Saved a Relapsing Acoholic's Life this AM (12th step call)

Doh!

One-a-Day Plus Irony

I find it rather inappropriate that what started out to be a fine thread on alcoholism recovery is now sinking into the muck and mire replete with tired jokes, and an obvious personal agenda. Are we here to stalk or are we here to talk?

I thought this was a thread about Kansans beating up gays. My mistake, Sglass.

Carry on with the fine thread about alcoholism recovery.

I honestly hope that neither you nor someone near to you ever needs something like a "fine thread about alcoholism recovery".

Thanks, Walter. I hope the same for you.

Well, I'm a sober alcoholic for nearly exactly 25 years now.

I knew that, WH. Continuing congratulations on your sobriety.

No need for that, Tico: I had (and have) no alternative.

Well, the 72 hour required hold is now up after which Jeff can go home and pick up drinking again or he can go into rehab. I pray he chooses the latter.

While drunk he said he wanted to go into residential treatment, so I betting he will make the decision after three days of detox.

Jeff was released and he is now home, he talked to my sponsor and she said he thanked us both fo rescuing him. My sponsor did not know him while sober and she said he sounds like a completely different person now.

Excellent Roxxx - Get over and see him if you can, and if he's in good enough shape take him to a meeting, or take a meeting to him.

This is the highest form of service in AA.

Sg

I gotta weigh in here...

"Saved a life"? Look... the program is supposed to be about humility, and if we are fortunate enough to say or do something that helps another drunk, we are taught not to take credit for it anyway.

Every bit of wisdom I've ever gotten in AA has taught me that individuals only take credit for PASSING ON something that they themselves were given. Every time I see someone talking about what "I" did and what "I" know, it always ends up being some form of twisted thinking.

It is, in great part our egos and our inflated and warped views of ourselves that causes us to be the grandiose (and morose, in turns of the same self-centered coin) types of personalities we are.

At 7 or 8 months sober its a great blessing for you to have had the opportunity to help someone else. It is a chance to be freed from the bondage of the self that we are often too absorbed with, and to focus on another living human. But it is unnerving to see someone take that, and then crow about how they "saved someones life". Something about that just seems wrong in general, and definitely ain't in the spirit of the principles of the program the way I've gotten them...

Could not have said it better myself. ..

Jeff woke up this morning.

Because of a 12-step call Jeff woke up this morning. Jeff is alive and grateful to two women who took time out of their lives to be there for him and get him the help that saved his life.

Roxxx is a diva and is very dramatic. She is newly sober and is a pendulum swinging between old and new behaviors. She hasn't learned that humility is a new behavior pattern. And of course she wants to take credit. Like a child taking their first step, and the pride that comes from that accomplishment. Of course she wants attention and approval for her good deed. So what it is arrogant. Years from now, she will think about this day, with years of humility under her belt, and laugh at herself for being so full of herself.

It's OK, she hasn't hurt anyone and Jeff is alive today.

Sglass, March 17, 1981

I have to agree with Snood and Shewolf. I don't see this thread as anything to help those on the road to recovery. I see it as...See what I have done and how great I am for doing it.

If the thread had simply said that Jeff was in trouble and he found the help that he needed without writing about WHO helped him, I could see this as a good thread.

In it's present state, I find it a lttle too much of the I thing.

Sorry, but that is how I see it.

I am, however, very glad that this fellow had the opportunity to try and bring his life back online.

I know where you're coming from, Sglass, and where the others are, too, but I rather favour being on the generous side (live and let live) - if she must tell people, she must. No real problem there. People can just not click into her posts.

I agree mame....and as far as feeling she saved someone...well, that's how she feels.

It does no good to tell someone they are "wrong" about how they feel. In essence, you are just telling them how You feel, and that your feelings are correct, and theirs are wrong.

Rox is right on track for 7-8 months sober.....pink cloud high, can't remember ever feeling so good about simple being alive. I for one simply hopes she remembers to carry her pink parachute.


If someone was suffering from depression, got therapy and on proper meds and everything, and shortly after starting to feel better...better than they ever thought was possible, and they said something akin to; I saved someones life....would we immediately just tell them they were tooting their own horn? I would personally tell them "great!" while realizing they were experiencing things for the first time, and needed to express it.

Did Rox literally save someone's life that night (apologies to Sir Elton)?

She very well could have. Saving someone's life may not involve rushing out and pushing someone away from an oncoming auto, or something equally heroic.

The simple fact that she showed up, and at 911 was called at some point, says there was a crisis going on that could have led to death. If she hadn't come when called...would he perhaps have overdosed and died?

So what if this wouldn't be some AA approved thread? It's still a thread about a persons stressful situation.

If someone other than Rox had come on, and used ever so slightly different words, people would be praising her.

If she left out the fact she's in AA...and simply told a story how a friend called her and she went over and it was a really bad scene, so she called 911, and that somehow she feels she saved his life...would putting the word "somehow" and "feels" make it all better?

Perhaps one of us will save someone's life today by simply leaving the house one minute earlier or later and getting into our lethal 2 ton steel missle...avoiding hitting them. We just won't know it....

Getting sober is an act of humility.

I always liked what my first sponsor, a lady with 35 years in the program said. "Humility is the ability to see yourself as others see you, the ultimate in humility is to see yourself as God sees you."

oh...btw sglass...I just read your post and agree.

Each of us here have our personalites, which we are all familiar with.

We know Rox for instance, and I don't think she'd deny it, is all about drama.

Well...that's who she is.....accept it.

If her story is over the top for some, it's reflective of a persons communication style....adapt it in your mind to your style.

It still comes out that she did a good thing, and regardless of AA, that in itself is good.