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In Reply to: Anyone know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous? posted by Bystander on October 24, 2002 at 11:19:56:
First of all just for the record, on Crossfire someone had posted that they had found AA to be cultic and controlling. So I posted my 2 bits. Subsequently that person and I exchanged some good emails on the subject.
About AA, here’s my story:
I drank a lot as a teenager, I got into drugs as a hippy. Joining the F got me off drugs. Then, even in the early days of the F, Berg made wine consumption acceptable, even commendable. He said he prophesied better, and championed its aphrodisiac qualities. Later, once litnessing road trips became more of a routine, I had even more opportunity to drink.
After the RNR and the single family home situation became the norm my alcohol consumption became regular and daily. The fact that Berg was a confessed alcoholic was just one more justification to me for my own drinking habits. The Family/Berg definition of alcoholism is just that, a bad drinking habit, which is false: alcoholism is a sickness.
Eventually I got to the point of wanting to stop and I’d have united prayer and I would stop drinking for awhile, but I was not able to get any “permanent victory”. I’d have a temporary deliverance and be abstinent, but sooner or later I’d be back into it. In other words the F’s Pentecostal healing and deliverance from sin doctrines did not cure me, and believe you me I really tried. Bacchus was exorcised on many an occasion. Some people will say it was my lack of faith. That’s what I thought at the time, and needless to say I was riddled with guilt. According to F doctrine it was all because of my sins and whatever else I had been cursed with from my parents, grandparents and/or other relatives.
Through it all I managed to keep the routine with the “ministries” I had in the homes. I also managed not to get re-classified to TS/FM status, because I made enough attempts to be abstinent, we were in a far flung fields, and I was a good actor. I could keep it hidden from most of the people I lived with, not my wife though, but I covered up from her just how much I was really drinking. Because I had good mail ministry I always had enough extra money on hand to finance it too.
Then some other circumstances arose and we were forced to leave the home and the field we had been working in, and not long after that my wife and I decided to leave the F.
No sooner had I left the F I started to hit what we call in AA, the “bottom”. At this time I got interested in AA’s 12 Steps from a book that some Dallas physiologists had written. Nevertheless I went on a binge and was getting sicker and sicker physically and mentally. My depression grew. I finally phoned the local AA number.
I liked who I met, and what I heard made sense. Immediately I followed the advice I was given. It worked.
I’m still going to AA meetings twice a week because it's given me recovery from not only alcoholism, but it’s helped me to recover from what being in the F left me with, which was very little other than confusion.
I had no job skills, no CV, no prospects either. Subsequent to joining AA I found job training, and employment. The program helped to do that on my own too. All my AA friends did was to encourage me to do something about it, and to give me some good advice on the ways and means, .
Being in the F left me confused spiritually too. In AA I found a down to earth spiritual schema. The group I go to is committed to giving everyone the room to believe in a Higher Power as they understand him/her/it. In my group there are agnostics who sit next to some very dedicated Catholics. The person’s personal beliefs stay that way… personal. My understanding of who God is has changed a lot since I’ve had a chance to be really open minded. And I find that AA has served to keep me open minded about life, death, God and all the rest.
To conclude: you know Berg preached a lot about living one day at time, but in reality everything else he taught made that impossible; we lived in fear and we lived for his idea of the future, the Berg interpretation of the coming End. If there’s anything that AA has done for me that I appreciate more than just about anything else, it’s how I’ve now learned to truly live just one day at a time. “Just for today” is one of the major ingredients of AA.
If you're interested to know more go to:
http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/
OR
http://www.aa-intergroup.org/directories/email_english.html
Or you can email me if you want: ')
