re: Alcoholism: Why it sucks.

I've now been sober for 8 years. From the first day I ever stepped foot in a treatment center (1995) till today, it took me 19 years to make 8. That's 11 years of bullshite, serious attempts, saying frick it, on again/off again "sobriety". In 2006, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I had all but written AA off, the concept of being sober off, and hated the world and the people in it. I hated myself and didn't want to live anymore. I didn't know how live with/without drugs and alcohol in my life daily. I had gotten to my bottom. I was at a jumping off point (literally) and decided on a whim that I wanted to live.

You really have to get to that stage before you will be willing (huge arse keyword) to take suggestion and quit trying this thing on your own terms. The beauty of it is that there are clear cut directions in black and white what you need to do. There are 164 pages of a manual on life. When I finally realized that and tried to the best of my ability to follow the directions, my life took a 180.

I know there are some in this thread (Lucas) that have huge resentments and doubts in AA, so I'm not going to promote that exclusively. I'll just put it this way. It worked for me. It was the only thing that worked for me. I tried therapy, I tried working out and a healthy lifestyle, I tried every little method out there (including the direction and approach he's pushing), and nothing stuck quite like the 12 step program of AA did. I continue to be amazed at the life I have today, which I never thought was possible. I thought everybody else out there had a chance at life and that mine was shite and sucked. I thought I was doomed to being a fricking loser the rest of my life. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that isn't true today. I claim very little credit for that. To me, it came from AA. I found God through AA. Not through church, not on my own. Through AA. And to me God is my God, not the Catholic Church's God, not the Protestant God, my God. I claim spirituality rather than being religious. I claim many of the world's religions all wrapped up under one God.

If you're constantly relapsing, you need to focus on you right now. Your time to give back will come. But right now, you need to clear away the wreckage of your past and let the fog clear before you have anything that you can offer anybody other than maybe a ride or an ear to hear them bitch. And honestly, you need to be sober. Being on again/off again is not sober. It's not even relapse. It's just a fricked up period where you're not sober and your buzz is always ruined by that thought in the back of your mind that you know what you're doing is not right.

If you're serious about wanting to talk, I will listen and can offer you my own personal experience to you through email and/or the phone. I've sponsored many guys like you. The end result is never good. One of the guys I sponsored decided that he hated God and hated AA and wanted to go get fricked up again. I didn't hear from him for 6 months and then he called me one day from a homeless shelter wanting a ride back to Baton Rouge. That's the kind of shite that happens. I just heard yesterday that another guy I knew who did the same thing OD'd on heroin and died. As much as we like to make ourselves terminally unique and say all that is bullshite...the end result to alcoholism/addiction is always early death. That is, if you don't choose to do something about it.