my guidebook to reconstruction of self is what you see out of your window in your newly built mansion. How you view yourself in the universe. The AA member sees himself as an alcoholic. That is his place in the galaxy. One who is always in recovery with the devil on his shoulder telling him he knows he is sober today but can’t tell you what he’ll be tomorrow. In my worldview, alcoholism was something that was part of my past. It was part of my being and hugely so the last few years of my addicted days. But that past has nothing to do with the perception of my place in the universe today. For you are in rhythm with that universe when you are progressing yourself in its realm.

Even as largely eighty percent retired as a physical therapist, I continue to progress my skill sets for the twenty percent of my life I still engage in the field. I really don’t have to keep gaining knowledge to pass for senior competency in the clinic today. But when one continues to advance, one is living verses just breathing.

And I have another mission before that breathing ceases—to bring as many out of the toxic program of AA as I can. To help guide people to their own reinventions of Self. So they don’t spend the rest of their lives, the minority who stay sober in the AA protocol, sitting in the rooms when they could be out creating the best versions of themselves.

That’s my mission on this terrain, not yours maybe. Maybe you go out and become a Big Brother. Or start your own business that contributes positively to this world. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you are attempting to leave the campsite better than you found it before you go.

But my contention with AA is none of these planes can be advanced if you are sitting in the rooms. Worse yet, the AA method is actually preventing you from rebuilding these planes. It should have been a program of recovery, not a permanent safehouse that you would never leave.

But you can go with AA. Feel free to spend all of your off time sitting in their rooms, lingering in the past while you ingest unhealthy substances and let your physicality go. Don’t advance yourself because your time is spent every night in the circle because that’s the only place you feel you can continue to abstain. Or you can engage in my program. Gaining the endorphin drop most nights from physical fitness activity combined with healthy diet. Dropping those cigarettes, which are destroying your lungs and damaging the rest of your health. Spending time improving yourself instead of telling your story for the thousandth time. Viewing yourself as a perfect fit on this beautiful earth instead of looking in the mirror and seeing a forever addict because of something you engaged in years ago. And ask yourself honestly—whether at the beginning of sobriety or years into it.

Which sounds like the better existence?

And to reinvent all of your planes to progress forward check out:

REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER 

For those who prefer the youtube version click this line

John Barleycorn: taken from Jack London's memoir of his alcoholism. John Barleycorn: First published, 1913