Question by not sure about this: if you are in AA and you doing pot are you considered clean and sober and should you get your chips from AA?
I have a friend’s husband who was a cokehead, finally went to treatment and entered AA. He has stopped using coke but yet continues to smoke pot-multiple times a day. Yet he just got his 3 year chip from AA. Should he be getting his chip from AA bc he still does pot or is it just because he hasn’t anything to drink.
Best answer:
Answer by Benji
No he should not. If a person is using or abusing any drugs that are not prescribed by his physician or any alcohol for that matter he should not get his “chip”. Addicts usually just replace one habit with another. If you will notice most folks in AA or NA just trade in their drug and alcohol dependencies for sex, nicotine, caffeine, work etc. Those are considered OK though and will not prohibit a person from recieving their “chip”.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
AA is very concerned about cross addiction. Using anything else addictive–tobacco, sugar, salt, caffeine, methadone or any other drug is not being clean and sober in their opinion.
No, if they knew about it he would not have gotten the chip
If he was a coke-head, he should have been going to NarcAnon instead of AA. What he’s doing is following the letter, but not the spirit, of his agreement with fellow AA members. This just isn’t right!
AA is not about using ANY addictive drug to mask our feelings. Though I do have to say tobacco, salt, sugar, is kinda pushing it in terms of ‘addiction.’ Believe me, in AA we don’t put those drugs in terms of what we must stay away from.
I’m talking about hardcore drugs here–and pot is one of them. It is illegal in most states, and will lead him back to his drug of choice. You can get a DUI/DWI while on it. If he was on probation, he would violate it with a positive drug test. Also people can have a drug prescribed to them and still be addicted to it–people who are ‘nervous’ being addicted to Xanax, cause the doc give it to them. They are still addicted to a narcotic. And I’m not talking about those who are mentally ill and need drugs not bipolar, depression, etc. That’s different, and those drugs are not addictive, they just stabilize the neurotransmitters.
So your friend is lying to himself, and believe me those in AA around him know it too. We can tell the stoners. We just kind of feel sorry for people like him, and advise newcomers not to ask that person to sponsor him.
I have a challenge for him–go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and to say what he’s doing and see the response. He won’t like it one bit.
He wants to have his cake and eat it too–be praised for being clean & sober while he is not. And AA, NA, etc. are a lot more than just staying away from drugs and booze, it’s about emotional sobriety, learning how to be so comfortable in our own skins that we don’t need a chemical escape.
But can he get his chip? Yes, he can. Because we aren’t giving urine test to people to test for drugs. AA is not the Sobriety Police. This is about personal honestly. Does he deserve his chips? No. It’s like writing a check on an account that has no money in it. Write as many as you want, but you must deal with the legal, emotional, mental, spiritual, consequences too.
If he were honest with himself, he wouldn’t accept it, but that’s his decision.
I’m kind of wondering if you and your friend understand what the second A in AA is for. Whatever he does there is his business, not yours.
Most AA groups would say no; you are supposed to be free of alcohol and all non-prescribed mind-altering substances in order to be considered sober.
Of course it’s perfectly okay to be flagrantly addicted to nicotine, caffeine, porn, gambling, exercise, etc., but pot, no.
And of course some of the people who say they are sober really aren’t…even some of those oldtimers…not long before I left AA there was a woman with “30+” years who was discovered to be buying large quantities of vanilla extract and drinking them.
Anyway, your friend’s husband is obviously a pothead, and all the AA chips in the world aren’t going to change that!
He can do whatever he wants. AA has no rules for medallions or anniversaries.
In fact AA doesn’t condone or support sobriety medallions at all. Individual groups and Intergroup-offices buy them from outside vendors – because they are autonomous.
Peace,
Danny S
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com/