Depression and God

I'm not saying I had high self esteem, but it definitely wasn't nearly as low as it was when I left treatment/AA. They basically convinced me I hated myself more than I truly did, because when you're told something enough you eventually begin to believe it. I spent many sleepless nights when I came out crying over what a terrible person I was led to believe I was. My hair is still in ruins from it all breaking off and falling out over the stress.

Hell the women had a dress code, I was given positive reinforcement the one day I didn't wear make-up and one of our counsellors told us "women hide behide heels"...I'm past feeling guilty for liking make-up and heels and wearing clothes that flatter my figure. The shit they do is in-humane when I look back at how traumatized I felt for months.

I imagine it did bygoo. And I'm glad your beginning to feel good about yourself.

Most people don't go skipping into AA, it's surprising that everyone is thrown a brick instead of a life preserver.

You know what, though, Byegood, I wasn't a horrible person but I realized that I did some horrible things that I would never do sober. That is the difference. I didn't feel guilty for existing but I didn't feel worthwhile.

We didn't have a dress code, but we were encouraged to clean up and get to a meeting. I think women have a different take on appearance. "You feel as good as you look..." and I think there is some merit in that. Of course, that isn't just in AA. That's a basic of life.

Excuse me, . . . what are you referring to here? When you say "that wasn't your opinion a month ago", what are you referring to specifically?

I would like to see AA, from the top, not the bottom, make available to treatment centers, halfway houses, meeting houses, and all other points of meetings, and any and all who want it, a disclaimer sheet that explains that the tenets of the program are based on the attendee\'s willingness to believe in a higher power. At this point, if the attendee is offended, feels tricked, seems in any way put off by the disclaimer, he should be instructed that it is an option to leave. The courts should employ a similar disclaimer and stick to it. If people don\'t want to be invaded by notions of God/god helping them through the maze toward abstinence, they ought to be cut loose at the beginning.

I do not believe AA is a religion. I think that it does not have the structure that religion has. I think there are too many loopholes that no religion would tolerate. I think there is a difference between spirituality and moral values. AA touts spirituality; religion, moral values. AA does not explain the origin of life or of the universe. Despite what all this hollering is about with regard to Clancy I., there is no clergy in AA.

Bill Wilson and his pals built AA loosely on what they knew from The Oxford Group. Bill himself was a Catholic, as I remember; this would have been an influence of some measure; but in my years of attending meetings I never felt the pinch of Catholicism, which I had been trying to escape. Just because the examined life is a large part of the program does not make AA a religion. Examining one\'s life and trying to become a better human being is nearly universal.

What has transpired in AA since I fell away from the program has left me dismayed and angry. It has become what a pop tart prancing around a stage in a gold leather bra has become to music. It has become a caricature of its former self. The program is lost and has become meaningless because it has been abused.

I\'m responding because you asked me to. No doubt there will be the usual suspects nipping at my heels within moments of my posting this, dissecting it, finding nasty remarks to make about my viewpoint. It won\'t surprise me and it won\'t hurt my feelings. It\'s the same bullshit that has happened to the program and will happen to SMART and SOS and all the rest if some perspective isn\'t gained here. I am a choice advocate. If you can sit on your back porch and drink a lemonade and watch the sun go down after having been a puking-sick drunk for 25 years, and you maintain sobriety, and you never go to a meeting, and you\'re an atheist to boot, I salute you. But I won\'t say AA is a religion. I think they should take the high road and totally revamp their sales pitch and bring it up to date. There\'s a lot of good they can do if people know what to expect. If the surprise element is removed from their approach and people know that God might be in the building while they\'re in a meeting, it gives people more options, to stay or to go. The religious ones already have their church. They might find comfort within a meeting when they realize they\'re no different than the businessman and the musician and the stay-at-home mom. They don\'t need to get locked up for 30 or 60 or 90 days in a facility where their clothes are taken and they have to wear signs around their necks that tell other inmates that they\'re stoopid. Where this shit comes from I will never, ever know or understand.

Okay, open the floodgates. Hyenas in front, please.

Then we are at least on the same page because I have asked that of the forum before. Why is it that my experiences are so unbelievable? I think it is simply because we HAVE had different experiences. Where has any of the respect been toward anyone that wasn't an Anti-AA? It's been so bad that Orange has had to come to reprimand and remind ADULTS to play nicely.

There is just so much misinformation being permitted to stand here simply out of hate that I keep coming back to refute it. Just as your belief that Marty Mann had broken her anonymity when she was actually given permission to do so by Bill Wilson. You want to believe that despite evidence to the contrary. He came to regret it, BTW, and explained why in further writings. It matters not a bit to me that someone disputes me because perhaps further down the line, someone will read it and get it.

AA was a great experience for me. I met a group of wonderful people, turned my life around with the hep of the fellowship and a renewed relationship with God, and I met my husband. Yet I am told that I am not an alcoholic because Brett drank so much more than me, you believe it was just remission (which even if it was, I would still work to keep it that way), and others such as JR have a weird obsession with my marriage because his didn't work out and he comports himself like a stalker with pride, or Cause, who just wants to believe anything she THINKS she found to discredit someone. Tell me, Avo, do these sound like happy people? If this is what is outside the AA club in MB, then you can keep it because it sounds dreadful to me. People come from other areas and often talk about how special recovery is in MB. Between these people that would shoot up AA in a heartbeat but that inexplicably find reasons and justifiation to keep going back, and those that literally moved BACK to the beach for AA, its pretty clear who the happier, healthier people are.