Time for me to weigh in here with some alternative suggestions, which may be of interest to John or Jon or anyone who wonders about their relationship with alcohol:

I quit drinking a year and a half ago, cause I felt my life needed changing and sorting out and that was the first thing I needed to do. After 40,000 beers or so, (sixpack a day more or less for twenty years) I figure I'd pretty much had my quota and needed to get more done in my remaining productive years (being 42 and trying to switch from being a usually-unemployed carpenter to a usually-employed techie; a transition I'm still working on )

Like the vast majority of people who succeed in quitting drinking (or smoking) I did not join AA or any other group. And I meant to call up and get some counselling but I never did that either. When I quit it was more or less spontaneous, I was doing a lot of reading and online research in order to study what was happening to me, and work it out.

The first surprise I had was how difficult stopping wasn't. No shakes, no nausea, no physical symptoms whatsoever. (Until I stopped, I'd be into the beer by 11 a.m. most days at home, and desperate for a couple at lunch if I was working. That memory is, more than any other factor and there are many, what keeps me away from the stuff. I don't ever want to feel like that again.)

AA never interested me, partly because I'm a lifelong atheist and not interested in a religious-based program (although you will hear the standard line about how AA also welcomes atheists and agnostics, its sort of like pitying the sinners, not for me thanks); and secondly because if you try on those twelve steps, the first one is to "admit that you are powerless over alcohol."

With all due respect to the folks that this program has helped, I think that's a bunch of crap. If I was powerless over alcohol I'd still be drinking it. I firmly believe, that I quit drinking by finding my personal strength and resources, and utilizing them. That was a conviction I came to before I discovered the existence of some alternative-to-AA groups for which the primary tenets are just those two factors--first, they have a completely non-religiously-oriented recovery program, whatever their beliefs may be, and second, that they use their personal power instead of denying it. You can find out more about this approach at:

www.unhooked.com

I didn't join this group either, or particularly subscribe to their whole platform, but it helps to have support, no doubt about it; two weeks after I had my last beer, I started talking about it on a mailing list of old friends and that helped me a lot.

The peculiar thing you find, in this thread and in the world at large, is how successful AA has been at dominating the discussion, such that society equates sobriety with AA just like burgers and McDonalds. The thing is, people are different, their problems, needs and recovery processes are not all the same, and the AA "everyone follow these steps, and if you question them you're in denial, if you don't keep going to meetings you will relapse and die in the gutter" is actually rather cultlike in its circular logic.

If you look into the subject, you will soon discover that all is not as it appears; there is considerable medical and legal controversy about the effectiveness or lack thereof of the 12-step model, (not to mention its recent application to a host of other problems which are also defined as addictions although they are physiologically very different), the disease model, and whether problem drinkers or alcoholics can ever become moderate social drinkers again.

And this is the second thing that surprised me: when I'd tell people I quit drinking, they'd either say "Why?" or "Have you joined AA? and start to tell me about their involvement with a 12-step program for something or other. For me, the point was to quit drinking and improve my life, not join some club.

A couple of other net resources you should check out:

• The About.com Alcoholism home page--the guide Buddy T. is into AA but there's some good links, slightly buried under "alternative approaches" in the net section to other approaches

• The Stanton Peele Addiction Web Site--some interesting and controversial stuff, and lots of links to other academically-oriented addiction info.

  Whoa, long posting. I DO go on about this stuff.

  John E, join the Cat (if you aren't already a member) and drop me a personal if you want to discuss this further.

  There are many routes out of this swamp.

  Best,

  Bill Cameron aka Willie-O