AA makes me want to drink
I have been going to AA on and off now for what feels like years, first in my small-ish town, and then online. There are not many IRL meetings where I live and at first I liked the one I found, until 1) someone of the same sex hit on me (I’m 26 yrs married to someone of the ss, but come ON); 2) someone made a *wild* anti-Semitic comment to me (it was so weird and antiquated that it made me laugh until I realized how awful it felt); 3) three of my immediate male neighbors go to the same meeting (!), one of them has always skeeved me out, and then he started talking about his sex life during shares. I stopped going and found a great online meeting that I loved. Was told I had to do 90/90 for chronic relapse, I did it and after it was over every day, I’d immediately open a bottle of wine.
I keep coming back over and over and over, and relapsing over and over and over. I had a good sponsor who called me constantly, and it felt annoying and intrusive. I had another sponsor who I really liked, who just never responded to me. I’ve been through the first 2 steps with a sponsor and without, over and over. Ive worked with two therapists who were addiction counselors, one of them was particularly cruel, and the other broke up with me when I had Covid and was medicated by my doctor with something she didn’t approve of (it felt like projection, and she never billed me for our last session).
I’m now in what I call “the gully”- the space between my leaving and then returning to meetings; I decided to moderate and was successful until I wasn’t and drinking 1-2 nights a week became nightly again. Of course. The gully can last anywhere from a few months to a year, until I wake up feeling horrible self-loathing that cancels out my “I can handle wine, it’s fine” tendencies. I feel lost and confused.
AA sometimes really pisses me off: the slogans, the relentless insistence on 90/90, the feeling that it’s just another addiction replacing alcoholism—Program people tell me they want me to give in and get to a point where it’s not ruling my life. Even though AA keeps it in your life, in another kind of ruling manner.
I feel like I’m on a merry go round, I’m 62, and I feel like a constant liar, mostly to myself. I don’t know who I am.