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Alcoholism

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I tried AA too, and found their 12 steps and touchy-feely shit, just way too much for me. I drank from my early teeens till I was 31. I had one slip up for about 6 months and then got back on the wagon. I just quit cold turkey, like I did with cigarettes, sugar, meat and some medications. I’m a super strong minded bitch, and when I finally decide to do something, I just do it.

Abusive?? Yes, I’ve been abusive. To my daughter. I’m not happy to say it, but I was when she was growing up. I was so out of control with PTSD that I couldn’t take care of me, never mind a child. So I do understand where you are coming from in that dept.

All I can say is this..... If you are committed to being sober, then just DO IT!!!!!!
 
Hi all I'm on day 3 on the sober train again. This time I really want to stay sober. I started d...

Rational Recovery: The New Cure For Substance Addiction
Author: Jack Trimpey

Teaches AVRT (addictive voice recognition technique)
 
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Yeah I suffer with a lot of inner conflict about AA as in many ways it has got me to were I am now and have made good freinds there, but I think the flaws are glaringly obvious and it can be a potentially abusive system if your in a vulnerable place. i am not anti AA I am pro AA reform and taking a look at itself which is difficult because its a very rigid system right now but I dont think anything can grow unless it reforms so it will be interesting to see what future lies ahead for AA. I have learnt not to make AA my only option and to just take what I need from it. I much prefer the codpendents anonymous twelve step these days as it is more modern as it was found in 1980s and it is much more relevant for people recovering from trauma, in AA a traumatised person will just be labled a crazy alcoholic. and the meetings have a big emphasis on boundarys, you can go to a meeting and not talk to anyone and just go home if thats what I wanted.
 
Thanks again everyone. Well my open mindedness and curiosity and desire to test my perceptions about AA now I'm sober and clean lead me to go to a meeting Wednesday night. I thought I'd better not write this off just in case I got it wrong before because I was off my nut and not seeing things correctly because of my paranoia etc.

But some loony woman latched onto me even I thought she was nice to begin with. We swapped phone numbers as you do and I went to an meeting the following lunchtime. I was starting to think, hey maybe AA ain't so bad after all. Anyway this woman and I spoke on the phone after my second meeting and I told her that I wouldn't be going to a meeting that night because I was too tired to attend. She basically bullied me into going and to my annoyance at myself I let her.

She picked me up in her car Thursday night and I attended my third meeting in 24 hours. It was in a portacabin in the grounds of the local hospital and there must have been at least 30 people crammed in there like bloody sardines. I started feeling triggered and overwhelmed and I wanted to leave but she insisted I stayed. I couldn't wait to get out of there it was bloody horrible I was scared shitless.

Anyway she drove us home like a bloody lunatic and talking at a million miles a minute and it was obvious she may have been sober but not clean. I know a crack head when I come across one I've known enough of them in my time!! Anyway she dropped me off and then yesterday morning I called her because like me she has a bad chest and was so wheezy in the previous nights meeting she had to use my reliever inhaler because she hadn't brought her own. I was checking to see if she had gone to the doctor as she said she would. Anyway she said she had but when I asked her if she had been given antibiotics for it and what type she couldn't tell me the name of the medicine he'd given her. She also told me that she had a blood clot on her right lung and I asked her how she got it and she wouldn't tell me. But I know from other crack heads that's a result of sucking on a crack pipe and the lung damage it causes.

Anyway I told her that I probably wouldn't be able to get to a meeting yesterday because I was busy with washing shopping bill paying and seeing my tobacco man and this woman starts telling me I must go to a meeting and that's got to come above everything else or I would be in danger of slipping and relapsing. I replied that I didn't feel like I would slip but I still had to live my life and do things that were every bit as important as going to a meeting or my life would become unmanageable again. She really tried to push it with me and in the end I said I'd let her know but I would do my best to get to a meeting that night.

Anyway I went and did all my jobs and errands and by the time I was finished 5 hours later I was bloody knackered and stressed out to the bloody max. When I got home from town I texted this woman to say that I wasn't going to a meeting after all because of tiredness due to COPD and stress due to PTSD. She completely ignored me I didn't get a reply at all. Which I thought was really rude and smacked of narcissistic silent treatment and game playing. I tried to be patient and waited 5 hours for her to get back to me but she never did. So I called her to ask her what her problem was. And that's when she turned on me like a rabid dog.

She called me a liar a nutter a slag and a kiddie fiddler. She told me she was friends with former abusers of mine who hurt me in the years after my youngest was taken into care 13 years ago and that I deserved everything they did to me because of X Y and Z. She told me that I thought I was better than everyone else that my shit didn't stink because I apparently think I'm more clever than other people when I really don't. She called me a stuck up bitch because I called her out for lying about the true state of her health in front of another AA member at the meeting the previous night. And that's when I lost my shit too.

She threatened to come round my house with her mates my former abusers and kick the shit out of me. I retorted that I was sitting here with Dr Martens on my feet a 2 foot long machete so sharp it would take her crack addled head off and my pit bull cross would finish the job if I didn't. She slammed her phone down on me at that point but I was so f*cking triggered and angry. Not to mention really shaken. I tried to calm myself down to no avail. I sat at my kitchen table for half an hour before I caved in and went to the shop to buy beer.

I bought 4 beers which took me 4 hours to drink mind you. After a couple I rang another woman I'd met Wednesday night to ask her advice about handling this woman and going to meetings from now on because obviously I didn't want to run into her again after that. This other woman said she didn't want to get involved and anyway I should have gone to a meeting last night rather than pick up again not understanding that I wouldn't have even picked up again at all if I hadn't been so bloody triggered by the loony bird.

I felt so sad and disappointed and let down that it triggered all my old feelings of grief and sadness and I cried my eyes out for half an hour with my dog comforting me as best she could. Strangely I felt better afterwards but I'd made up my mind about AA because of this awful experience. I'd had a timely reminder as to why I stopped going to meetings before. And because of this nasty nutty woman I realised I'm far too vulnerable to be going in the rooms of AA if that's what is going to happen to me if I do. And certainly not locally with stupid abusive people who think they know me and know my history or personal business.

So the moral of the tale is that I can't go to AA because all my previous observations and perceptions about it were and remain bloody spot on. I'm going to stick to my original plan of going to support groups at my local drug and alcohol clinic. I'm also back on the wagon booze wise because I actually have a hangover this morning and feel like dog turd. And I really don't want to be feeling like this anymore. It was a huge and valuable lesson and one I don't need to repeat because I accept the reality of the situation at long last. I hope someone else on here can also take something from my extremely unpleasant experience of AA.

Anyway will leave it there and once again thanks everyone for your advice and support. I really appreciate it. Thanks :)
 
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