People with mental illnesses are tolerated at AA meetings and have to believe in a higher power. I guess some can be themselves if they are able to talk well show some intelligence and carry an acceptable opinion - My point is that AA is the only thing that works and it fails most people as a hierachy emerges at every meeting and personalities tend to take over - they talk about being of service to others - god didn’t make us crazy yet there’s no solution to being crazy - to say AA will lead to a life worth living - Well they say that
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I don’t totally understand your meaning. But I agree with you that AA could be troubling for someone with mental illness. People on this site have benefited from it though. Personally, I don’t find it terribly compelling, and a little bit cult like?
I have benefited from it but it’s not been a cure all weather God was the main theme or the group or people … I guess just know if it isn’t working and you want to share a varying opinion in AA then you’ll be possible met with resistance
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People with mental illnesses are tolerated at AA meetings
No. Every single person at every AA meeting is mentally ill to varying degrees. This is understood as a given. The Steps function as a crude sort of CBT that helps us identify our poor behaviours and twisted thinking and correct them. Those who are diagnosed with MI are just as welcome as anyone else with a desire to stop drinking. AA formally acknowledges and welcomes those diagnosed with mental illness:
In fact, Chapter Five of Alcoholics Anonymous, How It Works, is read aloud at the start of nearly every AA meeting globally. It says right up front: “There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.” Mental illness is an expected and accepted issue in AA.
and have to believe in a higher power.
No. Members are allowed to choose for themselves what their Higher Power is (for many like me it is my alcoholic family that supports me). You don’t have to choose an HP at all if you don’t want to. No one can or will force you to. YES, we do have occasional problems with preachy religious nutsos and they wreck some groups. If you ever walk into a group and see Hazeldon’s literature prominently displayed, get out. It’s not a healthy place to be. There are some folks who are unhappy that AA does not favour their religion, so they tailor their own group around it. That is NOT AA. You will never find God or a Higher Power being shoved down people’s throats in groups that are run properly according to AA Tradition and that use GSO-approved materials:
I guess some can be themselves if they are able to talk well show some intelligence and carry an acceptable opinion
No. I was made to feel welcome and asked to keep coming back even after my sharing sounded like a bad X-Files rerun. People who are disruptive may be asked to leave the current meeting but come to the next one. We know that people come in sick and that it takes time to straighten them out. Empathy and patience are requirements for every meeting. For the more challenging situations, there are policies in place that groups and members are encouraged to follow when there are people trying to disrupt a meeting or just cause issues:
My point is that AA is the only thing that works and it fails most people as a hierarchy emerges at every meeting and personalities tend to take over
Maybe this happens at some sick meetings. Google “Bleeding Deacon” and “AA”. We are all equals in AA. We are all staying sober in the same 24 hours. Yeah, I’m an Old Timer, but I can get drunk just as easily as the greenest member and I have to work my program as hard as they do. Having extra years in does NOT make any member special. If you think it does, I refer you to the Bleeding Deacon. I’m sorry, but yes, you meet unhealthy people at some meetings. That will happen in a society of drunks. Are there hierarchies in the service levels of AA? Absolutely, but it is the home group that holds the most authority.
they talk about being of service to others
Serving others is how you stay sober. We keep our sobriety by giving it away. Apparently you didn’t make it to Step 12 or notice the Service Manual.
god didn’t make us crazy yet there’s no solution to being crazy - to say AA will lead to a life worth living - Well they say that
Lots of people do just fine if they are capable of showing humility and listening. In AA to be humble means to be teachable. To be open to trying something different because we have all learned that if nothing changes, nothing changes. If you show up, listen, and do the work you’re supposed to do (Steps!), you’ll get the results you need (not guaranteed to be the ones you wanted - life is like that). The first third of the book Alcoholics Anonymous is dedicated to helping people work the Steps. The back 2/3 of the book contains stories of what people were like, what happened, and what they are like now. These are real stories from real people. The book is updated every so often to add relevant stories for the current day and age (LGBTQ2+). The Grapevine magazine is full of stories of people succeeding. Meetings are full of people succeeding. There’s no shortage of people living good lives in the program. They’re often found at meetings trying to share their good fortune with others. That “service” thing, y’know.
This is my own experience in AA as someone with schizophrenia that I recently shared with another in this community:
AA is why you’re talking to me right now. My doctors wrote me off when I was first diagnosed and so did my family. My “friends” disappeared. It was only my AA family that kept treating me like I still had value. They took me to meetings, took me for coffee, and had me over for meals. When I relapsed and wound up in the psych ward, I’d come out of the catatonia and there would be an AA member just sitting there quietly and being supportive. They got me taking my meds like I should be. They got me to stop lying to my psychiatrist and to follow medical advice. They taught me that I should always look at everything in a recovery context where improvement is always possible no matter if it’s alcoholism, drug addiction, or schizophrenia. Applying the AA program to my SZ is how I was able to set small goals and then bigger goals.
There are a lot of people I have sponsored over the years who would still be drunk, nuts, or dead right now if I hadn’t carried AA to them. Love AA or hate it, there is still nothing more effective for alcoholics and this is now solidly backed by science. And it can work for everyone including atheists like me. It is also the most welcoming environment on earth. All other members care about is if you have a desire to stop drinking. They don’t care about your gender, your orientation, your race, or if you’re rich or poor. You’re not judged for having MI because EVERYONE comes in broken and we work together to fix what can be fixed.
This is my experience in over thirty years of belonging to AA as a member, as a sponsor, and as a volunteer. Thirty-one sober years. I do not find what you have been sharing to be the least bit representative of AA as I and almost everyone else I know has experienced it, You sound, frankly, like someone with an axe to grind. Your commentary on Alcoholics Anonymous lacks both substance and merit.
There is no requirement for you to stay if you don’t like it. Go. There are other ways to get sober and you need to find one that works for you. Practically every other AA member will agree with that as we know full well we don’t hold a monopoly on recovery. Just don’t try and turn people away from AA before they have had a chance to form their own opinions.
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Thank you for taking the time to write that. I found it very helpful.
Reading all your encouragement to other members about AA since I first came here in 2018 was a very important factor in my decision to join OA two days ago. I am a recovering bulimic and I hit a breaking point after one of my worst episodes in years. I am still hurting at almost 53, and my bulimia started at 13. I’m ready to work the Steps.
So I want to sincerely thank you. You make a real difference on this forum.
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Thank you for this. It has been a trying month.
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AA got me clean and sober 33 years ago. In the beginning I went to meetings regularly, got a sponsor and worked the steps. I saw what a good program it was and I wanted what I saw a lot of the old timers had. They practiced rigorous honesty and were filled with good will and wanted to help every alcoholic (or addict) they could. When I got in, I too practiced rigorous honesty and tried to live how they taught me. I tried to be a better person and help others.
I got into service. I lived by the 12 steps and 12 principles and my life changed and many good things happened to me besides just stopping using crack. When I got clean in AA (yes, I got clean in AA, only two people in 15 years said anything about an addict going to AA) (and I hate to put down other members but one was a grumpy old sourpuss who complained about everything and the other one was a really outgoing and extroverted individual but had a twisted way of working the program and he later apologized).
Anyways when I first got clean I was living in a temporary crisis home. I was unemployed and just drifting along in life smoking crack and having bad things happen to me all the time. Stuff like getting carjacked, kidnapped and cheated too many times to count out of hundreds of dollars. I hung out in the worst places with the worst people. Me and my “friends” used each other and conned and lied to each other constantly. When I started going to meetings in that temporary crisis home I left my friends. As suggested by the program I stopped hanging out with any person, place or thing that had to do with drugs.
I guess I was lucky I was forced into that crisis home because I moved away from the bad people and the bad areas and started hanging out with other recovering addicts and alcoholics who wanted to get clean and live a good life as much as me. Shortly after getting clean I got a job that I stayed at three years. I went back to college and attended classes for the next 5 years. I was living in a board & care home and almost all the other residents were drinking, using drugs and stealing, But I didn’t hang out with them. I just went to my job, went to school made one good friend at the board & care and soon I was doing all kinds of social things with my friend, my family and other AA members.
I went to AA and got into CA and went to functions and like I said, I got into service. Those first 5 years in the program I went to 5 or 6 meetings a week. On weekends I did stuff with my family like go to parties and barbecues and comedy clubs and camping and water skiing. From the very beginning my life got exponentially better. When I got in I was one of those people who laughed at church goers and anyone who believed in god. I was dismayed with all the talk about a higher power. It went against everything I knew and believed in and I thought I was going to have real problems in the program. But they kept telling me my higher power could be anything I chose. I chose to believe in the universe as a spiritual place with all kinds of mysterious things that couldn’t be all known and understood. It was something greater than myself and I soon found my self praying to and believing in a higher power.
I can’t say enough good things about AA, sure some members are more popular than others but they have no real power over other members. I met many mentally ill people in the program from neurotic, odd people to other schizophrenics. As a whole, most people didn’t look down on them and welcomed them and some of them were quite popular and well known in the area.
AA shouldn’t be arbitrarily dismissed as some kind of cult which doesn’t work for most people. I found the opposite was true. I found meetings where the majority of the people were old timers with 10, 15 and over 20 years clean. It wasn’t a bunch of old, somber men barely hanging on to life and their sobriety, they were happy, and lived good productive lives. There’s no guarantee of monetary success in the program, some people don’t get good jobs or the wife and kids and the house. But some do, but what they get by working the program is reward enough; freedom from the obsession and compulsion to use that wrecked their lives. And serenity and a sense of comradeship.
But it’s taking it one day at a time and being thankful for each day of recovery. I got out of AA years ago, I haven’t been to a meeting in 15 years but I crammed a lot of meetings into those 20 years I was an active member. I have a lot of program in me and the obsession and compulsion was taken from me years ago and has never returned. Maybe I’ll get back into the program, it helped me more than I could ever repay.
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