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Re: One week clean... » ClearSkies

Posted by 4wd on October 7, 2005, at 22:10:05

In reply to Re: One week clean... » luvdove, posted by ClearSkies on September 7, 2005, at 7:20:30

> 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.

Dear Clear Skies,

Hi. I don't usually post here, just happened by because I am in recovery. I just want you to know that not all AA groups are like the one you go to. I am in recovery from hydrocodone abuse and I got there through AA. I tried NA and they laid the NO DRUGS crap on me. I am on Celexa and Klonopin. My AA sponsor tells me to follow my doctor's instructions. No one hassles me. Many if not most of the people in my AA groups are on ADs.

I used to abuse benzodiazepines. Specifically ATivan. But I have terrible anxiety and I now take Klonopin for it (after no benzos for over 20 years). I do not abuse it. I take less, way less, than prescribed. So there is NOT a guarantee that you will abuse the Xanax. That makes me furious. Does the Xanax make you high at all? Or do you take it for the reason it is prescribed? If so, take it and forget it.

If you want to correspons via babblemail, I'd be glad to help if I can. I am very depressed and anxious so I don't know if I will be much use but I went through the same thing you are going through when I tried going to NA and it made me almost lose my mind before I found AA. (I live in coastal Alabama and I've heard our groups here are really good). Most of us are addicts as well as alcoholics and a lot of us are just addicts and we are accepted.

Marsha


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