![]() ![]() Sometimes, in the more doctrinaire pockets of AA, methods other than the 12 steps are frowned upon. In meetings, seeking outside help is encouraged when necessary, but it’s often another spiritual method, such as mindfulness or reiki. When you’re a hardcore believer in AA, as I was, it’s very easy to block out other possible solutions to your problems. I’d be lying if I said that AA didn’t save my life, but it also – towards the end – left me in a state of overwhelming cognitive dissonance. Eventually, I accepted God myself.įrom that point onwards, I was a 12-step evangelist. When I heard that Ringo Starr had “found God” while struggling with his own addiction, I started exploring more structured forms of faith. Then, more specifically, the Beatles became my deity. So, initially, I accepted music – something that seemed accessible to me – as my higher power. He reassured me that AA doesn’t expect you to find God straight away and that I should just keep an open mind. AA has an informal system of “sponsorship”, where newer members are buddied up with more senior ones who look out for them. I asked him to help me and he agreed to be my sponsor. Then at one meeting I met a guy who’d been sober for five years. In the beginning, I went every day for a month, but I still couldn’t stop drinking. From left: Stewart, Winton, Diid Osman, Louise Wener and Andy Maclure. Supermarket sweep: the writer’s band Sleeper with presenter Dale Winton on the video shoot for their single Inbetweener in 1995. I’d run out of options and, acting on the advice of my doctor, I decided to give AA another try. I had money, but it seemed like my whole life had ground to a halt. I couldn’t seem to organise anywhere to live. Or perhaps just inspirational.Įventually, my American work visa ran out and I moved back to the UK. At the same time, I was coming into contact with people who had been just like me and were now 10 years sober. I went along to a couple of AA meetings in the area, but I couldn’t get on board with the God thing. In my mind though, I was still on tour, and I was behaving as such. It was around this time that I realised I needed, and very much wanted, to stop drinking. My band had split up and I was living in Los Angeles, playing with other bands and doing session work. Most people with a drinking problem have moments where they wake up and think to themselves, “I’m never doing that again.” I’d had hundreds of them.īut if I were to pinpoint my absolute low, it would be in the summer of 2000. It’s generally, though quite simplistically, understood that before you start AA you need to hit rock bottom. ![]() People struggle, even die, without ever hearing about others Around 10% of drinkers, it’s thought, are overly sensitive to the pleasure stimuli in alcohol, and I happen to be one of them.ĪA is still the default treatment. I now know that this is to do with the way my brain responds to reward chemicals. Although I always seemed to be having a slightly better time than everyone else. It was nothing particularly out of the ordinary – I discovered booze, I started going to parties, I had a good time. I had just been your regular steady drinker. I would’ve prayed to Lord Xenu, if that’s what it took. ![]() By the early 2000s, I was so desperate to get sober that that “something” could have been anything. ![]() I’d spent the previous decade as the guitarist in Sleeper, a successful band, touring, partying and, well, drinking. It didn’t have to be God per se, but I was assured that, if I didn’t find something, I’d probably drink myself to death. But AA’s 12-step programme demanded, or at least strongly suggested, that I relinquish myself to a higher power. When I went to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 15 years ago, God was and always had been the opium of the people. I’d always been a staunch atheist I grew up in Yorkshire during the miners’ strike, and was raised on left-wing politics. My first day of sobriety was the first day I prayed. ![]()
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