I have a drinking problem.

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I hope I don't come off as dogmatic. All I can do is share my own experience. I had a friend who was an AA member who sat in stony silence when I celebrated my 2 year sobriety anniversary, because I had done it without AA. I don't necessarily think it's the right place for everyone, but it was and would be the first place I'd start. Because of my social issues I was unable to connect with the other group members outside of the group. Anyway, I like you too leejosepho and wasn't trying to lecture. I don't know how AA is these days. A friend of mine is now deceased after relapsing which set off a set of circumstances that led her to neglect a chronic condition, from which she died. Anyway, she had gone to AA and asked someone to be her sponsor. She was told that she had to have 6 months sobriety before she could get a sponsor. She may have been lying. She was ill and in deep denial, but if it was true that sounds insane to me.

and I appreciate you more than I can express, Lee I have no problem with you, either.

I got sober in a tiny town in Southern Oregon where the AA was started by retirees from the original LA AA group (that was started by two guys, a big book and a coffee maker, I hear) I was the only woman for over two years. My sponsors were all the really old guys sitting around the table and their AlAnon wives clucking around, tending to their needs.

no rehab, no counseling, nothing, just me and cases of New Coke living in an abandoned house used as a cow barn and one meeting a week for two years. You see, it really doesn't matter what your circumstances, AA works if you work it. And I will sing my song of gratitude forever.

Merle

I thank each of you and both of you for your friendship.

Like almost anyone else who had never before been to "A-n-A" or whatever else, I went to my first meeting virtually clueless. I knew I never, never, ever wanted to drink again, and I also knew my next drunk could not possibly be more than just a few days away.

Call it synchronicity, or coincidence or "God-incidents" or whatever, but I can still hardly believe all the things over the previous months that had all "added up" to eventually leading to my being *exactly* where I was and with a very specific group of people at my first (actually second) "real A.A." meeting, but to this day I am convinced I would have soon died drunk if I had tried to begin anywhere else.

Today's AA does not even have a clue, and I can easily prove that:

Just ask anyone there what they would do with someone like me who absoultely could not "Dont' drink" ... and they will come off with some rubbish about him or her still needing to "go get done" ...

... and now I must stop talking before I set myself off on a roll and cannot stop and end up failing to get a couple of computers going for some folks where I work!

I drank for years because I did not understand how to function in life. I think it is probably a very natural habit for Aspies to pick up to prevent us from having to feel the pain we often do. I have had to work very hard not to drink. Even now, when I get really frustrated about something, I want to drink to make it go away.

Since you have not mentioned any out-of-control drinking, I would assume you are not alcoholic ...

"All [alcoholics] have one symptom in common: they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence." ("The Doctor's Opinion" in "A.A.", the book)

However, nobody has to be an alcoholic to suffer the kinds of things you have mentioned:

"We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people ..." (page 52)

I drank over those very same things ... and the Steps are about bringing us into spiritual fellowship with others just like ourselves ... and that leads to ...

"... release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead. Thus we find the fellowship (we share), and so will you." (page 152)

And in my own opinion, that sure beats that damned "Don't drink" club so sadly mistaken for A.A. today!

for me I couldn't imagine what life could possibly be like without it so I couldn't quit because I thought it would be a dark empty void. Then I went to AA and met amazing happy people who didn't need to drink. I've relapsed twice in the time since, about 18 years in march, both times due to isolating myself and getting away from the 'program' of AA and not knowing I was sliding down a slope into relapse. AA is the best thing I ever did, though, both times I got away from it was after moves when I didn't start up going to meetings and get a sponsor in my new town and then eventually it just faded out of my life and I relapsed.

I wish you the best in your recovery, as far as 'not letting yourself touch it again', if you go to AA or other support group that deals with recovery, once you are through withdrawal the desire for it will lessen and you won't have that 'fight' like I hear in that sentence. It will be more natural to stay sober.