Posted by ClearSkies on September 7, 2005, at 7:20:30
In reply to Re: One week clean » ClearSkies, posted by luvdove on September 7, 2005, at 6:42:47
Thanks for asking.
I have a sponsor, and funny enough I had a good rant about her at my outpatient appointment yesterday, because...
she said I "need" to stop taking the Xanax I'm prescribed for GAD and panic attacks. I replied that I'm up front with my p-doc; that I take 1mg per day or less as needed; and I understand that a therapeutic dosage is between 2 and 6mg per day, so - where's the problem?
Oh, she said, you're going to abuse it now that you're sober. No question.Can you see the hackles rising on the back of my neck?
So I brought it up at the group meeting and the coordinator said, "yes - your brain chemistry has been altered by alcoholism and there is no doubt that you will start to abuse the Xanax now that you are sober."So I turned to her and asked whether she was advising that I *not* follow my doctor's instructions. I said - who am I supposed to trust here? My intuition? My doctor, who knows ALL about my history and endorses my treatment plan, or my sponsor, and now you? She back-pedalled and said that at the moment, since I have plenty of support IRL what with the Women For Sobriety group, outpatient treatment, p-doc and therapist, that maybe I should "suspend my activities in AA" because I'm getting mixed messages. Or, she said, I could continue to go to meetings, but told me not to share and speak about my depression, which has kept me from being able to work for months now, and "be careful".
OK, so it takes me bashing my head against a wall for 5 years off and on before something finally sinks in. And though I am extremely intuitive, I have forced myself to return to AA time and again because I've been told that it's the only way I'm going to stay sober. It doesn't feel right - in fact it feels like a betrayal to my very soul for me swallow the concept, that only AA will save my life. Yet, that is the exact message that they convey, at every single meeting.
Having gone the AA route about a dozen times and not been comfortable nor felt the fellowship in the meetings, can I finally admit that It Doesn't Work For Me? I am who I am - an alcoholic who is bipolar and suffers from anxiety, has a lifeboat filled with immediate family members with either one or the other dx, and AA cannot be a safe place for me. It's not that I haven't tried other meetings - women only, closed, open, speaker, step, up north, down south... the message is consistent: I don't belong there.
And then I cried for 2 hours.
poster:ClearSkies
thread:545328
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20050722/msgs/551819.html