we grew up very poor, mayonnaise and crackers for dinner poor. my mom was struggling to raise 3 daughters after our bio dad walked out on her. he is/was an alcoholic that supposedly (i’m sure this is true to some extent but my mom is still pretty sick with the bitter) went out and bought new cars/houses/etc with lots of money that he inherited. while his kids starved.

i am a sober alcoholic with 17 years of continuous sobriety, still active in meetings, i have a sponsor. sometimes the best thing you can do for an addicted person is to *not* give them a hand out. a very good friend of mine committed suicide when he was 24 years old. his family were quite wealthy, and they did everything they could to get him “fixed up”, treatment centers, therapists, etc. they did all of this out of love for their child.

the unfortunate part of this is that he never got the opportunity to “self correct” b/c his family loved him and thought they were doing the right thing for him. they were there to catch him after every single fall out of love. this isn’t something that the majority of people in the world understand or can do. his death is not their fault, nor was his addiction.

i’ve been to many jail/detox meetings and i see the same women over and over again using the system (not all of them). the institutions are used as a “vacation” on some levels.

having said all of that, would i turn my back on a person that needed some extra cash? most likely not. i have been known to pay bills off for people, get them groceries, rather than just give them cash.

i know from personal experience (and lots of funerals) that people will get sober/clean when they make a decision to do it from within. it isn’t necessary to have a warm bed, plenty of food, and a car to get sober. i’ve seen men and women that were homeless get sober, people that don’t have cars, every kind of terrible situation you can imagine. within the fellowship of aa people will help other people if they have an honest desire to be sober. i can assure you of this.

a true story from my vault: about 15 years ago, i got a call from our aa intergroup office that a female with two kids staying at the battered women’s shelter needed a ride to a meeting. i was lucky enough to have gotten the call. she’s still sober, her boys are grown, she’s a college graduate with a good job driving a brand new bmw. i realize that she was getting help from the shelter, which goes with your post but i firmly believe there should be a limit for those that abuse the system.

not that i have any big solutions, i do not. this woman is a good example of getting helped by the system and making her life better. my own experience, we lived on food stamps and free lunches. my mom didn’t *use* the system improperly, and it helped us along. there is no hard and fast rule for this subject, but i wanted to offer up my personal experience b/c there are addicts out there that will rob you blind, *you* being unsuspecting awesome/good people.

Um.

Cause I just ran my mouth for, like, 87 paragraphs.