(October 16, 2014 at 12:42 pm)Dorian Gray Wrote:(October 15, 2014 at 5:38 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: It's a very bad ruling. A higher power, as it says in the article, can be anything: the greater good, aliens, his girlfriend, or even his own penis. Nothing says the higher power must be divine.People who believe in weird higher powers such as aliens, doorknobs, and penisis probably do not have much success in AA. Then again, people who believe in god do not have much success in AA, so....
When they say "fake it 'til you make it" or some other idiotic platitudes that AA is famous for, it really means "fake it until you're brainwashed." In other words, keep believing until something good happens in your life that you can falsely attribute to whatever your flavor of higher power is, and thus confirm your belief with a fallacy of false assumption.
Obviously, whatever success accrues is not due to an invisible sky god, a coffee mug, tulips, or a pet dog.
It's the individual coughing up the will to do it.
As it turns out, unfortunately, the typical (but not universal) mindset of addicts is if it is actually themselves controlling abstinence, instead of an external agency of some kind (higher power), the thought that they can NOW, FINALLY AND AT LAST, resume drinking and CONTROL IT THIS TIME metastasizes in their corroded brains, and we wind up with one more goddamn relapser.
I firmly believe (after 28 years of sobriety) that the 'higher power' stuff is a necessary fiction in view of the pathology of addiction in most cases.
Obviously, spouting this off at a meeting is contra-indicated, but there are those of us in and around the program that understand.
Ever encounter someone with a coffee mug full of 30 day chips ?? We've got enough relapsers as it is. It is less insane to go with the higher power ruse than to go down a path that leads to a resumption of active addiction.
