Hi,

what's your opinion on 12-step recovery programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous ?

From my own experience, going to AA meetings allowed me to have some sort of a support network, meet people with similar problems, helped me overcome some of my troublesome past issues... and, as I sadly realized, somehow in the meantime during my therapy I decided to become a fucking beta and went extremely far.

And, I'd really like to know, if it was just me OR do those programs just work this way. What's your opinion on that?

For example, step 1, admitting being powerless over alcohol is pretty okay if you realize, that this is pretty the same as admitting being powerless over how your body reacts to fire, and this is cool, because how alcohol changes our thinking is a purely biochemical reaction. Unfortunately, somewhere during my therapy for alcohol addiction I found myself looking for more and more things to be powerless over, trying to be extremely polite to people, openly showing my weaknesses to my wife/others, while thinking, that this is expected behavior. Was that just me, or do AA groups endorse such behaviors? What's your opinion and experience with that?

Today, I exchanged meetings for the gym and reading and this subreddit. I like feeling my strength. After hearing all those people at the AA meetings, I am a bit afraid that this thinking of mine will lead to relapse, because that's what I heard on both meetings and therapy.

On the other hand, why should I play weaker than I am?