"Happy Saturday!"
When I became sober I went to meetings. When I first became sober I read "only" approved literature. When I first became sober I listen to leads, people who shared and listened to what everyone said. When I first became sober I was naive, scared and innocent to the whole program. I did what I was told to do, say what to say and think the way others told me how things should be, can be and how they will be. I was a robot!
After some years in the program I started to learn more things about myself. I chose to go to outside therapy and deal with things I knew I could not deal with in the program. I started to make my own choices. I started to make my own decisions,...healthy ones that is. I started to trust me. I started to understand the politics, the cliques and the strait jackets,...another word I use for the Big Book Thumpers. Do not get me wrong, the program is a great place to get sober, learn about yourself and grow into a respected, loving and trusted human being...if one is willing to choose that path. However, I frown on how the program has revolved over the years and how so many people think they have the right to govern it the way they think it should be. Hopefully, the newcomer then will either snap out of the fog or continue to think in a closed minded and co-dependent way. I pray for those newcomers who are so desperately trying to stay sober and are taken advantage of or are brain washed into something that the program is not at all intended to be or teach in the first place. Has anyone notice this? Has anyone said anything about this at their group conscious meetings when this is noticed? Does anyone care?
Non-approved literature is anything that is not written by AA, Al-Anon or any other 12 step program in that matter. Who are these people who write this stuff and how are they chosen over someone else in the program to be the "God Almighty Approved King or Queen of These Books?" How are they chosen?,... maybe I am missing something here, but if I am, I really do not care to know,...it is very controlling and almost a turn off to any of these programs. Well, I write in my Sobriety Fitness blog and many come to read my experience, strength and hope and I am not approved literature,...WHAT? How am I different from them? I would rather read something from someone who has actually gone through struggles in there life than someone who hasn't and has only learned about it through a text book. Doesn't that make more sense? It is like taking advice on how to raise your child that has never had a child?,...What? Coming too, means more than just stopping are way of our chosen addiction,...it is also coming to with our needs, wants and love for our own self! Who is the one who determines all these rules,...I will tell you this it is not Dr. Bob and Bill W.,...for they have passed on and bless their souls for they can not be here to answer, let alone want to see how this has all changed to these distorted and controlling ways the program has become for some. I wanted to talk about this because I had an experience once when a woman was going to share a topic at a meeting and she continued to talk about how she was reading this book,...Yes!, you guessed it...it was NOT approved literature...well that was all she had to say for the whole group,...(except me and a couple more), they continued to tell her she could not talk about this book and that the topic should be changed,...blah, blah, blah....etc! I was in shock to see this response and let me just clue you all in,...it is the 2000's and things have changed tremendously as for books on recovery, quotes and anything else that may help us be better humans today. Sadly, the woman that got reprimanded at the meeting never came back and when I called her and told her the "principles over personality" way of thinking,...her response was, "There is only so much you can take and for me there is nothing healthy about what was said!" After she said that, I had to take my own inventory and examine my thinking as well and know that she may have been healthier than that group itself. I looked at her comment or response back to me as a gift from God and that there are tons of meetings and other people in the program that are way more "open minded" and really want help for themselves and not come to meetings to dictate, control and manipulate newcomers. I will read non-approved literature! It has allowed me to have a better recovery!
Have you ever experienced this at a meeting or with others in the program or even in a Facebook recovery group? I have, and I choose to be open minded for this allows me to love, accept and remain teachable to anyone or anything! I will always keep learning!
Today, I will run with an open mind and realize how many gifts I have received in my recovery, only because I chose to do so!
Sobriety Fitness by Cathy Shuba is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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