Lots of thinking on this AA thing has gone on since I started this blog a couple of days ago. It's funny how once you get the thoughts that roll around in your head everyday down on paper they begin to sort themselves out. Hmmm...score one for the AA folks.
A lot of that thinking has been about why I'm so resistent to AA. Part one of this thought process was about my dad and how he got sober. Now let's talk about my sister. Buckle up people.
My sister has been drinking and drugging since she was about 6 years old. I know...hard to believe but it's not an exaggeration. In all that time I don't believe she's been totally clean for more that 24 hours except, maybe, when she was pregnant with her two kids. However, she's a lifelong attendee of AA. She attends. She makes coffee. She spouts chapter and verse from the Big Book. And she drinks and uses drugs and lies, lies, lies.
Over the years I've attended family sessions with her. The people I've met have not impressed me as the type I would want to reach out to for help. I know that sounds so snobby and stuck up but let me explain. I think it's because of the meetings she chose. These people were ALL (for the most part) using and thumbing their noses at the institution! It made me so cynical that even thinking about going into one of those rooms makes me anxious.
However (and this is a big however), I've learned over the past two years that there are LOTS of different meetings and that alcoholics come in all shapes, sizes, genders and colors. Intellectually I know there's a meeting out there for me - but my heart...it's another story all together.
Now let's talk about the way AA is portrayed. It appears to me (I've read the Big Book by the way) to be an awful lot of rules about what you should and shouldn't do and - and this is the part that really worries me - it appears to be directed toward white collar men. I'm not sure I want to be directed to or by an organization that doesn't understand what it's like to be a mom, a professional AND a drunk.
I'm going to work at overcoming this and see where it takes me.
This is wonderful - I struggle with the same issues in AA. On the one hand, there is much to recommend in the Big Book. When I first started reading it, I had many "aha" moments. However, there is much that irritates. I was NOT a drunk who thought she had all the answers, I did not have a massive ego, nor did I expect to have the world handed to me. When I go to women's meetings and hear young women, disenfranchised women, share that they need to lose their egos, I almost cry.
ReplyDeleteThat said, even though my home group is packed to the rafters with white men, I am still often inspired to grow and think differently about the world around me.
For the most part, it balances out.