Quote:
Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan
One of my closest friends got to the point that she'd drink wine that had been opened for a few days and turned bad. Didn't seem to notice or care that it was downright awful. She lived down the street from me for years, and would stop by my house two or three times a week. I'd hide the booze in my house from her and stopped stocking wine all together, because I knew three or four bottles would be emptied if she came by. So did her roommate, who eventually moved out because of the drinking. It was really, really hard to talk to her about it, and several of us tried. But it wasn't until my boyfriend, another addict (15 years clean off of cocaine) came into our circle of friends that she had someone to talk to in langauage that she could understand that she started thinking about trying to quit. She tried on her own, and failed miserably, and then went to outpatient rehab.
It's been a year. She stopped going to meetings after about four months; she sort of thought of those meetings as being cultish. She says that she can control it now, but I'm not so sure. This spring, she had her contract non-renewed, and as of August 31, she's out of a job. I'm pretty sure that her drinking led to the poor performance evaluation that led to the non-renewal of her contract. I'm also pretty sure that had she NOT been through rehab, she would have spent the spring inside a bottle. But the closer and closer she's getting to that August 31 deadline, the more her drinking is becoming something we're worried about. She's moving to Costa Rica next week for a two month clear her head and figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. I hope that there are meetings in Costa Rica, and I hope that she has the good sense to go to them. I doubt it though.
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I think your friend needs to revisit her definition of a cult. I assume she was just looking for a disparaging term for group membership in general. The best definition I've heard for a cult is that it combines a high degree of interest in novel religious beliefs with a high degree of tension with society. It seems to me, and I think any person without an axe to grind, that AA is the polar opposite of both. So to your friend, "cult" simply means "group that has expectations of its members." If she thinks that's bad and wrong, her prognosis is very poor.
I shall pray for your friend to my invisible god who wrote a book about himself 2,000 years ago but failed to invent IP law until some years later. He's a bit of a doofus but well-meaning and with a wicked sense of humor.
