Quitting AA

[Bruised_Reed]

You are easily amused.

True.

 

[EasterJoy]

As for alcohol, there are people who have a history of abuse who can address the reasons behind it and amend their drinking because they do not have a physical addiction. There are others who have a physical addiction whose brain chemistry makes using alcohol in a moderate way over a long period of time almost impossible.

OP, you have a great duty to avoid abusing alcohol ever again. If you can’t use it without getting drunk, just stop. If you ever use it to self-medicate emotional problems or mental pain, just stop. You have done enough damage by your overuse of alcohol to last you a lifetime, haven’t you? If you cannot use it without going for the intoxicating rush, then just quit. That is not how moderate drinkers use alcohol.

 

[PaladinSword]

Op here.

So ended up having a few with my friend. Made linguini with Alfredo sauce and listened to catholic answers live for two hours.

My friend wanted me to stay longer and drink more I said no that I had responsibilities to take care of in the morning and walked home.

Didn’t get drunk.

One of the knights who also ministers to me on the side called me on my way home and said he was proud of me. My mother was okay with it and reaffirmed that alcohol was “never your problem anyway.”

Thank you everyone for posting

 

[Petaro]

Op here.

So ended up having a few with my friend. Made linguini with Alfredo sauce and listened to catholic answers live for two hours.

My friend wanted me to stay longer and drink more I said no that I had responsibilities to take care of in the morning and walked home.

Didn’t get drunk.

One of the knights who also ministers to me on the side called me on my way home and said he was proud of me. My mother was okay with it and reaffirmed that alcohol was “never your problem anyway.”

Thank you everyone for posting

Teetotalers and drunks treat alcohol similarly as a drug. If you can treat it as a beverage as you appear to have done successfully, you should be happy with yourself. But as many posts recommended there are still dangers for you and you should be very very careful. But good luck, it must be a very hard road.

 

[PaladinSword]

As for alcohol, there are people who have a history of abuse who can address the reasons behind it and amend their drinking because they do not have a physical addiction. There are others who have a physical addiction whose brain chemistry makes using alcohol in a moderate way over a long period of time almost impossible.

OP, you have a great duty to avoid abusing alcohol ever again. If you can’t use it without getting drunk, just stop. If you ever use it to self-medicate emotional problems or mental pain, just stop. You have done enough damage by your overuse of alcohol to last you a lifetime, haven’t you? If you cannot use it without going for the intoxicating rush, then just quit. That is not how moderate drinkers use alcohol.

No I haven’t done enough damage by abuse of alcohol to last a lifetime.

That was never really my problem or how I got into AA in the first place. I had a emotional and spiritual crisis when I was going to get married a few years ago and got involved in the department of mental health and aa was a part of their program. Catholicism has done more for me than they ever have.

 

[PaladinSword]

Teetotalers and drunks treat alcohol similarly as a drug. If you can treat it as a beverage as you appear to have done successfully, you should be happy with yourself. But as many posts recommended there are still dangers for you and you should be very very careful. But good luck, it must be a very hard road.

I just learned a new word and thanks for the support!

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

That was never really my problem or how I got into AA in the first place. I had a emotional and spiritual crisis when I was going to get married a few years ago and got involved in the department of mental health and aa was a part of their program. Catholicism has done more for me than they ever have.

This is a completely different thing then.

It is good that AA has helped you, but if you don’t think your problems belong there, then move on.

Glad you have found healing in the faith.

 

[LaughingBoy1503]

If you want to leave AA for good, I don’t blame you lol. I was court ordered to 12 step meetings on and off for about 3 years. More on than off. I quit my narcotic of choice a little over 5 years ago and I do not see the need to talk about how I use to have a drug problem for the rest of my life to help keep me off drugs. I use to have a pretty big drinking problem too. Now I wont drink more than 2 beers in a day. I might drink 3 or 4 at a social gathering, but no more and I do not go to social gatherings often at all. By the grace of God, the desire to get drunk or use drugs is gone. Some people Can learn to drink like gentlemen. A lot of A.A.'s only want to focus on those who try to, but fail. I do not remember ever hearing someone talk about people who quit drinking or learn to moderate without A.A. at any A.A. meeting I have ever been to. And more people do quit by themselves and are happy. I did not like that they were trying to teach me in A.A. that if someone quits without A.A. it means they are only “Dry” and not sober. And that they are still going to be miserable. Completely not true. Regarding leaving a.a. and staying sober… I guess someone can never know unless they try, right?

 

[heidi_storage]

Take the 12 Steps, put “sin” in place of “alcohol” or whatever “Enslavement Anonymous” you’re in for, get specific about the truth when it comes to “greater power”, and you have the Catholic faith.

It would go something like this:

We admitted we were powerless over sin—that we cannot defeat the enslavement of sin alone.

Came to believe that Jesus Christ could restore us to wholeness.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being ordained to hear our confession the exact nature of our wrongs.

Was entirely ready to have God remove the stain of these failures from us.

Humbly asked Him to help us renounce sin and amend our lives.

Willingly faced up to all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. (That is, tried to remedy the temporal results of our sins, as far as we are able.)

Continued to frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Eucharist, admitting our sins, looking for a better-formed conscience, depending on the grace offered in the sacraments to more clearly become an image of God.

Sought through prayer and meditation to pray for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to share the Good News with others, which in the economy of grace brings both others and ourselves closer to the divine life we all need and share.

 

[EasterJoy]

No I haven’t done enough damage by abuse of alcohol to last a lifetime.

That was never really my problem or how I got into AA in the first place. I had a emotional and spiritual crisis when I was going to get married a few years ago and got involved in the department of mental health and aa was a part of their program. Catholicism has done more for me than they ever have.

OK…so just as there are people with horrible pain problems who overuse painkillers but don’t get hooked, there are people who self-medicate or who are simply socially irresponsible with alcohol and yet by the grace of God do not become addicted to alcohol. If you really fix the thing you are self-medicating or learn to cope with it in a sustainable way–and alcohol, being a depressant whose overuse stresses the body terribly, is obviously about the worst way to treat stress or depression!–then that leaves you free to use alcohol in appropriate and responsible ways. I have known many people who have done that. Not everyone who gives into the habit of drunkenness becomes an alcoholic, and just because people lie to themselves about the category that they are in does not change that.

Time will tell. As long as you do not hide your drinking and have people to whom you are accountable for your future use of alcohol, I think your game plan is sound. If it is your habit to tell yourself “I am not like other men” and nobody can tell you anything when you are convinced that you are right, then you are skating on thin ice. Be honest with yourself and allow others (and the plain facts of your life) to give you their honest feedback, and I think you are OK.

 

[acacia12]

Take the 12 Steps, put “sin” in place of “alcohol” or whatever “Enslavement Anonymous” you’re in for, get specific about the truth when it comes to “greater power”, and you have the Catholic faith.

It would go something like this:

We admitted we were powerless over sin—that we cannot defeat the enslavement of sin alone.

Came to believe that Jesus Christ could restore us to wholeness.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being ordained to hear our confession the exact nature of our wrongs.

Was entirely ready to have God remove the stain of these failures from us.

Humbly asked Him to help us renounce sin and amend our lives.

Willingly faced up to all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. (That is, tried to remedy the temporal results of our sins, as far as we are able.)

Continued to frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Eucharist, admitting our sins, looking for a better-formed conscience, depending on the grace offered in the sacraments to more clearly become an image of God.

Sought through prayer and meditation to pray for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to share the Good News with others, which in the economy of grace brings both others and ourselves closer to the divine life we all need and share.

I like these steps. Unfortunately I won’t be able to use them with my sponsor, but they are good for personal use.

 

[EasterJoy]

Teetotalers and drunks treat alcohol similarly as a drug. If you can treat it as a beverage as you appear to have done successfully, you should be happy with yourself. But as many posts recommended there are still dangers for you and you should be very very careful. But good luck, it must be a very hard road.

I think there is more than a tinge of the temperance movement in the way alcohol problems are looked at.

No matter who we are, our will power is not without limit. We have to put boundaries on ourselves in order to achieve self-mastery. The nature of those boundaries, however, are going to differ depending on the individual workings of our bodies. Some people have brains that operate so that certain centers, when stimulated, send out cravings so intense that it is not realistic to hope to resist them indefinitely. It is asking too much. Addicts fall into that category. They have to admit that there are certain things that their biology does not allow them to master except by absolute avoidance. That does not mean that everyone else who has ever habitually failed at self-mastery in the same area will always have to resort to absolute avoidance in order to succeed. It does mean that those who are facing up to a habit of serious failures must accept that total abstinence may be in the cards for them. We all have to be willing to renounce those things that will enslave us if we don’t. That is why fasting is such an important spiritual practice. It gives the soul insight into whether the body resists mastery, and by that defeats personal integrity with inner chaos, or whether the person is a unified whole in which soul and body act as one in the service of God, so that one may take one’s place in the greater integrity for which one was made, which is to say the ultimate integrity in which the Church will triumph as the spotless Bride of Christ, as truly His Body.

In short: We must choose self-mastery, in order to fit ourselves for mastery by God. That is our pearl of great price, and we must be willing to sell everything in order to obtain it. Either our use of alcohol is owned by us, such that we can put it under the mastery of God, or we must renounce it, that God may master us because we have let go of it as the price of being obtained by Him.

If AA is what it takes to obtain self-mastery, more power to those who choose it. If it is not, then it is a tool not needed. That is OK, too, so long as it is the truth.

 

[PaladinSword]

These are all good and insightful posts! Thanks all. And good morning from Los Angeles!