Frequently Asked Questions

Long-term drinking rewires the brain. Recovery is not a straight line. Many people feel worse before they feel better once the substances are removed. This is normal. It is one of the reasons we continue step work, service, prayer, and contact with a sponsor every single day — not just in the early weeks.

If you have been sober a year and are still struggling significantly, it may be worth pursuing professional mental health support alongside your program work.

Yes. Combining approaches often works better than relying on any single one. For example: AA with a sponsor, attending church, and therapy running simultaneously gives you multiple layers of support. If one has a bad week, the others hold you up.

That is okay. Here are two low-commitment starting points:

1. Try the normal discussion-based A.A. meetings — just listen, no commitment required.
2. Talk to a friend who understands this group and has already worked the 12 steps.

Many people in AA do not know that the 12 steps come directly from page 58 in the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous. Neither do they know that the 9th Step Promises are from the book. Reading them aloud at every meeting sets an example: our sponsorship program comes directly from the book, not from personal opinion.

A sponsor's book is underlined, highlighted, has writing in the margins, drawings, lessons learned, and more. There is a large amount of personalized information that comes with reading this together — context and insight that cannot be captured any other way.

In life-and-death situations, Steps 1 and 2 may also be approached by listening to a hosted study as a podcast. The Joe & Charlie Big Book Comes Alive series is the one we use:

• Episode 1 – Joe & Charlie Big Book Comes Alive
• Episode 2 – Joe & Charlie Big Book Comes Alive
• Episode 3 – Joe & Charlie Big Book Comes Alive
• Episode 4 – Joe & Charlie Big Book Comes Alive
• Episode 5 – Joe & Charlie Big Book Comes Alive

Depending upon how long we drank, how severe the DTs were, and how close to the end we came, it is likely that we will be spending 1 or 2 hours a day working our program or helping someone else.

However, we find that we still have far more productive hours than before — because of the enormous number of hours that drinking was silently consuming every day.

The 12 steps are the core. Once those are working, the conversation expands: how service work works, how and why we pray, why we use "God" instead of "Higher Power," how the 12 steps are a summary of a handful of chapters in the Bible that give even more instruction, and more.

Yes. The people in this program who work it consistently have remained sober. That is the proof of concept.

"To carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers."

A Primary Purpose group that was planted off the main Primary Purpose group in Texas.

No. AA does not have an authoritative, controlling leader. People are allowed to leave whenever they want. There is no isolation from society. However, it is sometimes classified as dogmatic — it has a fixed set of principles it does not deviate from, which is a feature, not a flaw.

That is a completely honest place to start. Many people in AA came in with the same feeling. The program does not ask you to believe immediately — it asks you to be willing. Over time, most people find a working definition of a Higher Power that makes sense to them personally, even if it does not match traditional religion.

The program asks you to act as if there might be something greater than yourself — not to pass a theology exam. The practical question is: has your own best thinking kept you sober so far? If the answer is no, then trying something different costs you nothing.