For someone who does not identify as nor spiritual whatsoever, could AA possibly help me or is it a waste of my time? I ask this because I have been sober for 6 weeks now but still feel on edge and amped up all the time. I’ve been told I need a support group. Thank you.

I went to a meeting and it was a reading then everyone shared around the meeting for several meetings. I have trouble listening to the shares around the room, because they're sharing honest and deep stuff and i just find it difficult to concentrate, I have anxiety so that doesn't help but i just found myself having difficulty and getting stressed trying to listen to the shares. Have you ever experienced this. it was an hour long too. I feel like my flight or fight response was triggered too. What's wrong with me lol. Thanks

i made a post on here not terribly long ago about checking myself into rehab. I got home yesterday after my insurance maxed out, and i am now officially 13 days sober today 🤩 it feels pretty amazing. im on medication to help my mental health, and im going to AA almost every night. i start IOP classes on Friday as well. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to make the leap into going into rehab. im only 24 years old, so i didnt even know if i fully believed i was a “real” alcoholic. i’ve learned so much in such a short period of time. I am excited for my future and for this feeling to stay with me.

I’m familiar though with the pink cloud effect, so please don’t worry about me suddenly crashing down. i’m kinda already going through that stage, where the overwhelming joy and motivation has worn off. But I realized that even when I’m having those bad feelings; that when I wish more than anything I could drink, I’m still grateful to experience these feelings sober. No amount of alcohol could ever replace how my body and mind feels sober, even on hard days.

I know I’m barely getting started with my sobriety, but I really am just so proud of myself for sticking to my guns and getting this far. It’s something I never thought possible for myself :,)

or at least accept the awful things you’ve done? and how much you’ve affected the lives of people you love?

I just turned 30 and I spent the better part of my 20’s drinking in excess, Like as drinking 2 handles of Tito’s a week at the end of my 20’s and sometimes 6 bottles of wine in 2 days. My blood work was horrible, my liver enzymes were really high at 23. But as of last year I stopped drinking as much and my blood work came back tomorrow about a month ago. I can go two to three weeks sober now before I need to have a drink and repeat the same cycle, is this normal ? Will the cravings ever go away ? I know it’s good thing that I’m not drinking as much anymore. But I would like to get rid of the cravings entirely. Any advice ?

I’m on day 6.. usually by now i would be getting drunk and high and doing anything I can to escape the way I feel right now and I know I can’t. That’s the whole reason I was doing it to begin with was so I wouldn’t have to feel this way.

I usually have some type of vice to lean on and there’s nothing around to give me that quick fix so I don’t have to think about all the things that hurt me and all the things I did that I regret.

I know that this feeling is why I have to sober up.. but this sucks and I hate being sober..

Still working on step one.. accepting I’m powerless.. tonight was the wake up call that I am.

Just picked up a 3 month chip at my meeting tonight. So grateful for what I get from this program and working the steps every day.

hi! I live austin texas and in this season of life making it to in person meetings its difficult and i want to go to one even if its online. are there any good online ones anywhere in the US that anyone would recommend? after covid they kind of dwindled and i have not joined since then. thanks!! i have 5.5 years for reference and just need a lil something different right now

I am a registered nurse, I am 26 years old, male, LGBT, and I am an alcoholic. I have been sober for 4 days. I also just started in a PHP program at a local treatment center. I’ve hit rock bottom, I’m exhausted of the ways I’ve been living my life with alcohol and need a necessary change. I don’t know anything about AA. My program is not a 12-step focused program, I really need someone with patience and understanding. I have little to no knowledge about AA but I’m open minded and desperate to learn and begin this journey. Thank you!

i am 23 years old and am an alcoholic. i don’t know if that technically needs a medical diagnosis but i can say for almost certain i would get that diagnosis.
i don’t know what to do anymore. i’m sitting here now with a bottle beside me, crying. i just picked it up from my local bar; i live in a tiny town with less than 400 people and every time i walk in they know what i want, the bartenders walk to the offsale wall. i didn’t want to be in there. i didn’t want to buy it. i buy a bottle of 1L bottle of vodka and finish it in two days. i cannot keep doing this for the sake of my health and mental status. not only that but it’s so embarrassing.
it started as addiction transfer or whatever it’s called. i used to smoke for my chronic pain (which is much better for your liver) and it started making me very sick and then i realized alcohol would numb it for a while. it never actually helped anything.
there is so much guilt and pain and shame around my addiction. it started as “screw it! i’m young it doesn’t matter!” turns out that’s a really slippery slope.
i shake and get so sick , i can only imagine what the bartenders think as i make my poor attempt to sign the receipt with my shaking hands as young as i am (although i always do tip simply for them just grabbing me a bottle).

there’s so much shame and so much guilt. i’m not looking for medical advice as the rules state not to do, but looking for support. no one around me gets it. it rules my whole life. my first thought of every single day is alcohol related. i’ve heard of meds that can help or even rehab, but i don’t have health insurance (i live in the US and it’s not an option, and i don’t qualify for medicaid). my loved ones don’t understand. i haven’t ruined any relationships as im not an angry drunk and i don’t steal or lie (no judgement to those that have, i understand the pains of addiction and how miserable it can get.)

i need support from people that get it. i am so young that unless they’ve been through it themselves, no one understands. what do i do? there’s no sober groups in my area and people say those tend to be highly religious and i understand that’s the way to go for some people, but not me.

i’m so lost and alone. and im terrified of withdrawal, because at the end of the day i still need to go to work and be a functioning member of society. i know theres some lovely people in this group, so im curious, what did you guys do to cope? “find a hobby!” “make sure you eat and hydrate!” yes those can help but when you’re as deep as i am, it doesn’t after a certain extent. i really cannot miss work, or ill lose my job entirely. i don’t know what my next steps are, and i fear i may not have a choice but to charge into sobriety head on. with the health anxiety i have though, as soon as i start shaking i think ill have a seizure.

thank you in advance to anyone that takes the time to help, ive read several posts and everyone is so kind. i’m hoping one day i can come back to this page, SOBER, with advice for someone else struggling.
much love to you all.

My uncle is going to have 40 years soon and he said something along the lines of "if I make it till then without a drink, I'll have 40 years!" I laughed because it seems like a guarantee, but then again, I saw someone trade a 30+ year chip for a 24hr chip. I was so shocked. I feel like it's easy to see relapse after a year, but 40??

Is it that people rarely relapse with that much time or is it that they probably don't return because they die on a bender?

MY CHECKLIST, NOT YOURS

October 15

Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 67

Sometimes I don't realize that I gossiped about someone until the end of the day, when I take an inventory of the day's activities, and then, my gossiping appears like a blemish in my beautiful day. How could I have said something like that? Gossip shows its ugly head during a coffee break or lunch with business associates, or I may gossip during the evening, when I'm tired from the day's activities, and feel justified in bolstering my ego at the expense of someone else.

Character defects like gossip sneak into my life when I am not making a constant effort to work the Twelve Steps of recovery. I need to remind myself that my uniqueness is the blessing of my being, and that applies equally to everyone who crosses my path in life's journey. Today the only inventory I need to take is my own. I'll leave judgment of others to the Final Judge — Divine Providence.

— Reprinted from "Daily Reflections", October 15, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.

30 days sober! Im till feeling very tired. Wasnt even a daily drinker...

30 days sober, still very tired. Wasnt a daily drinker?!

Hello!

Im 30 days sober, finally i made it this far. I was drinking like 3 or 4 times a week, for 2 years long maybe. I was drinking like 3 beers a time, 6 glasses. So maybe like 15 tot 18 glasses a week. Had times that i dronk daily, for 1 week every day... But then i didnt liked it anymore. Sometimes i stopped for one week..Im really happy that i made it this far finally.

I dont understand why im still feeling this tired and umotivated even little depressed, anhedonia. I searched a lot on Reddit for people with the same drinking pattern. I know that some people are stil tired even after 30 days. Even running is to much now. I must say that i also use Concerta 36mg, Lexapro 10mg, olanzapine 2.5mg en serequel 12.5mg. And i drinked with these medications to. My question is does this feeling get better?! I want to wake up more refreshed again and want my energy back....

On the walk home from the meeting & after talking to my sponsor on the phone, I went into a liquor store, bought some shooters and immediately downed four of them. I'm home now and feeling disappointed but obviously that disappointment is being somewhat drowned by the euphoria or alcohol in my blood after 30 days away. It really doesn't feel that good though, certainly not what I was expecting.

I don't understand what happened. I guess if I'm being honest I've felt the cravings pick up in the last few days and have been pushing through to get that damn chip, but I've talked about this all at length with my sponsor. When I hung up that phone I really didn't think I'd have vodka hitting my lips within 15 minutes. Or at least I don't think I knew but maybe I'm not being fully honest with myself.

Is this a common thing that happens? Right now I definitely want to make this just a hiccup and start again at day 1 tomorrow, but I know it'll be hard to stick to that when I get to tomorrow evening. What the f*ck have I done?

I love being sober because I have two birthdays now. Although each year it’s a little less exciting because it’s just integral to who I am now, it’s still fun to find a small way to celebrate.

Hello! I will be traveling to Barranquilla in mid-November and was curious if anyone knew of some AA meetings there? English or Spanish-speaking is okay :)

So I posted a couple days ago about making it 40 days (now 42✨). I decided to look and compare photos of myself pre and now 42 days out. The difference is shocking… 😳

To someone’s point about people realizing I look different - I guess I didn’t see it until I looked back at photos and now able to compare.

I’m sober now for three months and I’m working through step 8. I think I’m at the point now where I can demonstrate my control by doing the sacrifice. I have been around alcohol without a strong temptation to drink it so I believe I can safely open a beer and dump it out without any danger of relapse.

I’ve heard of other people doing this and someone else that goes to the meetings said it helped him. My sponsor does not believe this exercise will have any value, and on the contrary it would prove my lack of control but he’s not going to tell me not to do it if I think it’s something important to me.

What do other people think? Have you done this and was it useful? Is it a waste of time, or is it bad for some reason?

Thank you for your answers and God Bless.

So this is just a general question. I tend to come here rather than pose these questions in AA meetings. But I have come to realize most of the things I have struggled with in life have all come from me being addicted to one thing or another. Something’s I don’t struggle with anymore and others are so deep-seated I don’t think I can shake them. Some people would call them bad habits but I think it’s more than that. Does anyone have anything thoughts on the subject or is this just nonsense?

P.S. I should say I am addicted to things that aren’t considered controlled substances while also being addicted to alcohol. I am just trying to correlate addictions in general.

I appreciate all the responses, I just want to make it clear I am not criticizing other for what ails them.

I’ve been thinking about my time in rehab and my best friend Liam. ❤️
Liam was an Irish fella, and he was lovely. We’d become close during our time in rehab, and we were both approaching a point where we had to decide what came next.
We had a choice. We could go back to London, where we both still had our flats, or we could stay in Luton and try to build a different life.
I chose to stay in Luton.
Liam went back to London.
Shortly afterwards, Liam died.
He had alcohol-induced epilepsy and suffered a head injury. We never knew exactly what happened. Had he suffered an epileptic seizure and banged his head, or had he been drinking and fallen? I never found out.
But I lost my best friend.
And I’ve been thinking about those two choices.
Sliding doors. Two people. The same crossroads. Two different paths.
I stayed. Liam went back.
I lived. He died.
I’m not saying that going back to London caused Liam’s death or that staying in Luton saved me. Life isn’t that straightforward, and I’ll never know what might have happened if we’d made different choices.
But there’s something about recovery that I’ve never forgotten.
Getting sober is one thing. Building a life in which you can stay sober is another.
You can spend time in rehab, get your head together, start to feel hopeful and begin to imagine a different future.
Then you leave.
And what happens next?
Do you go back to the same flat, the same streets, the same people, the same routines and the same circumstances that surrounded you when your addiction was at its worst?
Because you might have changed inside, but the world you’re returning to might not have changed at all.
It’s easy to fall back into familiar patterns, back into the life you knew, and back towards the very things you went into rehab to escape.
Recovery doesn’t magically protect you from your past just because you’ve completed a programme.
Sometimes, you have to make difficult decisions about what comes next.
Where you live. Who you spend time with. What you return to. What you leave behind.
You can’t predict the future, but you can look honestly at your past and ask yourself whether going back to the way things were is really going to give you a different outcome.
Sometimes, moving forward means having the courage not to go back.
There’s something else about Liam’s story that matters to me.
Long-term heavy drinking can cause serious damage to the brain and nervous system. Alcohol-related seizures, cognitive difficulties and nutritional deficiencies can have devastating consequences.
We talk about addiction destroying relationships, families, careers and lives, but we don’t always talk about the damage happening inside someone’s body.
Getting sober is an enormous achievement, but stopping drinking doesn’t automatically undo the harm that has already been done.
I wish more people understood that.
Liam had his own history, too. He’d grown up in an institution in Ireland, raised by the Christian Brothers. We know there is a terrible history of abuse in some of those institutions, although I can’t speak for everything Liam personally experienced.
He was a person with a life and a history, not simply someone who struggled with alcohol.
He was my mate. My best friend in rehab.
And I wish he’d had the chance to live the rest of his life.
I’ve recently discovered that a documentary was filmed while we were in rehab. They followed us for weeks, and I’ve been told that someone who remembers me from those days appears in it, too.
I’m going to find that old tape and get it digitised.
I might get to see Liam again, all these years later.
I know it could be difficult to watch, but I’d like to remember him as he was when we were together.
Because there’s something poignant about looking back at the people who shared a part of our journey and realising that some of them never got to see what came next.
I wish Liam had been here to see my life unfold.
I wish my brother had been here, too.
There are people we lose along the way whom we would give anything to have beside us again. People we want to tell about our lives, our struggles, our achievements and all the things that have happened since we last saw them.
I can’t change what happened to Liam. I can’t go back and take the other road. But I can remember him, honour the friendship we had, and carry that part of my life with me.
We don’t get to see the road we didn’t take. We can only make the best decisions we can with what we know at the time.
And sometimes, when we look back, we realise just how precious the opportunity to keep going really is.
❤️** Recovery isn’t just about getting sober. It’s about having the chance to build a life beyond addiction, and about remembering the people who walked beside us along the way**.

I am on yet another sober journey. My partner told me I am not “really” sober this time because it has only been three days. Do you have any encouragements for me? I feel crushed because I can only go one day at a time. He maintains his Al-Anon group would support him in his definition of sober but from my experince (limited, I admit) with AA that doesn’t sound right. I would love to hear your stories and experiences.

7 days sober here. I went to my first meeting Monday and I was the only newcomer so the meeting just consisted of everyone telling me their stories and then I shared my story last and it was over. Surely we’re not all just sharing our stories over and over again every meeting? Or are we? Just curious what normally happens if there are no newcomers. Thanks in advance.

EDIT:
Thank you everyone. The reason I was so curious is because there was about 15-18 of us there and about a quarter of the people when it was their turn to tell their story they would act annoyed or just be really dry about it. That’s why I was thinking are they having to tell their story every night?

Title pretty much says it all folks.. I am ready to admit that I have a problem and I need to find meetings near me to go to. Or just people to Talk to and relate to. It has been years that this monkey has been on my back and I want to learn to live without him again. I have wasted so much of my life, any help is appreciated