After years of going in and out of sobriety, I needed to have a fundamental change effected within me if I was going to stay sober. I was depressed and anxious because my life was depressing and anxiety-producing, because I had designed it that way, below the level of consciousness. Better living through chemistry, whatever the chemistry, was not the solution.
Everything had to change: beliefs, thinking, and behaviour. The lot. No turning back.
I was miserable, whining, self-pitying, blame-throwing, confused and confusing, misinformed and misled, highly analytical, temperamental, mercurial, querulous, cynical, snide, attention-seeking, and intolerably arrogant despite my manifest failure and incompetence, being largely ineffective in almost all areas of my life; I had no clue how to work, take practical care of my life, or interact in a socially acceptable and healthy way with other people, let alone ‘have a nice day’. No wonder I drank.
I guess there are other systems for effecting systematic, comprehensive change in one’s morals and literally every value, strategy, and tactic one employs in one’s life, but, for want of anything more compelling to hand, I found the most spiritually and practically successful people I could in AA and submitted to the long process of exhaustive (and exhausting) change, under their guidance.
Just going to meetings and sharing my feelings with other people at meetings was completely ineffective at bringing about sobriety, rewiring my mind, and reconstructing my life from scratch. AA’s Steps, with the best instruction available, Traditions, Concepts, Home Group, Service, Sponsorship, Al-Anon, the whole deal, front of the queue, front of the bus, with the busiest, most gung-ho, positive, go-getting, and uncompromising people in AA served me incredibly well, and still does today. As soon as I started the process with dedication and absolute surrender, the relapsing stopped. Dead. Then and there.
If nothing else works, that is worth a try. It's worked for me for > 25 years. I’m clean, competent, and calm and a very happy customer.
Everything had to change: beliefs, thinking, and behaviour. The lot. No turning back.
I was miserable, whining, self-pitying, blame-throwing, confused and confusing, misinformed and misled, highly analytical, temperamental, mercurial, querulous, cynical, snide, attention-seeking, and intolerably arrogant despite my manifest failure and incompetence, being largely ineffective in almost all areas of my life; I had no clue how to work, take practical care of my life, or interact in a socially acceptable and healthy way with other people, let alone ‘have a nice day’. No wonder I drank.
I guess there are other systems for effecting systematic, comprehensive change in one’s morals and literally every value, strategy, and tactic one employs in one’s life, but, for want of anything more compelling to hand, I found the most spiritually and practically successful people I could in AA and submitted to the long process of exhaustive (and exhausting) change, under their guidance.
Just going to meetings and sharing my feelings with other people at meetings was completely ineffective at bringing about sobriety, rewiring my mind, and reconstructing my life from scratch. AA’s Steps, with the best instruction available, Traditions, Concepts, Home Group, Service, Sponsorship, Al-Anon, the whole deal, front of the queue, front of the bus, with the busiest, most gung-ho, positive, go-getting, and uncompromising people in AA served me incredibly well, and still does today. As soon as I started the process with dedication and absolute surrender, the relapsing stopped. Dead. Then and there.
If nothing else works, that is worth a try. It's worked for me for > 25 years. I’m clean, competent, and calm and a very happy customer.