Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings is centred on meetings of people who have a desire to stop drinking. Many people profess to have an intense dislike of these meetings. While others go to at least one every day and almost seem to develop another addiction. For the meetings themselves! The fundamental and most important point is that as alcoholics, we have to go to these meetings in order to stay well. They are our medicine. Some of us like the taste and taking our medicine and some of us don’t.
However, if I were to have cancer and be told that I would be in remission for the rest of my life from cancer if I gave up an hour and a half a day and attended a meeting. Had to undergo no chemotherapy or radiotherapy or to take no prescribed medication. Staying well was entirely my choice. Would I do that? Of course I would. So, if we have the illness of alcoholism and wish to stop drinking and stay stopped, we need to go to meetings.
To start with, we may need to go to one every day. We can decrease the numbers as our recovery gets stronger but we still need to go at least every week. Even if we have been in recovery for several years. Think of it another way, most of us put more than this amount of time every day into our drinking and that did not make us happy in the end. If we put half as much effort into our recovery as into our drinking, we will have a good chance of getting well!
First AA Meetings
The first AA meeting is acknowledged to have been between Bill Wilson and Bob Smith (Dr Bob) in May, 1935. Bill was 6 months sober and had just had a bad business meeting in Akron,Ohio. He was tempted by the hotel bar but decided he would rather stay sober – and knew that it would help him to do so if he talked to another drunk. He called a local clergyman, who put him in touch with someone else. Who knew Bob and was praying for some sort of miracle to help Bob with his drinking. The two met in an incredible stroke of good fortune (higher power at work?). They liked one another instantly and recognised that getting people together who wanted to stop drinking was a powerful and helpful tool.
Alcoholic Anonymous Meetings Today
The same stroke of good fortune is played out in just about every AA meeting today. If you attend an AA meeting, there is every chance that at that meeting someone will hear something that really helps them with their day and their sobriety; we meet people at meetings who change the course of our lives ; and by sharing with others how we are feeling and hearing others’ experiences, we all usually leave a meeting feeling enriched and better than when we arrived.
However, this is not true for everyone. Some people profess to feeling worse after an AA meeting than before they went. These are usually the people who do not really want to stop drinking (yet). For whom the total abstinence message is unpalatable (they would like to control their drinking). For whom it has not got sufficiently painful.
Help Each Other
Meetings is where drunks help each other to get ‘undrunk’ by sharing their ‘experience, strength and hope’ with one another. All meetings are different and all have a unique feel depending on where they are and who regularly attends them. If you go to a meeting and do not like the characteristics or character of that particular meeting, keep shopping around until you find the ones you are comfortable with.
Do not be tempted into thinking that AA meetings are full of ‘losers’. Listen more closely and you will find that it is at meetings that you are most likely to find the winners. Those who have managed to stop drinking. Stay stopped and are now happy not drinking are the ones you want to emulate! You can have what they have if you don’t give up and ‘keep coming back’!
AA meetings certainly provide a road to recovery for some, if not then perhaps you should consider a residential rehab programme.
The Haynes Clinic is an alcohol and drug rehab clinic which offers detox and counselling for people with addictions. Call 01462 851414 for free and confidential advice.
