CW: Alcoholism, binge drinking, blackouts
spoiler
I've spoken before about having a parent with serious alcoholism problems before here somewhere, but I personally relapsed after trying to get sober for awhile and feel really shitty about it. I got wasted early in the day, and then went through shit I had to get done at home drunk around 3-ish throughout the day and just kept taking a gluggluglugglug kind of swig from an 80 proof bottle after each chore, and eventually ended up going to bed early, then woke up completely confused and thinking I was in my back yard instead of my bedroom for some reason and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out where I was while being scared and pathetic and alone. I don't want to fucking be like this anymore. I've been to AA meetings before and was really offput by the weird pseudo-Calvinist shit and would appreciate some kind of secular and preferable left-friendly options for getting sober because I'm in really bad shape mentally right now and don't really have any faith in the typical avenues where people go to when they want to get help.
If you don't like AA, maybe consider going to SMART? It's like AA without the religious elements. There are usually quite a few SMART meetings available, and if none are in your area, you can always call in online.
Another thing might be, though this might be impractical in your situation, having someone else control spending/shopping, so you never get the chance to buy the high proof alcohol in the first place. Just an idea.
Will look into SMART, thank you. Never heard of that and all the group stuff I've seen locally has been religious, even the "yeah it's at a church, but we're not like those other groups" groups that also try to convert you and paint themselves as "the non-religious one" as a way to get hesitant people in the door to proselytize to, which kinda soured me on that.
Yeah, all the religious content really turned me off from 12 step program groups, I'm glad alternatives exist with no requirement to believe in a higher power..
I was just reading a book about Tupac's mom (a former Black Panther and now deceased, but a major part of her life was her recovery from crack), and AA seemed to have such a weird impact on her, basically converted her. In Afeni's early life god and religion doesn't seem very prominent, but then, after the twelve step, she says that the Black Panthers failed because "we turned against God", which just seems like a change from the person she was before. And the way she described her journey through the 12 steps, it didn't really sound like something I would want to do.
(I kind of just wrote all this because I wanted to talk about a book I just finished)
Idk why but I always had it in my head that Tupac's mom was Assata Shakur, but I just looked it up and she was his step-aunt. That's interesting though, I feel like mental health and substance abuse program stuff is frequently rife with opportunistic and predatory agendas that take advantage of vulnerable people at some of their lowest points.