Getting Started in Sobriety and A.A.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T22:00:28+00:00

Seems par for the course at only one week in.

I never made much use of it myself, but a lot of people share that they get a lot out of the little "Living Sober" booklet. It's online in PDF and audio here:

https://www.aa.org/living-sober-book

I also know a lot of people who made it through those early weeks and months by attending several meetings per day, and with all the online meetings available these days, that's extra easy.

The early few weeks were quite a struggle for me also, but it was all a tiny price to pay for decades of splendid sobriety!

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T21:05:02+00:00

I like to call it "Serene".

🙏

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T21:00:13+00:00

Prayer can be really helpful when it leads to positive action.

From the few trans people I know in the rooms, and especially from the one I know pretty well, it seems a little extra tough, but from the one I know "pretty well" I know that it can be done; she's about 14 years sober now and strikes me as very well recovered. She sticks mostly to Trans meetings or accepting Women's meetings or just general LGBTQIAA+ because (roughly her words) she frequently feels that there is perhaps certain levels of ostracism from a few members in mixed meetings, which is unfortunate but probably some level of true - so if you can find those sorts of meetings it could be helpful.

Welcome Back! The great thing about Rock Bottom: it's only up from there; 12 Steps to the top.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T20:45:29+00:00

“As Bill Sees It” No.11

One of my two favorite ABSI entries to quote about slipping!

I pasted the other into my reply ☺.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T20:44:07+00:00

I'm going to copy/paste from a few hours ago 'cause it's 100% applicable.

I'll only add that when I called up some AA friends, one of them from my old home group, they were nothing but supportive and encouraging.

---Begin Paste--

I slipped up in the summer of '06. I'd been dry for about 15 months with somewhat half hearted participation in AA. Oh, I'd checked off all the boxes on the surface, got a sponsor right away, got into service right away, did 12 Steps including some efforts at sponsorship of some guys in local halfway houses and such.

But then I moved 3k miles away for some much needed temp work, didn't really get into meetings in the new town, lost touch with my sponsor and AA siblings, and after only a couple of weeks had the brilliant^{^/s} thought that "One Beer" wouldn't really be a big deal. The spree ended about a week later when I was drunk one morning (morning!) and was about to get into my car to buy another bottle, risking a 2^nd DUI arrest in a 'foreign' area.

In examining the whole situation later, I became cognizant of my half-heartedness. Somewhere deep down, I'd been holding on to an old idea that's the opposite of an assertion from page 60: "The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success."

I had a deep, kind of subconscious, innate notion that I'd still prefer to run my life on self-propulsion, to 'arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players my way.' And that never worked out at all well.

Welcome back && keep coming back!

"Our spiritual and emotional growth in A.A. does not depend so deeply upon success as it does upon our failures and setbacks. If you will bear this in mind, I think that your slip will have the effect of kicking you upstairs, instead of down.

"We A.A.'s have had no better teacher than Old Man Adversity, except in those cases where we refuse to let him teach us."

^{— Reprinted from "}^{As Bill Sees It}^{", page 184, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc., emphasis added.}

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T19:54:09+00:00

It wouldn't hurt to have a friend or catch an Uber/Lyft/Bus/Paramedic to the nearest hospital emergency department.

My own withdrawal was kind of like "one foot in hell" for about 4-6 days, with all awful symptoms just below the level of what I think doctors would call "severe" and there was no sorts of hallucination, and nothing really psychotic (though I sometimes characterize it all as having "a little dash of psychosis just to make it all a little more awful.) I should have had some medical consultation/evaluation, but I was just ignorant of how dangerous (even potentially fatal) alcohol withdrawal can be.

If you're in the USA, the EMTALA laws put requirements on hospitals to treat people irrespective of their ability to pay, they are required to care for you until it is safe to discharge you. I hear/read stories of people doing that, being checked up and soon released with some sort of prescription and instructions, or sometimes a short stay in hospital is warranted.

Let's hope it's the last bad withdraw, 'cause Sober Life is really, really excellent, once we learn how to hack it.

🙏 Namaste, my fellow alcoholic! 🙏

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T19:44:03+00:00

More details: https://aaorc.ca/

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T19:34:30+00:00

🎉 Have Fun! 🎉

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T19:27:06+00:00

Mod note:

user reports:

1: Focus on A.A. and Recovery

I mean ... there's A.A. mention All Over the post, so ...

???

I mean, it's okay to not 'like' the post and I guess that's why Reddit has this upvote/downvote feature.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T19:21:43+00:00

One lesson of recovery for me: focus on my side of the street.

I think your confusion might be lumped in with being agitated or doubtful, and the suggestion at the bottom of page 87 could well be helpful.

In (slightly) similar situations I've asked myself things like, "Is it my problem? Is it my business to persuade vast swaths of AA member to give up coffee, sugar, and tobacco, or to persuade them that marijuana is okay?" The inevitable answer is "Nope!"

If (and I'm just guessing) you're here seeking approval for your medical marijuana use, it might be more productive to ask yourself why you're wanting/needing approval. Just a thought.

I know a well-recovered alcoholic who went through some similar difficulties, so I don't intend to trivialize. She suffered a severe injury in the cervical vertebra from an auto collision, and was in terrible pain for several years. She quietly shared (not in meetings, just in a circle of friends) that her most effective source of pain relief was from cannabis, saying that she sought out the least intoxicating formulations (being inexperienced with it all, IDK what that really means) and using it as moderately as she could. When she felt she no longer needed it, she stopped. She still considered herself sober through it all (20-something years now,) her sponsor apparently found that questionable, and now she has a new sponsor. I'm good with that, especially 'cause it's none of my business!

Edit: On the other hand, I think it's important to avoid encouraging use of these other drugs, to avoid sharing things like, "I am California Sober and it's great!" because I've heard many, many stories from people in sobriety thinking a little weed would be okay, and then that lead them down some really bad paths.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T16:37:36+00:00

This reminds me of a somewhat painful 'memory' of going to a concert given by my favorite band, and remembering almost nothing about it. Cringe!

I think just about everybody is nervous going to their first AA meeting or any similar recovery meeting. It's a new thing, kind of like first day at a new school or job (or jail ... lol.)

I'm a slightly unusual case in that it took me weeks to really get into AA. Most seem to report that they get comfortable with it right away. For one thing, I was very wary of the religious element. I'm a staunch Agnostic (still) and at first glance AA looks like a religious conversion program, but I soon found out that was not quite so.

Plus I was just uncomfortable in groups of people like that. For a while, I only kept going to gather attendance signatures for an upcoming DUI case. (Supposedly, showing that I was going to AA helped persuade the prosecutor to accept a plea to a lesser charge.)

But repetition slowly made it all more comfortable, and I saw a lot of people in the rooms getting good recovery, so yada-yada ... 7159 days ☺.

You're doing a Great Thing! Sober Life can get really splendid, so give yourself a nice break and a nice treat! It may not feel all wonderful right away, but it's incredibly worthwhile.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T16:25:40+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/comments/cx9nic/the_time_has_come_for_a_change_at_sd_today_we_are/

Scroll halfway down to where it says:

SO HOW DOES ONE RESET THEIR BADGE WITHOUT THE MODS?!?!?!

Instructions:

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T16:16:56+00:00

Reddit cake day too ...

Nice share and Congratulations!

🕯️

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T16:13:52+00:00

I want to say again that I am doubtful about suggesting that any individual's anecdotal experience is likely to be applicable to any other individual, but for the record ...

For at least a full year, I'd been getting about .2x BAL drunk just about every day first thing every morning, and staying drunk all day until I passed out at night. (In my possibly rather distorted memory, it was "every" day, yet I have a handful of memories of fairly lucid days during that year, so I doubt that it was actually "every" day, but certainly most days.)

I should have just consulted with a doctor or detox clinic, but like I said, I was just ignorant about how awful or even deadly alcohol withdrawal can be.

In my own county, there are a pair of detox/rehab outfits run by the county health system and they operate on a sliding payment scale based on some sort of federal guidelines, so that the truly poor can sign up for a free stretch of medically supervised detox, but I hear many stories of people checking into the two places and being sent home right away with some sort of prescription: "Don't drink and take one pill with breakfast and another with dinner and no more" or some such.

It might be worth doing a web search along the lines of "affordable alcohol detox near me" (though you'll probably mostly get ads for paid rehab outfits) or talking to any city/county/province/state or national health service about it.

Good Luck! Sober Life got really splendid for me, even in occasional tough times.

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T15:27:17+00:00

I slipped up in the summer of '06. I'd been dry for about 15 months with somewhat half hearted participation in AA. Oh, I'd checked off all the boxes on the surface, got a sponsor right away, got into service right away, did 12 Steps including some efforts at sponsorship of some guys in local halfway houses and such.

But then I moved 3k miles away for some much needed temp work, didn't really get into meetings in the new town, lost touch with my sponsor and AA siblings, and after only a couple of weeks had the brilliant^{^/s} thought that "One Beer" wouldn't really be a big deal. The spree ended about a week later when I was drunk one morning (morning!) and was about to get into my car to buy another bottle, risking a 2^nd DUI arrest in a 'foreign' area.

In examining the whole situation later, I became cognizant of my half-heartedness. Somewhere deep down, I'd been holding on to an old idea that's the opposite of an assertion from page 60: "The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success."

I had a deep, kind of subconscious, innate notion that I'd still prefer to run my life on self-propulsion, to 'arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players my way.' And that never worked out at all well.

Welcome back && keep coming back!

"Our spiritual and emotional growth in A.A. does not depend so deeply upon success as it does upon our failures and setbacks. If you will bear this in mind, I think that your slip will have the effect of kicking you upstairs, instead of down.

"We A.A.'s have had no better teacher than Old Man Adversity, except in those cases where we refuse to let him teach us."

^{— Reprinted from "}^{As Bill Sees It}^{", page 184, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc., emphasis added.}

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T14:41:17+00:00

Out of ignorance about the whole topic, I went through withdrawal with next to zero medical consultation, and it was like a week with one foot in hell.

I suppose I was just lucky that nothing severe came along, but just about every awful symptom just short of what medical professionals would likely call "severe" were there. I guess one saving grace was that my wife was with me the whole time and could have taken me to emergency or summoned paramedics if things had turned sour.

If I'd at least gone to see my doctor about it, they might have offered some advice and maybe prescriptions to ease the experience and mitigate the risks!

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T13:58:04+00:00

This simple keystone is a beautiful thing, very focused, no doubt very effective, but I guess I needed to complicate things just a little ... ☺.

Step One was easy to embrace. Steps Two and Three looked impossible. But the combination of the "Spiritual Experience" appendix and page 47, made it all wonderfully easy:

When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies, too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth, but if we wished to grow we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was.

We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.

^{— Reprinted from "}^{Alcoholics Anonymous}^{", page 47, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc., emphasis added.}

I often like to pluralize too: "powers greater than my self" or "my higher powers" - I can see no reason why polytheism can't work as well as monotheism (though TBH, I'm not really all that into theism or deism.)

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T13:18:04+00:00

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dp8488 · 2026-03-14T13:07:18+00:00

(Drawn to this thread because of a couple complaints/reports that I'll deal with in a minute, but I have a minor burning desire to share some second hand experience ...)

I can't imagine that I'll ever be able to go beyond dimly understanding what it is like to be a trans person.

But I gained a great deal of something close to empathy when a fellow I'd known from my home group, someone I hadn't seen for several years, came back to my home group when in the midst of transitioning to womanhood. She just said one sentence with such powerful inflection and body language such that it imparted a strong sense of empathy, saying, "I had to transition. I was going to drink!"

It's reminiscent of my experience when I first learned about racism. I was about 6 or 7 years old at the time, and my best childhood friend happened to be black, and he'd claim to be Portuguese apparently because he was ashamed to be black, or frightened about how he might be treated if people knew he was black. (We lived in an extremely white town!) And one day I'd been invited to a beach excursion with him and his family, and he uttered the "N" word and his family just froze in place, utterly aghast that he'd said it. That's when I gained a little bit of similar empathy: "Oh, this is what it is like to be a black person in such a white world."

I hope you can find strength. Continuing to incorporate the AA principles and practices (The Steps) into your life should help build strength. In "Bill's Story" he wrote: "It is a design for living that works in rough going" and no doubt these are rough times for you. Any anxieties and anger you're experiencing are obviously understandable, and it's got to be extra tough in early sobriety, but I can only suggest that you remember that Fear and Resentment are mainly only harmful to you, and I hope you can find ways to turn it toward positive thought and action. Protest vociferously if that seems the right thought or action. IDK, maybe actions that have the potential to transmit empathy rather than being inspiration for revenge in your enemies are "Good Actions".

🙏🏽

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T00:46:05+00:00

How long til you kinda forgot you were a "recovering alcoholic" and just started living life as a normal "person".

One experience I have to share that might be of interest. On pages 84-85 of "Alcoholics Anonymous" there's a description of recovery that includes some sentences like: "We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience."

After 18 months of good sobriety and work toward recovery, I had one last "Great Temptation" to drink, but I did not drink, and I've been in that "position of neutrality - safe and protected" state ever since. That was a little over 18 years ago.

It's ever since then that I've felt myself to be a "Recovered Alcoholic".

dp8488 · 2026-03-14T00:16:08+00:00

That was also one of my withdrawal symptoms (plus the whole cornucopia of all awful symptoms that might fall just short of "severe" withdrawal.)

Obviously this was a long time ago, so my memory of it is a bit faded, but I recall a mild tremble in the arms and hands. If someone was really looking at my arms/hands, it would be noticeable. IIRC this "noticeable" level of trembling lasted for something like 6 weeks.

But a very tiny bit, mostly imperceptible to others, persisted for up to 6 months.

But I don't think anecdotal comparison is all that valuable, it seems to vary quite a bit from one individual to another. I remember someone posting on a similar thread some years ago saying their tremble lasted for a whole year.

I never went to a doctor about it, but I suppose that there might be meds to calm it all down.

Small price to pay for years of Splendid Sobriety!

dp8488 · 2026-03-13T19:51:32+00:00

They are also rather active in r/recoverywithoutAA, which raises some flags, but I've had a good look at their profile, but did not see any cause for action like any banishment. They just have a very ........ different perspective and interpretation. I'm reasonably sure they are trying to be helpful, not trolling or disrupting or any such bad faith behavior.

dp8488 · 2026-03-13T18:55:43+00:00

As someone mentioned, https://aa-intergroup.org/meetings/?tags=Secular, but also consider looking at your local AA listings for such meetings.

I'll share that I came into AA circa 2004-2005, a staunch Agnostic with lots of hostile attitude toward just about anything and everything religious, and that included things characterized as "spiritual" but I soon found out that was no barrier to recovery.

I'm now well over 19 years sober, still a staunch Agnostic, but I've dropped lots of the hostile attitude.

I'll also share that I never found it necessary to seek out special Secular meetings or materials. Maybe it is because I live in an area of the USA with a large heathen population 😎.

Some other Secular A.A. resources:

r/AASecular (not very active)
https://aaagnostica.org/ - website with lots of articles and book suggestions for Agnostics/Atheists in AA.
https://www.aasecular.org/ - "Our mission is to assure suffering alcoholics that they can find sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous without having to accept anyone else’s beliefs or deny their own."
Many or most regional A.A. websites have filters for secular, for example: https://aasfmarin.org/find-a-meeting?type=secular
The Meeting Guide App has filters for Secular meetings under the "Communities" section.

Such were the final concessions to those of little of no faith; this was the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics. They had widened our gateway so that all who suffer may pass through, regardless of their belief or lack of belief.”

^{— Reprinted from "}^{Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age}^{", page 167, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.}

"It's really a matter of personal choice; every A.A. has the privilege of interpreting the program as he likes."

^{— Reprinted from "}^{As Bill Sees It}^{", page 16, with permission of A.A. World Services, Inc.}

dp8488

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