Apprehension

On my fears of AA.

Regardless of the ‘free to have your own opinion message’ that I have received from HOFL in earlier messages I still think that my reply to another excellent post of her should not be listed on her blog. My reply carries anger, and that’s fine for my blog but it should not be put on others I guess.

Since I have been doing this  quitting ‘on my own’ (with help from a GP, therapist and all of you here!) I have been wrestling with the thought of going to AA meetings. And there are a few things stopping me. Most important I guess in how I perceive things is my family history where religion has been an issue. Well BS, we had to fight to survive and not drown in my fathers wishful thinking for this world to end. I fought and did drown. So come the AA I am sceptical and I don’t dare to go because I am afraid I get caught up in the same religiouslike disrespect. By now I long to speak out freely with people on the subject of not drinking, or more on the repairs that need to be made and how other people did that. But only the thought of a meeting being anything like I have been through suffocates me. So I think it might be wise to not go till I sort this out ;-).

In the video of HOFL Lucy and Veronica Valli discus whether to call yourself an alcoholic or not. I think/feel(?), that due to the stigma of the word and the traditional intro of ‘I am such and I am an alcoholic’ the AA itself stigmatize those that are there. To me it feels like there is a general ‘need to feel shame and to call it upon people by forcing visitors to name themself such’. I had that when reading My name is Bill, I have that when reading up AA stuff online.

I mean, it is not like ‘alcoholic’ in anybody’s perception stands for anything good – as my Google autocomplete search points out. You might as well ask people to say: I am a nasty, smelly, not trustworthy, sneaking, cheating, irresponsible, aggressive, mean, disrespectful person that WILL NEVER BE FREE OF DRINK and I agree that the world will from now on secretly or openly disrespect me, distrust EVERYTHING I say and do, check my breath while kissing hello, check my reaction to anybody taking an alcoholic drink, try to be carefull around me when drinking, refuse me a job, refuse me loads of things that are now open to people who ‘moderate’ their way through the business club.’ And if one refuses to call themself alcoholic the shaming continue with: ‘now calling yourself such is therapeutic and if you don’t agree with that you are in denial. And denial is bad, because you will never be free. From denial comes lapse, relapse and collapse and we all know that people who relapse might kill themself. Told you, you’ll never be free.’

I never knew that I was supposed to kill myself if I would have an alcoholic drink but since reading up on AA this thought has been put in my head that it is The Thing to do. I thought I’d quit and not drink again but I should quit, not drink again AND be scared that I’ll kill myself if I do drink again.

All in all calling yourself an alcoholic in AA meetings doesn’t look like therapeutic to me, it looks like psychological torture of a former century. What’s wrong with: ‘I am feelingmywaybackintolife and I have been addicted to alcohol. Because of that I have build an addictive  character structure that is dysfunctional and makes me unhappy and unable to follow my true path in life. I am working on changing that.’ But the system of shaming and placing fear is what keeps me away from AA. And yes, I do know that I have a bit of a history with religiously based thinking.

I am unhappy that I have been fucked up when it comes to religion. I would love to be able to fucking trust anything – apart from having trusted alcohol. Wasn’t that me that said ‘I do not have trust issues?’ No, I just never trust anybody, so I don’t have issues… Well, I tried feeling what it felt like last Sunday with the potato story.

It is my believe that religion is based on projecting those hopes, thoughts and feelings that can not be carried by the person outward in a higher power. Like ‘God says we should kill those christian dogs!’ That’s just hate speaking and using something that has been made up, mostly by the person, as an excuse to justify behaviour. Same with ‘the kingdom will come’. Same with my father and his violent end of the world fantasies. He was ‘just’ expressing his own fears. Because of this projecting of that what can not be carried we get a lot of the extreme hopes, fears and  agressions in religion. It’s never like ‘Hey, dude, whassup? Sun shining, let’s go for  a swim.’ because that most of us can carry.

Yesterday I worked out that the higher power I have envisioned for myself does not respond to any what I do, it could as well not be there. It does not judge, it has these natural boundaries. And I came to realise that it has the same quality as the wall I describe earlier. How appropriate.

There’s a good thing, my higher power does not judge (might that be a thing I can’t carry?), has put up some rules that naturally live in every human being in this earth like ‘you should not murder because that generally does not go down very well’ and ‘If anything living is small you should feed it, protect it, love it and let it play’. And if you don’t, things go wrong, we get unhappy, we ruin our natural habitat, poison it and poison ourself.

Got this new thought: Maybe I don’t need a book to work my shit out if there are people. Now that would be new. Maybe there is hope. 🙂

I am happy that I quit, proud that I did it and power to the people! 😉

Addition: 21 September 2014

I have been made aware of the point that I am, with this post, transferring personal aggression onto others. I do acknowledge that and I am sorry for the aggression I put out here. To be true, I am still not sure if I can/will ever come to, change my apprehension but I should not be writing out of spite or ranting because with our without conciously knowing, that will result in (trying to) hurt others. I was aware that there was something wrong with my drive when I wrote it. I was too angry to want to take a look at it. I am sorry. 😦