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**tlrgs** · July 9, 2008, 05:26 PM

knowledge is power part 2

First"
Here's an old saying that has special, strong meaning for us. Simply stated, it is this: Above all other concerns, we must remember that we cannot drink. Not drinking is the first order of business for us, anywhere any time, under any circumstances.

Some have asked us, "Does this mean you rank sobriety ahead of family, job, and the opinion of friends?"

When we view alcholism as the life-or-death matter it is, the answer is plain. If we do not save our health — our lives — then certainly we will have no family, no job, and no friends. If we value family, job, and friends, we must first save our own lives in order to cherish all three.

back 14 Fending off loneliness
Alcoholism has been described as "the lonely disease," and very few recovered alcoholics argue the point. Looking back at the last years or months of our drinking, literally hundreds of thousands of us remember feeling isolated even when we were among a lot of happy, celebrating people. We often felt a deep sense of not belonging, even when we cheerfully acted sociable.

If we felt guilty or ashamed of either our drunkenness itself or anything we did while drinking, that compounded our feeling of being an outcast. At times, we secretly feared or even believed that we deserved ostracism, because of the things we did. "Maybe," many of us thought, "I really am an outsider."

The lonely road ahead looked bleak, dark, and unending. It was too painful to talk about; and to avoid thinking about it, we soon drank again.

Although some of us were lone drinkers, it can hardly be said that we completely lacked companionship during our drinking days. People were all around us. We saw, heard, and touched them. But most of our important dialogues were entirely interior, held with ourselves. We were sure nobody else would understand. Besides, considering our opinion of ourselves, we were not sure that we wanted anybody to understand.

But we know now that we do not have to proceed all on our own. It is far more sensible, safer, and surer to do it in the company of the whole happy fleet going in the same direction. And none of us need feel any shame at all at using help, since we all help each other.

It is no more cowardly to use help in recovering from a drinking problem than it is to use a crutch if you have a broken leg. A crutch is a beautiful thing to those who need it, and to those who see its usefulness.

Thoughts of a drink seem to sneak into our minds much more smoothly and slyly when we are alone. And when we feel lonesome, and any urge for a drink strikes, it seems to have special speed and strength.

Such ideas and desires are much less likely to occur when we are with other people, especially other nondrinkers. If they do occur, they seem less potent and more easily put aside while we are in touch with fellow A.A. members.

We are not forgetting that almost everyone occasionally needs some time to himself, or herself, to collect thoughts, take stock„ get something done, work out a private situation, or just vacation from the stress of the usual day. But we have found it dangerous to become too indulgent about this, especially when our mood becomes a bit morose or self-pitying. Almost any company is better than a bitter privacy.

Tell somebody, fast. That at least starts to relieve the loneliness.

back 15 Watching out for anger and resentments
Anger has already been touched on in this booklet, but some rough experiences have convinced us it is so important it deserves special attention from anyone wanting to get over a drinking problem

Hostility, resentment, anger — whatever word you use to describe this feeling — seems to have a close tie-up with intoxication and maybe even a deeper one with alcoholism.

For instance, some scientists once asked a large number of alcoholic men why they got drunk, and found an important answer was "So I can tell somebody off." In other words, they felt the power and freedom while drunk to express anger they could not comfortably display when sober.

Anger in all its aspects is a universal human problem. But it poses a special threat to alcoholics: Our own anger can kill us. Recovered alcoholics almost unanimously agree that hostility, grudges, or resentments often make us want to drink, so we need to be vigilant against such feelings. We have found much more satisfying ways than drinking for dealing with them.

back 16 Being good to yourself
When a loved one or a dear friend of ours is recuperating from a serious illness, we generally try to give what good nurses call T.L.C. (Tender Loving Care). We pamper a sick child, providing favorite foods and some fun to help in recovery.

Convalescence from the illness of active alcoholism takes some time, and anyone going through it deserves consideration and a measure of T.L.C.

It's often said that problem drinkers are perfectionists, impatient about any shortcomings, especially our own. Setting impossible goals for ourselves, we nevertheless struggle fiercely to reach these unattainable ideals.

Then, since no human being could possibly maintain the extremely high standards we often demand, we find ourselves falling short, as all people must whose aims are unrealistic. And discouragement and depression set in. We angrily punish ourselves for being less than superperfect.

That is precisely where we can start being good — at least fair — to ourselves. We would not demand of a child or of any handicapped person more than is reasonable. It seems to us we have no right to expect much miracles of ourselves as recovering alcoholics, either.

back 17 Looking out for overelation
A great many drinkers (whether alcoholics or not) change an internal state of discomfort to one of enjoyment by the single act of taking a drink. This method of fleeing from pain to pleasure has been described as "escape drinking."

But thousands and thousands of us know that often we were already in a happy frame of mind when we took a drink. In fact, when we review our drinking records carefully, large numbers of us can see that we often drank in order to intensify an already jubilant mood.

This experience gives rise to our next suggestion, which is: Be especially cautious during moments of celebration or times of just feeling extraordinarily good.

For some of us, the impulse to take a joyful drink when we are feeling particularly good is even more insidious when there is no particular event to celebrate, and no particular social pressure to drink. It can occur at the most unexpected times, and we may never understand the reasons for it.

But the thought of a drink is not necessarily the same thing as the desire for one, and neither need plunge us into gloom or fear. Both can be viewed simply as warning bells to remind us of the perils of alcoholism. The perils are forever, even when we feel so fine that we wonder whether it's really all right for anyone to feel as good as we do, now.

back 18 "Easy Does It"
Have you just this minute finished reading the previous section, and are you now rushing right into this one? Why? It may be that you need to put into practice the slogan "Easy Does It."

As alcoholics, we often tended to gulp drinks faster than other people did. And we were seldom likely to overlook the last few drops in the cocktail glass, or the last few slugs in the bottle.

Many of us have been amused at our seeming inability, even after many years of sobriety, to walk away from a half-finished cup of coffee or glass of soda. We sometimes find ourselves gulping the last swallow of a nonalcoholic drink, as if...

Perhaps most readers already get the point: It is not always easy for us to put down an unfinished page, chapter, or book we are reading. There seems to be almost a compulsion to go on to the end, instead of taking only a page or a chapter or two a day and leaving the rest for another session. Not that this tendency is altogether bad. In getting over a destructive obsession such as drinking, it's sensible to replace it with a benign one, such as a compulsion to seek more and more knowledge and help for a drinking problem.

Remind yourself once in a while that maybe "Easy Does It" is this day's ideal speed. The change can start right now, remember?

back 19 Being grateful
One A.A. member recalls that, even during the worst of her drinking career, she never lost her faith. "I had a firm, unshakable belief in disaster," she explains. "Every morning, almost my first conscious thought was 'Oh, my God, I wonder what new troubles are going to hit me today!'"

When someone knocked at the door, she was sure it was for an unpleasant reason. She confidently expected only bills and other bad news in the mail. And if the telephone rang, she sighed in anticipation of, dreary tidings.

Such an enormous expenditure of energy in negative speculations is familiar to many of us; we remember the dark cast of mind that prevailed during the active stage of our own alcoholism. Some of it, to be sure, may have been simply a pharmacological effect of alcohol, which is a depressant drug. When we get the last molecules of alcohol out of the system, a lot of the gloom disappears along with it.

But the habit of thinking in such neurotically depressed ways can stay with some of us, we have found, until we learn to spot it and carefully root it out.

Those who try to quit smoking realize two possibilities are open: (1) continual moaning about how hard it is, "This time it won't work, either," and "See, damn it, I just lit another one"; or (2) enjoying a deep smoke-free breath when we think of it, being glad an hour has passed without a drag, and, even when a cigarette is unconsciously started, congratulating ourselves for putting it out without smoking it down to a stub.

For some reason, we spent a lot of time thinking or noting or talking about how wrong or mistaken so many other people persistently were. (Whether they really were or not is irrelevant to the welcome change in our own feelings now.) For some, the change begins with a tentative willingness to wait and see, to accept for a moment the hypothesis that the other person just possibly might be right. Before rushing to judgment, we suspend our own argument, listen carefully, and watch for the outcome.

It may, or may not, prove us to be in the wrong. That is not the important issue here. Whichever way the chips fall, we have at least temporarily freed ourselves from our driving need to be always right, or oneup. We have found that a sincere "I don't know" can be rejuvenating. Saying, "I'm wrong, you're right" is invigorating when we are sufficiently at ease with ourselves not to be bothered about actually being in the wrong. We are left feeling relaxed and thankful that we can be open to new ideas. The finest scientists are always alert to new evidence which may prove their own theories wrong, so they can discard any false notions and move closer to the ultimate truth they are seeking.

back 20 Remembering your last drunk
That's not a typographical error. The word is "drunk," not "drink," as you'll see.

"A drink" is a term which has awakened pleasurable echoes and anticipations in millions of people for centuries.

Depending on our age, and on the circumstances which surrounded our first experiences with alcohol, we all have various memories and hopes (sometimes, anxieties) aroused by the thought of a cool beer, a bullshot, a gin and tonic, a boilermaker, a sip of wine, or whatever.

It is not difficult for a 55-year-old Finn, for example, when he hears someone suggest a drink, to recall the flush of warmth that a shot of vodka or aquavit brought on a cold day in his youth.

A searching, fearless look at our complete drinking record, however, shows that in the last years and months our drinking never created those perfect, magic moments again, no matter how often we tried for them.

Therefore, when the suggestion of "a drink" comes to us, we now try to remember the whole train of consequences of starting with just "a drink." We think the drink all the way through, down to our last miserable drunk and hangover.

Drinking for us no longer means music and gay laughter and flirtations. It means sickness and sorrow.

One A.A. member puts it this way: "I know now that stopping in for a drink will never again before me simply killing a few minutes and leaving a buck on the bar. In exchange for that drink, what I would plunk down now is my bank account, my family, our home, our car, my job, my sanity, and probably my life. It's too big a price, too big a risk."

He remembers his last drunk, not his first drink.

back 21 voiding dangerous drugs and medications
Mankind's use of various chemicals to change moods and alter feelings is ancient and widespread. Ethyl alcohol was probably the first of such chemicals, and may have always been the most widely popular drug for this use.

Some drugs have legitimate value and are beneficial when administered by knowledgeable physicians if used solely as directed, and discontinued when they are no longer a medical necessity.

Drinking became, for many of us, a sort of self-medication. We often drank to feel better and to feel less sick.

And thousands of us used other chemicals, too. We discovered pep pills that seemed to counteract a hangover or relieve our depression (until they let us down, too), sedatives and tranquilizers that could substitute for the alcohol and calm our jitters, bromides and nonprescription pills and elixirs (many of them were called "nonaddictive" or "not habit-forming") that helped us sleep or gave us extra energy or loosened our inhibitions or floated us away on an exquisite surge of bliss.

The chemical "magic" we felt from alcohol (or substitutes for it) was all locked within our own heads, anyhow. Nobody else could share the pleasant sensations inside us. Now, we enjoy sharing with one another in A.A. — or with anybody outside A.A. — our natural, undoped happiness.

Chemical substitutes for life simply do not interest us any more, now that we know what genuine living is.

back 22 Eliminating self-pity
This emotion is so ugly that no one in his or her right mind wants to admit feeling it. Even when sober, many of us remain clever at hiding from ourselves the fact that we are astew in a mess of self-pity. We do not like at all being told that it shows, and we are sharp at arguing that we are experiencing some other emotion — not that loathsome poor-me-ism. Or we can, in a second, find a baker's dozen of perfectly legitimate reasons for feeling somewhat sorry for ourselves.

Hanging over us long after detoxification is the comfortably familiar feeling of suffering. Self-pity is an enticing swamp. Sinking into it takes so much less effort than hope, or faith, or just plain moving.

One form self-pity takes in some of us when we first get sober is: "Poor me! Why can't I drink like everybody else?" (Everybody?) "Why does this have to happen to me? Why do 1 have to be an alcoholic? Why me?"

Such thinking is a great ticket to a barroom, but that's about all. Crying over that unanswerable question is like weeping because we were born in this era, not another, or on this planet, rather than in some other galaxy.

Friends can be a great help if they're close enough that we can talk openly with each other. They can hear the false note in our song of sorrow and call us on it. Or we ourselves may hear it; we begin to get our true feelings sorted out by the simple means of expressing them aloud.

Another excellent weapon is humor. Some of the biggest belly laughs at A.A. meetings erupt when a member describes his or her own latest orgy of self-pity, and we listeners find ourselves looking into a fun-house mirror. There we are grown men and women tangled up in the emotional diaper of an infant. It may be a shock, but the shared laughter takes a lot of the pain out of it, and the final effect is salutary.
to be conitinue

**tlrgs** · July 9, 2008, 05:28 PM

knowledge is power part 2

23 Seeking professional help
Probably every recovered alcoholic has needed and sought professional help of the sort A.A. does not provide. For instance, the first two A.A. members, its cofounders, needed and got help from physicians, hospitals, and clergymen.

Once we have started staying sober, a lot of our problems seem to disappear. But certain matters remain, or arise, which do require expert professional attention, such as that of an obstetrician, a chiropodist, a lawyer, a chest expert, a dentist, a dermatologist, or a psychological counselor of some kind.

Since A.A. does not furnish such services, we rely on the professional community for job-getting or vocational guidance, advice on domestic relations, counseling on psychiatric problems, and many other needs. A.A, does not give financial assistance, food, clothing, or shelter to problem drinkers. But there are good professional agencies and facilities particularly happy to help out an alcoholic who is sincerely trying to stay sober.

May you have the same good fortune in these regards that so many of us have had. Hundreds of thousands of us are deeply grateful to the countless professional men and women who helped us, or tried to.

back 24 Steering clear of emotional entanglements
Falling in love with your doctor or nurse or a fellow patient is an old romantic story. Recovering alcoholics are susceptible to the same fever. In fact, alcoholism does not seem to bring immunity from any known human condition.

Sorrow is born in the hasty heart, an old saw goes. Other troubles, including an alcoholic bout, can be, too.

During our days of bottles, cans, and glasses, many of us spent a lot of time concerned about intimate personal ties. Whether we wanted temporary partnerships or a long-term "meaningful relationship," we were often preoccupied with our deep involvement — or noninvolvement — with other people.

A great many of us blamed our drinking on lack of affection, saw ourselves as constantly in search of love, drinking as we prowled from bar to party. Others of us apparently had all the emotional ties we needed or wanted, but drank anyhow. Either way, alcohol certainly did not ripen our comprehension of mature love, nor our ability to enter into and handle it if it did come our way. Rather, our drinking lives left our emotional selves pinched, scraped, bent, and bruised, if not pretty firmly warped.

Immature or premature liaisons are crippling to recovery. Only after we have had time to mature somewhat beyond merely not drinking, are we equipped to relate maturely to other people.

When our sobriety has a foundation firm enough to withstand stress, then we are ready to work through and straighten out other aspects of our lives.

back 25 Getting out of the "if" trap
Emotional entanglements with people are not the only way we can get our sobriety dangerously hooked to something extraneous. Some of us have a tendency to put other conditions on our sobriety, without intending to.

One A.A. member says, "We drunks are very 'iffy' people. During our drinking days, we were often full of ifs, as well as liquor. A lot of our daydreams started out, 'If only...' And we were continually saying to ourselves that we wouldn't have gotten drunk if something or other hadn't happened, or that we wouldn't have any drinking problem at all if only... :'

We all followed up that last "if" with our own explanations (excuses?) for our drinking. Each of us thought: I wouldn't be drinking this way...

If it wasn't for my wife (or husband or lover)..., if I just had more money and not so many debts... if it wasn't for all these family problems... if I wasn't under so much pressure... if I had a better job or a better place to live... if people understood me... if the state of the world wasn't so lousy..., if human beings were kinder, more considerate, more honest . . . if everybody else didn't expect me to drink... if it wasn't for the war (any war)..., and on and on and on.

Those ifs we cannot afford. We have to. stay sober no matter how life treats us, no matter whether nonalcoholics appreciate our sobriety or not. We have to keep our sobriety independent of everything else, not entangled with any people, and not hedged in by any possible copouts or conditions.

Over and over, we have found we cannot stay sober long just for the sake of wife, husband, children, lover, parents other relative, or friend, nor for the sake of a job, nor to please a boss (or doctor or judge or creditor) not for anyone other than ourselves.

Tying up our sobriety to any person (even another recovered alcoholic) or to any circumstance is foolish and dangerous. When we think, "I'll stay sober if..." or "I won't drink because of...' (fill in any circumstance other than our own desire to be well, for health's own sake), we unwittingly set ourselves up to drink when the condition or person or circumstance changes. And any of these may change at any moment.

Independent, unaffiliated with anything else, our sobriety can grow strong enough to enable us to cope with anything and everybody.' And, as you'll see, we start liking that feeling, too.

back 26 Being wary of drinking occasions
For the first nondrinking months, it's probably a healthy idea to stay away from our old drinking buddies and haunts, and to find reasonable excuses for skipping parties where drinking will be a major entertainment. It seems especially important to stay away from such affairs if we feel nervous about them.

But, sooner or later, there comes the time when a family or business obligation or a friendship makes us feel compelled to go or perhaps we just want to go. We have developed a number of ways to render such occasions easy for us to take, even though we abstain. Now, we are talking primarily about the big cocktail party or the fairly large but informal dinner-with-drinks evening.

If the host or hostess is an old friend we can level with, sometimes it helps to tell him or her in advance that we are not drinking right now. We do not ask for any special treatment, of course. But it's reassuring to know there will be at least one person present who is completely sympathetic to our efforts to get over a drinking problem. Sometimes, we can take with us a more experienced nondrinker, or at least a companion who knows we are abstaining and realizes how important it is to us.

It is a very good idea to eat a sandwich or other snack before going to a party, even if you know food will be served later. Something nourishing in the stomach, as we've already said, takes the edge off many trying situations. (And you might carry along a small packet of your favorite mints or a dietetic substitute.) This is even more important when you are headed for a party at which there are likely to be some long heavy drinking hours before food appears.

Just one more thing about this matter of drinking occasions. Many of us have had the guts, if pressure to drink really got unpleasantly strong, simply to make an excuse and leave, no matter what other people may think. After all, our life is at stake. We simply have to take whatever steps are necessary to preserve our own health. Other people's reactions are their problem, not ours.

back 27 Letting of old ideas
The ideas that got so deeply embedded in our lives during drinking do not all disappear quickly, as if by magic, the moment we start keeping the plug in the jug. Our days of wine and "Sweet Adeline" may be gone, but the malady lingers on.

So we have found it therapeutic to nip off many old ideas that start to sprout up again. And they do, over and over.

What we try to achieve is a feeling of being relaxed and freed from the bonds of our old thinking. Many of our former habits of thought, and the ideas they produced, limit our freedom. They just weigh us down and are of no use so it turns out when we look them over with a fresh eye. We don't have to hang on to them any longer unless, upon examination, they prove valid and still truly fruitful.

It is now well established that willpower all by itself is about as effective a cure for alcohol addiction as it is for cancer. Our own experience has verified that repeatedly. Most of us tried going it alone, hoping either to control our drinking or to stop, and we had no lasting success in either endeavor. Even so, it wasn't easy to admit we needed help. That, too, looked like a sign of weakness. Yes, we were being taken in by another myth.

But we finally asked ourselves: Wouldn't it be more intelligent to seek out and tap a strength greater than our own than to persist in our futile solo efforts, after they had time and again been proved ineffective? We still don't think it is very smart to keep trying to see in the dark if you can simply switch on a lamp and use its light. We didn't get sober entirely on our own. That isn't the way we learned to stay sober. And the full enjoyment of living sober isn't a one-person job, either.

When we could look, even temporarily, at just a few new ideas different from our old ones, we had already begun to make a sturdy start toward a happy, healthier new life. It happened just that way to thousands and thousands of us who deeply believed it never could.

back 28 Reading the A.A. message
Human beings, we are told, learn many things best by seeing and touching as well as hearing them; and reading about them reinforces the strength of such learning even further.

There are many good publications on alcoholism, and some not so good. Many of us have also profited by reading in other fields. But A.A. neither endorses nor opposes anybody else's publications. We simply offer our own.

Even drinkers who have never before been much for reading spend hours poring over A.A. material. It is undoubtedly the best way to grasp a broad, firsthand consensus of all A.A. wisdom, instead of just the hearsay of one time and place.

back 29 Going to A.A. meetings
Long before this booklet was even thought of, every single idea in it and many more suggestions for living sober were learned and proved successful by hundreds of thousands of alcoholics. We did this not just by reading, but also by talking to each other. At first, we mostly listened.

You can easily do the same thing, free, and you don't have to "join" anything.

What we did was simply go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are over five million each year, in almost one hundred countries around the globe. And remember, you do not have to become an A.A. member in order to visit some A.A, meetings. If all you want to do is sort of "try out" A.A., you are entirely welcome to attend A.A. meetings as an observer and just listen quietly, without saying a word. You don't need to give your name, or you can give a phony one if you want to. A.A. understands. It doesn't record names of either members or visitors attending its meetings, anyhow. You won't have to sign anything, or answer any questions.

Feel free to ask some, if you wish. But many people prefer just to listen the first few times.

back 30 Trying the Twelve Steps
"When all else fails," said the old country doctor, "follow directions."

We have not talked about the Twelve Steps offered by A.A. as a program of recovery from alcoholism, and they are not going to be listed or explained here, because anyone curious about them can find them elsewhere. Their origin is striking, however.

In 1935, two men met in Akron, Ohio. Both of them were then considered hopeless drunkards, which seemed shameful to those who had known them. One had been a Wall Street hot shot; the other, a noted surgeon; but both had drunk themselves almost to death. Each had tried many "cures" and been hospitalized over and over. It looked certain, even to them, that they were beyond help.

Almost accidentally, in getting to know each other, they stumbled onto an astonishing fact: When each of them tried to help the other, the result was sobriety. They took the idea to an alcoholic lawyer confined to a hospital bed, and he, too, decided to try it.

The three then kept on, each in his individual life, trying to help one alcoholic after another. If the people they tried to help sometimes did not want their aid, they nevertheless knew the effort was worthwhile, because, in each case, the would-be helper stayed sober even if the "patient" kept on drinking.

Persisting at this avocation for their own benefit, this nameless little band of exdrunks suddenly realized in 1937 that 20 of them were sober! They cannot be blamed for thinking a miracle had happened.

They agreed they ought to write a record of what had happened, so their experience could be widely distributed. But, as you can imagine, they ran into real difficulty in reaching agreement on what precisely had taken place. It wasn't until 1939 that they were able to publish an account they could all subscribe to. By then, they numbered about 100.

They wrote that the pathway to recovery they had followed up to then consisted of twelve steps, and they believed anyone who followed that pathway would reach the same destination.

back 31 Finding your own way
We hope this booklet has made it eminently clear that we don't consider drinking a frivolous subject. Alcoholism deserves and gets dead serious attention from us. We do not find jokes told at the expense of sick problem drinkers funny, except those we tell on ourselves from our vantage point of sobriety. We aren't amused when someone teasingly threatens to get drunk. That's like teasing about Russian roulette.

In spite of our serious attitude toward alcoholism, you will find we can usually talk with humor and detachment about our past and our recovery. This is a healthy approach, we think. Certainly, it does not weaken our resolve to get and stay well.

Most of us have seen death close up. We have known the kind of suffering that wrenches the bones. But we also have known the sort of hope that makes the heart sing. And we hope this booklet has conveyed to you more encouragement than pain. If you are a problem drinker, you already know enough about pain and loneliness. We'd like you to find some of the peace and joy we have found in meeting the reality of life's ups and downs with a clear head and a steady heart.

Some of us go back to drinking a time or so before we get a real foothold on sobriety. If that happens to you, don't despair. Many of us have done this and have finally come through to successful sobriety. Try to remember that alcoholism is an extremely serious human condition, and that relapses are as possible in this ailment as in others. Recovery can still follow.

Even after setbacks, if you continue to want to get well, and remain willing to try new approaches, our experience convinces us that you have embarked with hundreds of thousands of companions on the path of a happy, healthy destiny. We hope we see you among us in person.

But whatever track you travel, along with us or on your own, you go with our strongest good wishes.

**Bandit** · July 9, 2008, 05:37 PM

knowledge is power part 2

Thank you for the information

Hi tlrgs,
Thank you for your post.
I have never had an experience of AA as I just do not think it would suit me here in Ireland and I have to admit it does have a very negative impression for many including me which is crazy with no first hand experience of it. However, reading through the information a lot of it makes a huge amount of sense and I think I might actually get something from it. I am committed to an AF life for better or worse. At present I think I am out of the honeymoon and into the worse but that's life.
xx
Bandit

**Rusty-576** · July 9, 2008, 08:37 PM

knowledge is power part 2

Tirgs: Im just want to thank you for posting this thread, a lot of questions that I have been asking myself have been adressed in this thread. I think that I will have to read this a few times before everything just sinks in

**caysea** · July 9, 2008, 09:28 PM

knowledge is power part 2

Thanks T
Very helpful for were I am right now.Tried AA in the past went to a couple of different meeting locations but still didn't connect.Maybe I wasn't ready then.I think I will look them up here and see what happens.I am willing to try everything in this fight that will give me power.Has it been a positive for you?
Stay Healthy and Keep Fighting

**tlrgs** · July 9, 2008, 11:20 PM

knowledge is power part 2

yes cay very helpful in many ways i just go to a few AA meeting but i get alot insight from them and like the saying goes take what you need and leave the rest. thats how i work it and just learn from everything i do and read

**tlrgs** · July 10, 2008, 06:27 AM

knowledge is power part 2

have an awesome day everyone

**DeeBee** · July 10, 2008, 06:40 AM

knowledge is power part 2

Wow Tlrgs, you put so much effort into getting that knowledge to us, much appreciated!!

**Evie.Lou** · July 10, 2008, 08:11 AM

knowledge is power part 2

WOW TRIGS,You have such great PASSION and DEDCAITION...I will surly mellow my opinion out on AA because of the great respect that I have for YOU!!!!I SEE THEIR VALUE,I TRULY DO...THANKS

**nancy** · July 10, 2008, 08:22 AM

knowledge is power part 2

thanks

Hi Tlrgs

Thanks for posting all that. I got really turned off by AA meetings a while back but not without gaining an appreciation for some of the philosophy and literature.

I think some of the advice is really good, like the views about self-pity, Easy does it, avoiding loneliness, if ism. Of course I don't like the idea of having sweets and I don't like the idea of giving out your telephone number to everyone.

I think they also offer a book on how to handle social situations.

Definitely worth checking out even if it's not everyone's cup of tea.

**tlrgs** · July 10, 2008, 04:34 PM

knowledge is power part 2

thank you nancy.. i love to read. so i will look for that one

**time2change** · July 10, 2008, 06:17 PM

knowledge is power part 2

T
I have finally been able to read this post (I hope you didn't type it all by yourself...LOL). I agree with Nancy. Some of this seems like great advice for me and some doesn't. As you have already taught me take what you want and leave the rest. Great post. Thank you

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