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You obviously don't understand the concept of AA, of recovery, or of addiction. You didn't "quit". No one does. It's not a crutch. It assistance to remain in recovery from a serious disorder.
And as far as it being a "Christian recruitment" group, the only folks I've ever heard who've said that are militant atheists who really don't understand AA. The "higher power" doesn't have to mean a deity. I can give several examples of people who I knew who used something completely different as their "higher power". AA often gets criticized for using "God", but there are meetings that omit the higher power from it's literature.
I am very happy to hear you are doing better. From my experience, there are two kinds of AA meetings. The first are the dogmatic with no flexibility and with many punishing rules. The second are more flexible and understand that "not one size fits all" even when it comes to addicts. Currently in my caseload. I am treating several clients with depression. Under no circumstances to I treat them using the same techniques and types of psychotherapy. These are people, not examples in a textbook. Not all AA meetings are the dogmatic ones that some folks are describing. If I hear a client describe their experience at a meeting like that, I tell them to try a different meeting. An AA meeting that tells it's members that they can't take meds is a meeting to be avoided, for example.
AA doesn't work for everyone. It is neither the only roadmap for success from addiction, nor is it a crutch or a preventative for recovery.
"Reading between the lines" that was AWFUL for you. That is an excellent example of AA meetings to avoid at all costs, and I can understand your feelings towards AA. Not all meetings are like that. But this does bring up one of AA's failings. No real centralized management. I understand why... anonymity and all. But it does make it difficult to weed out the bad apples.
Know you have met me. I was mentally rock bottom and that caused me to accept help and work towards my beating my addiction.
And I am not talking about drugs, I am talking purely about alcohol and gambling. With drugs there is a need for consequences or order because there is so much of a chemical need to force someone to accept help in drugs that is much less prevalent in gambling and alcohol. At least that is my opinion.
No famous supporters of Two Faced Trump, it is not Lying Comey just because he says things Trump does not like!!
My guess is that your rock bottom yielded consequences. Perhaps you were going to lose your house... or your job... or your wife... or your family... or were going to go to jail... or your health... or something else. Without the threat of consequences, there would be no reason to stop.
To lose her PT license due to alcohol, and need 90 meetings to get it back doesn't sound like that bad a deal. Around here PT is a pretty decent occupation paying reasonably well with good working conditions, and it pays especially well for an indie in home-healthcare if they build-up a decent clientele - I know several PTs doing just that.
To walk away from one's profession and remain unemployed in lieu of 90 days of meetings, sounds a bit short-sighted to me.
I suspect your friend might have a bit more going on here, like she's still drinking or having issues coming to grip with paying the price for her mistakes. Or even perhaps she is addicted and is caught-up in 'addiction thinking', interfering with her decision processes.
This is an interesting thread. I've attended some 12 step meetings in the UK (though not AA) and read some AA material. I like the spontaneous origins of it and the genuine desire of fellow addicts to muddle through and help each other. Just telling and hearing stories of sobriety alone can be amazingly inspiring, even to non-addicts. As psychotherapy has become more specialised, I guess that specialists have had more insight into the dynamics of 12 step groups and I can see a lot of benefit in a twin approach of psychotherapy and 12 step meetings.
In my limited experience, I felt that many members were slavish in their check-in phone calls, revealed too much about their lives too quickly, and the process of reckoning-up to the past (is that stage 4?) seemed to be interminable and over-scrupulous. I didn't get a good feeling that these people were really making progress, but more that they were stuck in a loop and that the whole group had some boundary issues (me too).
My conclusion is that people with fragile personalities will find it harder to get the best from 12 step meetings and avoid these pitfalls without the balance that a good therapist can bring. I think people are a lot more fragile in 2015 then when the founders of AA started up, and this needs to be reflected in the structure.
But to finish on a positive note, the big problem that addicts have is that they tried to deal with their problems on their own, and so swing from extreme independence to extreme dependence (on whatever substance). Good group support is about creating interdependence but over-dependence on the group along the way is almost inevitable to some degree.