This Is What Real Alcohol Addiction Recovery Looks Like. Things I Wouldn't Have Done If I Was In AA.

There has been no hiding my dislike for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don’t have to prove my point when their massive failure rate proves it for me. It infuriates me that the AA method takes people at their absolute weakest in the beginnings of their recovery from alcohol addiction and indoctrinates them into this cult. A cult in which they will never leave.

I have stated in past articles that the AA method could be a good thing if only they would reconstruct their protocol from one of a continuous existence in the state of alcoholic to instead help people reinvent their lives on a holistic level. I am not alone with this contention as the Passages clinic has this type of recovery program and claim a very high success rate of cure. AA can not claim this. Plain and simple.

But it is not only the AA failure rate that gives me great ire with their methods. Alcoholics Anonymous steals peoples’ lives. The program literally not only doesn’t promote cure but keeps them in the same mindset when they were in the initial phases of abstinence. They wreck its members physically and emotionally. The do not promote advancement of Self. The spiritual plane will never be healed but always will reside with a self-image of forever addict, forever diseased and incurable.

What will an AA member say on his deathbed after being sober for forty or fifty years? That his life was spent in the rooms? That his entire focus was nothing more than a constant battle that allowed him to be sober, never knowing if he would plummet from that wagon into the arms of Johnny Barleycorn once again? It fills me with more than a little anger knowing what AA is doing to these people. Because first, most will fail in its program. And second, the minority who don’t will have their lives stolen from them by AA.

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

It is more than likely that this article and my media episodes will fall on blind eyes and deaf ears from the long-time senior members of Alcoholics Anonymous. They are too indoctrinated into the cult, much like the fundamentalist Christian who still believes the world and its makings were created in six days. But I hope the newer members see the logic of what I am about to compare. The life of one who isn’t reliant on the AA mantras versus the one who is. And then decide which sober life sounds more fulfilling.

The best way for this revelation in contrast of mindsets to proceed is to tell you all the things the long-time AA member won’t be doing in life when that life is dependent on the rooms for sobriety. At eleven months sober, I went to a few of their meetings. The most senior member there announced in his meeting motivational that AA was the only way to stay sober and he still went five to six nights a week to maintain that sobriety. He was decades from his last drink. What a sad state in which this man existed. For him the mantra was true. He was still an addict. He was now addicted to AA. I think about the condescending lecture that he gave me when I announced to the circle that I was an ex-alcoholic. He told me no one is ever a former alcoholic. He is always an alcoholic. It fills me with sadness to contemplate all the things he missed in life because of this self-proclaimed status.

He will not be physically fit. He wasn’t exercising consistently. He didn’t look like he was exercising at all. How could he be? His after work life consisted in going to the rooms most nights. When he wasn’t in the rooms, he was a sponsor—indoctrinating the cult mantras to the new, unsuspecting souls. He was on committees. He attended national conventions. But because of his new addiction, he had let the very foundation of his being greatly lapse—his health.

My method of reinvention that I describe in my own written guidebook states that the foundation of your being is the physical plane. For if you aren’t taking care of yourself physically, then the emotional plane will follow into the bottom of the abyss. You will have less energy to pursue other advancements in your life, such as career progression or side hustles or whatever attempts to improve your present position.

This senior member was in his fifties and had quit the alcohol somewhere around his early thirties. He had the opportunity to become not just physically fit but superbly so. I know because I began this reinvention at forty. In my now later fifties, I still do thirteen rounds of Thai boxing on the heavy bag and lift weights afterward two out of every three days. I have no more than a few cups of coffee a day, minimalize the sugar intake and fill my diet with an abundance of fruits and vegetables. My energy needle sits mostly on high. I wouldn’t have that healthy life if I was now a senior member in AA.

For this man was not only not taking care of his health but actively destroying it. He smoked at every break, dumped sugar into his system every meeting and was constantly sucking that coffee. You shouldn’t need all of these additives to stay sober after a few months from the last drop. But he still does. Because he believes he is always an alcoholic.

He is also missing out on having superior emotional health. The nicotine, sugar and caffeine he lives on will keep his emotions in a constant state of fluctuation. And every night he has been in the rooms for the last few decades has done nothing but bombard his mental state with never ending tales of former toxic lives of the addict. He is, on a nightly basis, absorbing depressing stories of people ruining their careers, marriages and everything else under the moon because of their former addiction.

If I was in AA, at my now almost two decades of sobriety, I wouldn’t have my healthy emotional state today, which largely consists of tranquility. For instead of the rooms, I added meditation, yoga and tai chi to my physical fitness program. I don’t have the jitters of constant nicotine withdrawal. My mind is clear. It wouldn’t be if it had resided in the meetings these last near twenty years.

The senior member in AA probably hasn’t advanced himself in anything since he became sober. Because his focus wasn’t on progression of Self. It was just staying sober. No one told him that you don’t need twelve steps to stay sober. You just need one—a mental contract with yourself that you will never touch alcohol again. One shouldn’t be fighting every day to maintain this contract years later. Alcohol is just something in which you no longer indulge. It really is that simple.

What I would have missed if my entire existence revolved around the rooms? I wouldn’t have had time to write five books if I was sitting in a circle every night. I wouldn’t have created a few blogs and podcasts. I wouldn’t be excelling in my craft of physical therapy—studying the art of manual therapy a few hours a week as another means to self-advancement. I wouldn’t have taken the time to learn how to trade stocks, which has led to yet more financial freedom. I would be on that AA committee. I would be telling the new recruit under my wing that he was destined to follow my lead as a forever member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The senior member of AA doesn’t think about advancement or reinvention of Self. He thinks about his master status—an addict. It doesn’t matter that he lifted the last drink to his lips decades ago. His being, his essence is surrounded around that drink today, even though the symptoms of withdrawal left long ago. Physically, he never suffers from withdrawal symptoms. But mentally, those syndromes are still there. Syndromes that are no longer with me nor have been for many, many years.

How many adventures I would have foregone if Alcoholics Anonymous was the dominant part of my life? Would I have hiked the 2,666 mile Pacific Crest Trail for six months? There aren’t any rooms in the mountains and deserts. Would have I gone back to Europe, where I once spiraled into the late stage of alcoholism? Probably not. I would have been too afraid of the alcohol influence that would have been conditioned in my mind in the rooms back home. How about training and living in Thailand, or spending long stretches of time in Latin America? People drink in these places pretty much continuously as well. I remember a two year sober member’s story about his anxiety with going to a simple party. He had to call his sponsor and attend two meetings that day just to survive the ordeal. How could he have lasted in a foreign land whose custom many times includes alcohol? No, his safe haven is the rooms.

How about all the positive people I have met since I broke the friendship with Johnny B? Who would my social circle be if I had started the steps in 2009? It would probably consist of other forever addicts, who are now only addicted in their minds. My group consists of those who constantly progress Self. A few were even former alcoholics, like myself, who also found the methods of AA toxic and non-helpful.

But that senior member? He surrounds himself with those who claim they are forever diseased. People who won’t advance themselves because all of their time is spent either in the rooms or failing in them. Their negativity will feed off each other. They think they have positivity. They believe they are beating the addiction. But what they are really doing is still living in it.

If I had taken the route to use the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous to abstain from drinking, my spiritual plane would have never been reborn. Today, I see my presence as a small but integral piece of this vast universe. Once the mind was cleared of the protracted withdrawal, I could not only strive to be the best I could in my practice of physical therapy but in all matters of my daily life. I would have never had the spiritual reinvention that allows me to reach out to others now who are in trouble, whether with alcohol or not. I certainly wouldn’t have had the cognitive presence to write the self help books for others or create this blog.

If I were in AA, I would be spiritually deficit. I would still see myself as an addict. That would be my role in the universe, just like that senior member who once talked to me those many years ago. His only fulfillment is that his existence is nothing but an open cut from the disease, which he has long beaten—if only he was in a program that told him that. His spiritual place in the universe? I am an addict who must continue to spend my life in the rooms. I was born an addict, lived as an addict and will die as one. I’ll just die as an addict who no longer drinks. What a dismal outlook and self-perception. For myself, alcoholism was just a stage in my journey. It wasn’t a healthy stage, but is now long past. I was once a turbulent teenager as well in one of the stages of my existence. Teenagehood is past as is my former addiction. The past is the past. You don’t continue to live there.

I was able to come to a spiritual reinvention, a holistic return of life due to the re-creation of my other planes; the physical, the emotional and the career spheres. You cannot come to this spiritual awakening unless you are actively engaged in the progression of these realms of being. If you are in the rooms most nights, you aren’t progressing anything nor even living in a healthy manner. You are only waiting to die with the status of ADDICT to be inscribed on your gravestone.

As I have stated in the past, I don’t necessarily want Alcoholics Anonymous to go out of existence. I simply want them to change their methods. I want a person who enters their doors to walk in at rock bottom and walk out months later with a formula to completely change their physical and emotional spheres. I want them to now have the tools to go from just being a person with a job to someone who will reach their full potential—whether it is in that job or outside of it. I want them to look at the stars, two years after their last drink, and see their connection to the universe and all of mankind in it. I want them to be able to be on their deathbed and have left no stone unturned, no avenue unexplored and no regrets. No one can do it all in a single lifetime. The world is just too vast. But I want the person to have done everything they could with what they had in the time they had while roaming the terrain.

Think about this concept, AA member. Can you really engage in this progression if you are attached to the rooms for the rest of your life? Are you physically healthy, smoking those cigarettes and sucking caffeine at the meetings? Did you ever wonder why you need to consume these toxins after two years of sobriety? Why you need to emotionally keep telling that same story? Why you feel the need to run to a meeting every time a trigger of life occurs? Why you can’t just deal with the normal hardships of the world without the rooms?

It is because you are not engaged in healthy living. Not physically or mentally. Alcoholics Anonymous has programmed into you that this unhealthy physical and emotional existence must be your normal now to stay sober. And that simply isn’t true. If you are in AA at years sober, you haven’t beaten the addiction. You just traded one for another.

I became the best version of myself after I beat the addiction to alcohol. After I was cured from it. Look at all of the things that I described that have enhanced my life since those ceased days of alcohol addiction. All the things that senior member has not experienced nor will because of his addiction to AA. We all want to remain sober, that is true. But that doesn’t mean you lose your life to the AA mantra. For if you take my route to cure, you will not only stay sober, but will have the most fulfilled life you can. An existence that everyone should strive for, whether they were once an addict or not.  

To journey on a tale of epic transformation on a 2,660 mile trail check out: THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

(Usually free on KDP)

To recreate your life on all planes for the best version of yourself as possible:REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER 

(Usually free on KDP)

For the condensed and orderly version of how I beat the addiction of alcoholism check out: THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK

(Usually free on KDP)

John Barleycorn taken from Jack London's book, John Barleycorn. First published 1913