If you are suffering as a result of someone else’s substance abuse or drinking, find support, understanding & hope in FRSA-Anon. No fees or payments of any sort required to attend. All meetings are open to everyone.
If you need to talk to someone call our helpline now:
07866 274 306
Read our 12 Steps below – a programme based on the morality of Unconditional Love.
Monday 645pm Zoom Meeting
We meet on Zoom every Monday from 645pm to 815pm, to share our experience, strength and hope. All meetings are open to everyone.
Click here to join the meeting.
We look forward to welcoming you.
Preamble
Welcome to the Chelsea meeting of the Friends and Relatives of Substance Abusers Anonymous. If you have a problem with someone else’s using or drinking you may, through this gentle programme, find support, comfort and hope.
The anonymous 12 Step programme of Friends and Relatives of Substance Abusers is open to anyone affected by any form of addictive behaviour in others.
The fellowship has but one purpose, to help and comfort these friends and relatives of addicts and to carry its message to those who still suffer.
We welcome members of other fellowships who have experienced difficulties with the recovery or active addiction of others.
Addiction, including alcoholism, is a cunning, baffling and powerful illness. It destroys lives and tears families apart. The illness affects not just the drinkers or users, but also those close to them. Once gripped, few escape the devastating effects of the disease by themselves. But there is a way out for each of us, whether or not the drinking or using stops.
There is a way to peace of mind.
We have found no permanent cure to what ails us, but have discovered complete freedom from the suffering is available whenever we surrender completely. We realised that we didn’t need strength or courage. In any particular moment, all that mattered was that the pain was too much. The instant we let go and decided we’d had enough of putting ourselves through the wringer, a reprieve was possible. Through Friends and Relatives of Substance Abusers Anonymous we came to see that no one is to blame.
We saw that we are not guilty, nor are the addicts and alcoholics in our lives.
Addiction to drugs or alcohol are the most obvious forms of the disease, but the illness can include addiction to food, gambling, love and sex, as well as many other forms of obsession or compulsion. The anonymous Twelve Step programme of FRAA is open to anyone affected by any form of addictive behaviour in others.
The fellowship has but one purpose, to help and comfort these friends and relatives of addicts and to carry its message to those who still suffer.
There are no fees or dues for membership, we are fully self-supporting through our
own voluntary contributions.
The Friends and Relatives of Addicts and Alcoholics Anonymous is not affiliated with any religion or other organisation. Healing through the programme does not require any particular belief; it works for those with a faith, atheists and agnostics alike. Coming to believe in a Higher Power can be a very gradual process. This programme is suggestive only. It is not a requirement to follow the Twelve Steps if you can manage without them.
Freedom is at the heart of this fellowship. The shares you hear are the experience of those who offer them. Take what you like and leave the rest.
This is an anonymous programme so what you hear here and who you see here should remain here. Let the unconditional acceptance of each other reign supreme.
Step 1
We admitted we were powerless over addiction and alcoholism, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
Our experience as members of FRSA Anonymous is that, without realising it, and with understandable determination not to give up on the suffering of our friends and relatives, who through no fault of theirs were afflicted by something so powerful, we proceeded to go to any lengths to save the addicts and alcoholics, thinking that this must surely be possible.
As a consequence of experiencing pain again and again we finally came to see that we couldn’t help, and that our own mental and emotional condition had deteriorated without our realising it. We then made the decision to seek help.
Many of us had experienced pain and unhappiness during our own childhood. Understandably we decided that with everything around us seeming to be so chaotic, we had to be strong. Those of us who may not recall having had a painful childhood were nevertheless so badly affected by the addictions and drinking of others that we could not see how our own mental and emotional well being had been seriously adversely affected.
Hope only came when we were finally able to take Step 1 and admit that addiction and alcoholism were too powerful for us to control or manage. Our own lives had become unbearably unmanageable.
We came to realise that Step 1 had to be renewed on a daily or even hourly basis. At first we thought that intellectual understanding was sufficient to alter our thinking and hence our behaviour in relation to the addict and alcoholic. We did not, initially at least, come to terms with the fact that it had taken years for us to get to the point of having a rock bottom ourselves. Without realising it, our memory had become somewhat lacking. Our obsession with the addict or alcoholic made the power of obsession a habit that had to be gradually reduced through patient and courageous reminders.
We discovered that Step 1 is the most important step, without which the other steps could not be adequately practised. We found that as we continued with the rest of the steps we had to keep coming back to Step 1. Humility to accept this is essential to our own healing process, which is what the entire programme is about. To facilitate our own healing we saw that all we had to do was to seek a daily reprieve and that this, as it reflected humility, was the surest guarantee of a spiritual journey. This also made the healing process manageable and free of denial.
Step 2
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
The key words in this step are ‘came to believe’. This suggests a gradual coming to believe. This is understandable given our recent experiences with the addict or alcoholic. We kept being disappointed time and again in our attempts to stop the addicts and alcoholics using or drinking. We tried praying to God to help us with this. We admitted we needed help, which we thought God could provide. We finally felt that it was all down to us, and our determined belief that we at least could not give up. We proceeded to continue with what we thought was our duty to help the suffering addict and alcoholic to see the harm they were doing to themselves. After failure after failure, we changed tack and thought that maybe our appeal to the addict or alcoholics good nature might do the job. We pointed out repeatedly to them the harm they were doing to us as a friend or relative. Again we were met with no success. Promises were made by the addict or alcoholic only to be broken.
Finally we admitted that we were getting exasperated and increasingly desperate. We began to see that our own mental and emotional balance was badly affected. Our obsession with the suffering of others rendered us unable to keep appointments, to care for our children or be there in a caring capacity for ourselves and loved ones. We gradually came to see that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, despite all the experience and evidence that it was not working other than for a limited period. Sometimes, understandably, and without realising it, we became self-absorbed with succeeding or failing with the addict or alcoholic. What started with definite altruism turned into self-loathing for failing to do what we thought was caring. Only time would tell us that sometimes our condition was caused by constant exposure to the addict or alcoholic’s behaviour. Some of us began to see that we may have been led to focus on rescuing others because of our own experience as children which had been left unexamined.
We then asked a reasonable question; how could a Higher Power do for us what we could not do for ourselves? Those of us with faith in God gradually came to see that the problem was not asking God for help, but having expectations of God. The idea that we had to humbly admit to ourselves that one could not expect God to listen to our demands gradually became clear. Whatever we did for the addict or alcoholic had to be done unconditionally without expectations either of them or of God. By the time we came to the fellowship this was impossible and we had become compulsive in our continued attempts in not giving up on the addict or alcoholic in our lives. We needed to detach with love. With the support of continued attendance at meetings, gradually we found that this was not only possible but imperative. Some of us including those who were agnostics or atheists, came to believe in the power of Unconditional Love as a Higher Power that could restore us to sanity.
The question as to how exactly this Higher Power could restore us to sanity continued to baffle us for some time until we acquired the humility to accept that our compulsive tendency to deal with matters using will power could not win because we had become self-obsessed in focusing on how we were doing in our quest for spiritual progress. We found that only something that doesn’t lead us to focus on how we were doing to enhance our spiritual progress could facilitate our healing process over which we had no control.
We finally found that only the idea of connecting to the power of Unconditional Love by serving it could facilitate our healing. Some of us found this to be the secret for the understandably self-obsessed people we had become. To become whole had to be left to the Higher Power of unconditional love. We sought sanity at last, and the unconditional acceptance of others exactly as they were at any moment in time. This realisation was born out of pain and repeatedly having expectations of ourselves and others. Sanity at long last was possible by seeking a daily reprieve from understandable self-centredness and enjoying the reprieve through surrendering into the serving of the Higher Power of Unconditional Love. Those of us who have no problem with God and are believers, found that our relationship with God had to be based on an unconditionally loving God who expected us to help ourselves by serving God, as we understand God.
Friends and Relatives of Substance Abuser's Anonymous 