Telling people they're powerless over alcohol/substances is dangerous

In her book Quit Like a Woman, Holly Whitaker explains why she didn't find AA the right solution for her. Her words might resonate with you, OP. Definitely worth a read when you're mentally ready to give up. Similar approach to Alan Carr (whom she refers to quite a bit) but adds in working on yourself to heal the traumas that led you to booze in the first place.

When you say you have character defects OP what do you mean by that? It sounds like a pretty harsh thing to say about yourself.
Is drinking a form of self harm for you I wonder? You know it's damaging you but you don't think you deserve better. Just a thought.
I hope you find a way out to deal with the underlying issues, it sounds like you have had a very traumatic life.

If you’re using alcohol problematically on a regular basis, the fact that you can also sometimes “just have one” is nothing more than a delay mechanism for dealing with your alcohol problem.

Almost all people with addiction issues can control them some of the time.

I haven’t read the whole thread but how is this serving you @FlyingMasticatedParticles ?
You're clutching at straws to avoid addressing your polyaddictions.

It's not an either/ or. People are rarely 'powerless,' but the whole empowerment message assumes that we all start from an equal footing and IME is usually spouted by those in a fairly privileged position and demonstrates their own ignorance more than anything.

Addiction usually stems from a desire/ need to escape from a situation or from oneself. Someone that hasn't had that need can't relate - they equate it to themselves turning down a drink or saying no to drugs. It's a bit like sharing diet tips with someone who's actually starving and expecting them to follow the same 'good' advice while ignoring their hunger.

I spent decades drinking too much and never managed to cut down. Started meds for adhd and the desire disappeared overnight. Now it's easy to turn down a drink, I make the decision whereas before it was a compulsion - the power it took me to turn down a drink was immense. I very rarely succeeded, cue a spiral of self loathing. Now there's nothing to it. We do not walk the same path in the same shoes, could be neurodivergence, mental health, trauma. It's not the drink or the drug but what it does for the person. Empowerment has fuck all to do with it.

The thing about alcohol is, I know lots of people who are alcoholics and would have this exact discussion about control/ powerlessness/ I’ll stop when I really want to etc then it creeps up - the physical dependence. You start getting unwell when you try to stop. Getting the DTs. My dad used to shake so bad, have seizures. He couldn’t physically stop anymore. Had to go to hospital to detox.
Trying to convince yourself you’re in control, however you phrase it, is a symptom of being an addict. I think a part of it is needing to hold on to that bit of self hatred tbh - you need that to keep destroying yourself.

I've been sober 9 years - my issue with the AA approach is that it continues to make your life all about alcohol, thinking about it, talking about it, taking it one day at a time.

When I stopped drinking one of the things I found was called 'Rational Recovery' it was developed by someone who HATES AA - he comes across as a bit unhinged but I really liked the very straight forward approach - Just decide you are not going to drink and don't drink.

I obviously looked for other support too but that's basically the nub of it.

The powerless thing is about accepting that you are not the type of person who can just go out for one drink. I think that acknowledgment can be helpful for some people with addiction.

I'm an ex-drinker and I believe problem drinking is an addiction i.e. a powerful and initially unconscious mechanism which, ironically, people adopt to protect themselves: from unregulated feelings, traumas, stress and so on. The 'solution', though, becomes the problem.

I'm not an advocate of AA but, to be fair, I think the idea of 'powerlessness' can be a way of explaining that you will need time, support and permanent changes to your life to become sober, not just 'willpower' or self-disgust. It highlights the illusion of simple control of addiction. The rate of lapse / relapse is high especially at first and I don't believe any addict recovered by being shamed, excluded, or villified. Only a minority of addicts are visible because they have become social problems, the rest are working, paying taxes, living in families and struggling along.

Of course addicts can make choices (physical addiction complicates this in that substances can't simply be stopped) and I'm a big believer in harm reduction - if you must drink, you mustn't drive, if you have to smoke or binge-eat you don't have to do it in front of children. You make a choice to remove yourself from situations which could harm others. Most problem drinkers who aren't physically addicted can hold off drinking on days when it's necessary - waiting for a Friday night reward, it's not a simple compulsion, but it's persistent and life-long.

Becoming free of all substance addiction - one addiction tends to be replaced by another - is a long, hard road, and while you could argue it's a duty to try, it is not a simple matter of making our minds up to stop using, not at all.

I also find aspects of AA flawed, after being in rehab and going to meetings in my early twenties. I’m not sure I agree that choosing not to start drinking moderately means you aren’t recovered. For someone who has caused a lot of destruction or health consequences from their alcohol or drug use, it could be quite a responsible and empowered choice…. Which would actually speak to their recovery more. To be honest, if I was like some of the other inpatients I met, I would never have walked into the same room as a substance.

I think the other thing rehab taught me was that substance abuse and dependency can look different in different people. For some people (myself included), their alcohol or drug use was functioning as a self-destructive behaviour and poor way of managing stress and trauma. For these people, the substance is quite secondary. Dealing with the underlying issues typically fixes the problem. The problem was never alcohol or drugs, so it doesn’t remain. On the other hand there seemed to being people who were highly physiologically dependent, and driven by physical symptoms such as cravings and obsessive thinking about drugs and alcohol. The substance would consume their thought, not just ‘I want to get wasted because I can’t cope with memories of abuse (as an example’. The battle seemed different for those people. It also makes sense if you think about how differently people’s brains respond to chemicals, or things like strong pain relief. I know people who get an absolute physical buzz from powerful painkillers and crave more opioid based ones after a day or so. They obviously don’t continue them, but they can generally appreciate how dependent they can become! For me, opioid painkillers do zero for me. They don’t usually even work for the bloody pain! Different biology and all that.

Who's sober OP?

The ones in AA who believe this?
Or you who doesn't?

I'm getting to realise that I'm the issue, it's not something I "can't help"

You are still misunderstanding the basic principle. People can't help having a predisposition to addiction. They can help themselves manage it through better choices, though it's a sliding scale. No addiction organisation sees addicts as completely helpless -- if they did, what would the point be in the organisation existing?

Some people have a predisposition to addiction that kicks in incredibly early and strongly, much moreso than for most people, and it results in rapid severe consequences.

Others have a predisposition to addiction that is not as immediately severe but becomes more ingrained and worsens through years of feeding the addiction, as addiction is progressive.

At a certain point, either type of person can reach a stage where their ability to help themselves is extremely limited due to the strength of the addiction.

I just don't see there's anything much different in 'recognising a character flaw' and making better choices in respect of it and 'recognising a physical drive for a substance' and making better choices in respect of it.

I have seen enough to come to believe that some people are just as "fated" to stay selfish or unempathetic or inconsiderate or even psychopathic as they are to stay substance-reliant.

There's always some back-story to negative qualities/a pattern of self-harmful or other-harmful behaviour. And there's always the possibility of choosing to change the behaviour or not change the behaviour.

Whether you put a person's continued failure to change down to having a certain type of personality or a certain type physical condition, when they keep being who they are and doing what they do, after a while it becomes easier to understand why the ancients attributed so much to fate.

"I'm selfish"/"I have poor impulse control" doesn't seem terribly far away from "I have a condition that drives me to drink" to me.

And "I could stop drinking if I wanted to, I just don't want to" doesn't seem terribly far away from "I can't seem to stop drinking" either.

I think the point is though that if you never had the first one then you would never be in a situation where it might get out of hand/all bets are off.

Personally I find it way easier to never drink at all than to deal with the endless negotiation with self/feelings shit when I drank too often or too much.

It's not necessarily that you turn into an unstoppable drink and drugs machine as soon as you wet the whistle (although I might!), if you simply never have one you never have to worry about that. It's way easier.

Those I’ve known who made it into recovery and stayed there or are still there changed a lot of other things too. Changed friendship groups and never associated with former addict friends either. One guy used do amazing diy and carpentry (keeping busy) and others took up new pastimes and sports. I don’t care what they do to stay busy, I just felt heartfelt gratitude that they are still around. That I can enjoy their sober wisdom and enjoy the sense of humour. Taking what you need is a great phrase…

It’s absolutely a choice. Calling it anything other than that is disempowering. Yes there are powerful forces governing the choice ….. but it is a choice

I have known quite a few people with addiction problems, including several in my extended family. The few who have got clean and continue to stay clean have only done so once they have accepted that they cannot ever casually enjoy their vices (ie. a couple of drinks, occasional drug taking) or indeed any other addictive substance. This is not the same as saying that they have no choice or responsibility for their actions- far from it, they accept that the responsibility but recognising that for them this means making the choice to totally abstain. To get to this point they have been through stages of denying their addictions and claiming that they could be clean/sober whenever they choose, several stages of claiming that they have been clean/sober for a while so can go back to casual use and in one case persuading themselves that they could swap one addictive substance for something slightly softer and be absolutely fine as a casual user.

Sadly several of the people I have known have lost their lives to their addictions, including people who always promised themselves they could give up whenever they decided it was the right time.

You know what, though? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

I got sober not in AA, I actually had a massive trauma which sort of shocked me into sobriety. But before that I went to AA a few times. I don't think there's anything wrong with AA filling a gap that was created by addiction if you're not longer unhappy and struggling and potentially killing yourself. Although it depends on the group as I've also been to some cliquey ones

I think whatever works for you works and you should do it, doesn't matter if it's the "right" way to get sober. I'm not in AA but I will quote them saying take what you need and leave the rest

This is about the way addicts tell ourselves we can "just have one" and "can stop any time we choose".

Those things are not true, we are not in charge of our substance/behaviour. We're powerless.

The only way to deal with it is to stop engaging. We can't negotiate with it.

Your OP reads a lot like someone in an abusive relationship explaining why she's still there and won't just leave. She could just leave, but she won't while she's telling everyone she knows what she's doing and doesn't want any support.

Hmm. It's a weird one. In a sense we all have "choice" in a lot of things, but how free that "choice" really is depends on a whole range of other factors.

I do think that fundamentally addicts need to "choose" to get sober in order to do so - no one can do that for them - especially in the long term. And they'd then need to keep "choosing" sobriety, most actively to start with.

But, there are many things that go hand in hand with addiction that make that "choice" a lot more loaded. Psychological effects of addiction, sickness from physical addiction, comorbid mental illness, social pressure, trauma, multiple disadvantage - these things all make it less straightforward than "I'm choosing to be in active addiction".

However, acknowledging the extremely difficult and loaded choices needed to get clean, yes I do think in order to get sober you do need to make a "choice" to do so. And bloody hell well done anyone who does it!

I think there are two sides to this argument. I think your view is self empowering, it’s useful for motivation and self worth. But it could also leave you open to self loathing and pain if you have a slip. You have to be realistic we’re all human. You have to be compassionate to your self and loved ones….it’s difficult to be the family member of any kind of addict. Something in the human soul seeks some kind of medicine at times. Self treating emotional hurts, real physical pain or horrors in one’s past is a soul trying to cope. One doesn’t always have a healthy outlet and some people are presented with dire circumstances are traumatised and have completely lost hope. Biologically there’s a gene pool to consider and being aware of your responses and liklihoods gives you time to turn around and choose wisely, I don’t beat up on people who make the wrong choice but I feel for them. As a child it was harder. I always felt my father chose drink over us, when married I thought my husband chose drink over me and my little daughter, I felt that three times as that child, as a mother and as my little girl. Frustrated. But I felt for him too he’d had no help for a longtime, then suddenly it was over. My dad dealt with his demons as did my sister but I just felt it was all around us, and many times I was utterly lost emotionally. Trying to bring them to sense. I like the positivity of your approach and I want it to work for you, there is the disease process and dependency side of the process too though, the actual biochemical effects of the substance to deal with that makes choices much much harder. It might help you to read up about the clinical nature of addiction and why it’s not just down to choice, though as you heal choosing to be healthy is really positive. I wish you well, enjoyed your post.

Haven't RTFT but I like the philosophy of 'you don't have a drink/drug problem, you have a problem and you are using drink/drugs to try and solve that problem'.

Ref the soldiers who got addicted to heroin in Vietnam and didn't carry on using once they left the army.