YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I have a few years of sobriety, and attend 3-4 meeting a week. After all these years, I still hate every moment of it. Unfortunately I can not find any alternative support groups in my area. I have read about SOS and other groups that are based on a more positive approach to recovery. I don't like that AA makes you feel like you are a bad person and have to repent for your sins. I have a disease and work every day to keep it at bay. I am not a bad person. I do enjoy meeting with others that I can relate to, and I guess that is why I continue to attend meeting even though when I am there I can't wait for it to be over. If anyone knows of any alternatives to AA that hold meetings in the Philadelphia area please post. Thanks

Hey! Thanks for posting.

First up, congratulations on a few years sober.

(Disclosure: I've not drank in 7.5 years, and identify as straightedge. I honor AA and wish its members well, and will not be singing from their hymnal, so long as I speak for myself. I've been helped by 12 step meetings and folks, but I do not identify as such. I neither endorse nor oppose any recovery model or concept.)

Just so I am clear, I have a clarifying questions:

Are you an alcoholic?

Should you never drink again?

You identify (according to your post) with the disease model. Is that accurate?

Do you subscribe to the idea that you are powerless over alcohol?

Do you believe in the recovery model? (ie an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic and can never truly "recover")

If I may attempt to answer your question as best I can, in ways that will probably be unsatisfying.

I've heard of SOS and Rational Recovery. Other than they exist, I can't say anything. Unfortunately I don't know any around Philly.

Is your question:

1. How to I find sobriety-focused support groups?

or

2. How can I find groups/tribes/like-minded-folks in order to stay sober?

While it may appear I am offering a difference without distinction, what I am trying to get at is, which is more important: community and connection, or sobriety?

(Again, I don't offer any judgment as to which you should choose.)

May I speak from my own experience? Take or leave anything I say.

IME, there are three ways to get sober:

1. AA/Recovery model (powerlessness, Higher Power)

2. Jesus (or Buddhism or yoga or any other life-changing experience)

3. Saying to oneself "I am sick of this crap"

Many of my friends are sober today because of #1 and #2. I had a #3 experience. We're all not drinking, and much better people.

There may be more ways to stop drinking. I don't know. I have seen with own two eyes the three methods above. All are good.

Ramblings of a sober person. Probably off topic.

Straightedge fits me because here is its whole philosophy: Got better things to do.

That's it.

I am free, right now, to go buy a beer. I can get drunk tonight. In fact, with six weeks sober I was hired as a fraternity house director at a school recently "honored" as the number 1 party school in America. (Soberly watching voluminous vice, folly, and splatted body excreta made sobriety look super awesome in comparison. which believe me it was.)

The reason I don't drink, or want to, is because I have better things to do. Today I am teaching myself AutoCAD. Because I'm awesome and want to impress you? No. Because my mind is clear, I want to do better in life, and because I'm not spending $20-50 a night at some sad bar.

Basically, OP, here is what I've learned in sobriety (and career and life): stick around winners.

Lastly, nothing you wrote or that I wrote is worth drinking over.

Please don't drink. If you desire to pick up a drink, instead pick up a phone and call a sober friend, an Intergroup, or 211.

There's no answers in a bottle. If there had been we would have found them long ago.