AA Meeting Is Not The Answer. How To Solve Problems Without AA. Better Method Than A Meeting.

It is a sad fact that once a former alcoholic enters the doors of the rooms there is a huge chance that he isn’t going to stay sober long-term with their methods. First, they inform the newly sober there is no such thing as a former alcoholic. You’re always diseased and always in never ending recovery. This may be true for the majority who continue to relapse over and over, which is the majority of Alcoholics Anonymous participants.

But what about those who do stay sober? I have stated, as well as other creators of blogs and vlogs, that AA is more of a high control group than a support group. They don’t want you to leave. They believe that one must continue to go to meetings, since after all, the recovery is ongoing. They contend you are there to serve what I deem is a cult. Many of these other content creators are escapees from this cult of the rooms. They interview other former members of AA, who once walked the trail of the twelve steps, some of them for over a decade. They all report the same thing: that AA attempts to coerce you into never leaving the cult. They use peer pressure and fear tactics on members attempting to flee.

Have you ever heard a conversation from two members of the rooms if one of them is having a bad day? Maybe there was an incident at work, maybe the person lost his job or possibly the family dog had to be put down. Whatever the problem with the person, whether work, marital or just a depressive episode, the answer is always the same.

We need to go to a meeting.

Ah, yes, the rooms solve all. Having a bad day? Go to a meeting and talk to your sponsor. Getting divorced? Run to the circle. Lost your house in a hurricane? That’s ok, the cookie table awaits right after the Serenity Prayer. The one thing all the members of AA know is that the permanently diseased can’t handle the life the rest of us handle without the embrace of their cult. The meeting answers all.

Why?

I have stated in other works that if AA would change its protocols, it could be very beneficial to those who want to live for the rest of their lives in the land of the sober. I have written exactly what they should modify and much of what needs to be eliminated completely in their methods and philosophy. For the pundits certainly can’t say what they have been doing since the program was created has worked. And one of the major modifications should be transforming AA into a temporary safe haven in the initial and protracted withdrawal stages that is used as a base for reconstruction of the former addict’s entire being. The plan I endorse lasts for up to two years, which is when the neurochemistry is rebalanced to live without alcohol for the remaining days of the former alcoholic. During these two years there should be a weaning off of the frequency of meetings. The meetings should never have been the go-to answer for every one of life’s problems that land on the doorstep.

I have seen in the comments, coming from the proponents of AA, that the method of the rooms is what keeps them sober. No, it hasn’t. The credit of the person who ceases his friendship with John Barleyorn belongs to that person solely. There is only one party who can change his status of alcoholic and that is the alcoholic. Mantras do not keep you sober. Twelve steps do not keep you sober. Neither The Serenity Prayer nor The Big Book keeps you sober. Long term sobriety doesn’t come from your sponsor or the other members in the circle. It comes from the person who stopped putting the bottle to his lips. That’s it and that’s all.

This is what I would ask the AA member who suggests that going to meetings keeps one sober. You know, the mantra of it works if you work the program—apparently for life. The meetings are about an hour long, give or take. What keeps you sober the other twenty-three hours of the day? If you are years sober, you wake up in sobriety, go through your day in sobriety and come home from work with sobriety. Why do you suddenly have to bounce off to a meeting to finish the day sober? Suddenly, you can’t control yourself for the rest of the evening? You need the reinforcement of the rooms to make it to bedtime?

Now I said in previous articles I could see a more modified AA post detox program in the very beginning of the sober life. I could see going every night in the first two months when those initial cravings are at the worst. Then one could begin to downgrade the frequency as transformation of Self begins. There is no way that someone past six months should need nightly meetings and definitely not at two years, when protracted withdrawal is over.

I went to AA at eleven months sober to see what it was about. I wanted to see if they had anything else to offer in my reinvention of Self. They not only didn’t, but had nothing but toxicity and the feeling of a cult attempting to draw me into a lifelong membership. They were shocked when I said it was my first meeting and I was eleven months clean. They were more offended in a meeting when I stated I was a former alcoholic.  

But why would I need to go to meetings this long sober? The cravings were minimal at eleven months and had been greatly reduced at the six-month mark of sobriety. I was on a five day a week fitness program. I was meditating and doing tai chi for twenty minutes a day. I was involved in hiking and fishing in those idle hours and more importantly, I was fixing what caused the addiction trap in the first place. What exactly were AA meetings going to add to this great reconstruction of all the planes of my being? One advocate for the rooms told me at even five years sober that AA is there to teach me how to live. I hope she reads this article. My life is completely filled with positive activities and hers is living in the rooms, regurgitating her past most nights. That’s not living, it’s an existence of the living dead. If you want to continue to be sober, all you have to do is to continue not putting the bottle to your lips. This is far simpler than mantras, steps and circle story time.

It is very apparent the long-term members of the rooms are still struggling with the want to drink. It is apparent they are sacrificing their lives to exist in this never-ending recovery. How many times have you heard one of their members state: I know I am sober today but can’t tell you about tomorrow.  I’m going to die sober. I don’t think it; I know it for absolute fact.

I made an iron-clad contract with the universe on January 22^nd, 2009 that I would end it with John Barleycorn. I not only was never going to drink alcohol, but once the haze of the first forty-five days cleared, I was determined to recreate all of my planes; the physical, emotional, career and spiritual realms. I was walking out of the inferno that I had been living in not only with alcohol but from the darkness that had been with me since adolescence.

But what about the stressful times in life? Whatever did I do since I forewent the rooms, in which I never returned? Since then, I watched a friend, who was like a brother, die from cancer; literally watched his final breath. Another friend of the gypsy soulmate type also died young. Then my mother died from cancer, which brought all those black, adolescent memories back for months after she passed. I’ve been battling a corrupt profession of physical therapy since I was an alcoholic and continued long after I wasn’t. How in the world am I making it without running to meetings?

I continue to remain sober because I now have a fortress that is impenetrable. As said, I am on a fitness regime about five days a week and engage in daily meditative practice. I spend time with nature type activities. And I have side projects for progression of Self, like this content. I learned to invest in the stock market long and short term, which continues to make me only more financially free. I don’t have time for meetings. But with this fortress, John Barleycorn can never enter the doors again. When bad times come, as they do for everyone, I ride them out just like everyone else and just keep the original contract to never touch alcohol again.

Here is what going to a meeting will offer when you are long-time sober. It isn’t going to pump you up like a Tony Robbins seminar. You won’t walk out the doors feeling good and strong. You will get reminded again that you are always an addict, always deficit and forever diseased. And you relive your past and others’ past in the circle, telling your story for about the thousandth time. Wouldn’t it be better, if you had a bad day, to go to the gym? Or take a long walk? Possibly meditate for a half hour after a vegetable and fruit smoothie? That’s what I do and that’s why I don’t feel the need to drink when those dark times of life descend.

The grand lie that AA has indoctrinated you with is that you need these meetings to remain sober as those very meetings continue to show a massive failure rate. They tell you the rooms are where you need to be when life throws a road bump at you. What I am saying is not only do you not need these rooms, but they are actually harmful for not just recovery toward cure but holding you back from living the best version of yourself. So the next time you’re having a not so great day and thinking about alcohol, consider what this meeting is actually going to do for you?

And then go on a run.

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