Spent most of the week in the wilderness, drinking only detox levels of alcohol. The amount it would take to stop me from shaking and hallucinating giant worms chewing their way out of my body, etc. I haven’t actually tried not drinking. I am probably not at the level where I’d have any real effects, I’d probably just be crabby. But I read somewhere that you can’t just stop drinking, that it could kill you. So I use this as an excuse to drink. I am “tapering off.”
After this, who knows. Maybe I’ll join Alcoholics Anonymous. Except every person I’ve ever known in Alcoholics Anonymous sucks. They’re either a sanctimonious pain in the ass who can’t shut the fuck up about “the program” or they’re just– you sit in a room with them and you feel the waves of misery shimmering off them. They broadcast unhappiness. They are touchy, sensitive to slight, humorless, cruel when they have a chance. I don’t want to be one of these people.
They tell you you can get laid in Alcoholics Anonymous, but of course, like all the other places they tell you you can get laid it’s bullshit. I’ve been to a couple meetings and it’s a sausage fest. 8 to 1, 9 to 1. About a Los Angeles bar ratio in other words, and the guys who are pulling ass are probably the long haulers, the experienced AA guys who can reassuringly quote the Big Book to the girl bass player who just got her third DUI. Like any cult, the new guy doesn’t get pussy. You probably have to spend years horning your way in to some social scene of people who drink coffee in diners at 1am and trade stories about relatives they ran over. Shaky failed comedians who sit around and one up each other with stories of how bad they once were.
And who wants to hear about shit like that.
delicioustacos 
Obviously, your readers want to hear shit like that. (Rimshot)
Are you kidding? You of all people will most certainly get laid as a result of an AA meeting. Just go.
Oh fuck you wordpress.
So true, so horrible, so funny.
The girls at AA are hot, you just have to find the right location maybe. I went a couple times with my friend who got a DUI.
It wasn’t like the movies where you sit in a circle with ten people and cry. It was a multi-level auditorium packed with people, many of whom were hot crazy bitches.
There are one or two times during the night where they declare a smoke break and EVERYONE goes outside and chain smokes to compensate for the fact that they can’t be drinking. There’s like two hundred people on the sidewalk, shrouded in smoke. A confusing and possibly cancer-inducing experience for any pedestrian who happens to stumble into it. Perfect time to socialize.
The speakers tell some pretty hilarious stories. Well, hilarious mixed with fucked up sad shit. I was always impressed by how sharp they were. Maybe you have to be exceptional to stay sober for ten or twenty years (the speakers were always people who hit a big anniversary that night).
I never pulled any girls from it because we always smoked a blunt in the car on the way and I was too high to contemplate talking to anyone by the time we got there. Afterwards we would get drunk, naturally.
This was just my experience though. Some AA places probably suck. I found it fascinating.
By the way, addicts tell these kinds of stories not to brag or boast or one-up each other, but to constantly remind ourselves how fucked up our lives were so we don’t fall back into addiction. We tend to have short term memory problems when it comes to the misery of drug and alcohol abuse.
one of the reasons i have not been able to go to more than a handful of meetings is because i feel like a peace of meat in those rooms–worse than i ever have in a bar. Men hunt women in AA and many women are coerced or even raped by sponsor constructs. repulsive and unbearable.
Women aren’t allowed to have male sponsors and vice versa, Emily. Not really sure what you’re talking about when you say women are getting raped by their sponsors. You mean lesbians raping other chicks? I guess anything’s possible. Are there guys in the rooms “13th stepping,” i.e., trying to pick up vulnerable chicks? Sure there are. But where the fuck doesn’t that happen? School, work, bars, supermarkets, fucking dog parks – you are getting hit on everywhere you go. It’s certainly not condoned. There’s no “rape culture” in AA. Matter of fact, the women who’ve been in there awhile watch for that shit like hawks and tip the new girls off to it. The meetings themselves may be co-ed, but women are strongly encouraged to foster relationships and support networks with other women, and men with men, exactly for that reason. That’s why when you go to a meeting and they pass around the list of phone numbers, the women get the women’s and the men get the men’s.
I can honestly say that I don’t do it. I mean, I’ve banged a couple of chicks in there, but most of them I knew from middle school and shit like that. We were already acquainted, already had a rapport predating the meetings. I don’t prey on emotionally vulnerable new girls. I would say 99.9% of the relationships are consensual.
Anyway, let’s face it, these aren’t exactly girl scouts we’re talking about here. The vast majority of the girls in twelve step meetings have been through enough shit that they’re able to let a couple unwanted advances slide off their back.
We don’t all let bullshit ‘slide of our backs’—just not that powerless
http://leavingaa.com/alternativeto12step,StopsexualharassmentinAA/sexual-predators-in-aa/
The Culture of Recovery — Making Sense of the Self-Help Movement in Women’s Lives
by Elayne Rapping
Many Roads, One Journey : Moving Beyond the Twelve Steps
by Charlotte Davis Kasl
That’s part of the reason that they recommend you get a same sex sponsor. Not all meetings are good places, but not all meetings are bad either. If you put in the time to go to 90 meetings in 90 days, you will surely find a place where you are comfortable. However, just like in Lotto, you can’t win if you don’t play!
Dude, stop projecting your compulsive fears onto Alcoholics Anonymous, because that’s all you’re doing here. You’re defending your right to drink with a fucking frightened determination. And you certainly have that right. After all, it’s your life, but let’s call a spade a spade here: you’re afraid if you stop drinking you won’t be funny anymore. You’re afraid if you stop drinking you won’t get laid anymore. You’re afraid if you stop drinking you won’t be able to write anymore. You’re afraid if you stop drinking you won’t be able to fucking LIVE anymore. But most of all I think you’re afraid to ask for help.
You are halfway through the first step – the place of truth where every addict begins an honest journey:
We admit that we are powerless over our addiction, and that our lives have become unmanageable.
When you take a solitary moment to be honest with yourself about why you remain addicted to alcohol, then you can drop the delusion that you are tapering off and ask for some help.
Until then, nothing and no one can help you.
Maybe you can do it on your own. I know I couldn’t. And I know that going to AA and NA meetings is the only thing that has kept me clean. All it is is a support system and a set of guidelines to stay sober. It’s not a “cult”. There is no fucking grand leader of AA you have to worship or pledge fealty to. All it is is a group of people saying, “here’s what works for us. If you want what we have, try it out. If not, there’s the door.”