Everything To Know About Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Meetings

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Everything To Know About Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Meetings

At different times and every day of the week, in many cities and towns around the world, you can find and attend a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous; where you will find people of all ages, races, social classes, trades, activities, and various professions, that in a period of his life, shorter or longer, we had problems with the way of drinking alcohol, and that we have found in the AA groups how to keep us drinking without drinking day after day, regularly attending, each according to their own decision, the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The purpose of all AA group meetings is to offer an enabling environment of understanding and equality to all attendees to share their experience with alcohol consumption, how he drank, when and how consumption ceased to be acceptable, for themselves and for others, and became a problem. It is proven by several million of us that sharing these experiences and sharing how we apply for the 12-step AA recovery program, allows us not to have that first drink, which was the one that hurt us – if we don’t drink the first one, we don’t get drunk -and keep us in a state of total and continuous abstention easily and comfortably.

The Most Common Types Of AA Meetings

For this purpose, AA groups hold Open or Open Access Meetings and Closed Meetings. Open or Free access Meetings are for Types of Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings, and All who have an interest in Alcoholism Anonymous alcoholism recovery program can attend to learn about AA.
Closed Meetings are only for AA members or for those who have a problem with drinking and a desire to stop drinking alcohol. In both types of meetings, the coordinator can ask participants to limit their comments to issues related to alcoholism recovery.
An AA member who serves as a “leader” or “coordinator” opens the meeting in the usual manner and selects a topic for discussion. Preparatory readings for many thematic meetings can be found in AA literature, in texts such as, for example, Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book), Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, As Bill, Daily Reflections and in AA Grapevine / La Vineyard.

Possible suggested topics include:

  • Attitude
  • Character defects
  • Fear
  • Freedom through sobriety
  • Gratitude
  • Higher power
  • Sincerity
  • Humility
  • Repairs
  • Resentments
  • Sponsorship
  • Recovery tools
  • Tolerance
  • Goodwill
One or more members, chosen in advance, “share,” as this is described in the Big Book, telling how they were, what happened to them and how they are now. Some groups, depending on the group conscience for general guidelines, prefer that those who speak take a specified minimum time of uninterrupted sobriety. Speaker meetings are often “open.”
Meetings for Beginners. These meetings are usually coordinated by a member who has been sober for a while. They are often question and answer sessions to help beginners.
Since the Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings Twelve Steps form the basis of recovery in AA, many groups dedicate one or more meetings each week to a study of the Steps, moving from one to the other by rotation; some groups discuss two or three steps at a time. Many groups have a habit of reading relevant texts from the Big Book or the Twelve and Twelve at the beginning of the meeting.

What Happens At A Meeting Of Alcoholics Anonymous?

People are greeted with smiles, affection, and hugs; they are glad to see one arrive. They share their stories not with guilt or shame, but with the knowledge that they managed to overcome something that seemed insurmountable.

That sense of community is evident from the beginning. The members of Alcoholics Anonymous have the support of a group of people who have gone through similar or worse situations and are willing to do anything so that the person does not drink again and can have a better quality of life.

The minimum requirement to be part of Alcoholics Anonymous is to want to stop drinking.

There are open sessions in which people who are not alcoholics or who have not
identified as alcoholics can attend. At these meetings, husbands, wives,
relatives, friends, or guests come by people who belong to the organization.

 

As the participants of the program explain, to be an alcoholic and to need the help
provided by Alcoholics Anonymous, it is necessary to bottom out. Your life, as
they describe it, must have become ungovernable.

What Is Bottoming Out?

The bottom is this unique situation where you are in between a rock and a hard place. You’re going to realize that you really have a problem. Because one of the characteristics of this disease is that it is cunning, disconcerting, and powerful, for some, this can be a traffic accident, a job dismissal, problems with the couple or marriage, financial problems, and others.

Many of those who arrive at Alcoholics Anonymous are in denial that they have a problem (although it is obvious), and they are not interested in being there. They go by obligation, either by court order or because they went through a detoxification process or because the doctor, the psychologist, the couple, or the boss gave him an ultimatum.

That is why the initial recommendation is: “Take the body in what your mind arrives.”

At the meetings, participants receive support, give them tools to change their lives: they learn about the 12 steps, the 12 traditions and the 12 concepts of service, choose a sponsor to call when they need assistance or mentoring, change their environment and of those things that associate with alcohol.

Here you don’t stop drinking (only), here you come to transform yourself as a new person thinking about the positive thing you get from your being.
It can be an insulating experience at the beginning, and relapses happen. Some people had several before they managed to stand firm. Many attendees gave testimony of this during the meeting, and they discover that they can do the things they did before for which alcohol seemed a requirement – go to the beach, go out to dance, share at a family party – without having to drink.
At each meeting and many go daily or several times a week, they repeat the statement, “My name is ________, and I am an alcoholic.” They say this even if they haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in decades since the program is a lifetime commitment.

How Much Money Did I Spend On Satisfying My Alcohol Addiction?

As with other drugs, alcohol consumption has two costs: price and health, which most people consider priceless — adhering to the economic consequences of consuming alcohol costs a lot of money.

The expenses derived from its use for the drinker are several:

The direct ones: alcohol. The type of beverage consumed, be it beer, wine or high-grade beverages, and instruments for consumption, corkscrews, cups or glasses, etc.

Indirect costs: the equivalent of the time spent drinking, acquiring the drink and recovering from the hangover; products purchased to mitigate their consequences, such as pain relievers, stomach protectors or special toothpaste, etc .; medical treatments for associated problems (ulcers, cirrhosis, and others), etc.

To this money that the individual cost supposes, the social and collective costs are added to it. Among these, the health treatment of the consequences of alcoholism stands out. Unlike the former, if it is assumed by public health or by mutuals, these expenses are socialized. That is, it is distributed among all people regardless of whether they are drinkers or not. In any case, the public health expenditure for alcohol consumption is higher than the income from its sale and commercialization in the form of taxes.

A drinking person may be motivated to stop drinking by calculating how much is spent per year to consume alcohol. And this is precisely what we are going to calculate. The goal is to show that drinking is expensive, and that stop drinking allows us to save.

Suppose a beer costs 2 dollars on average and also assume that you consume 20 beers weekly, 1040 beers per year. After a simple arithmetic operation, we know that you spend only 2080 dollars per year on drinking beers.

Multiply that for all the years you’ve been drinking; now tell me how much your health will cost you the day you get stomach cancer or a disease caused by your liver in poor condition.

Now, the million-dollar question … How much money did I spend on satisfying my alcohol addiction?

We already saw that drinking “my beers” after work or partying during the weekend costs me approximately 2000 dollars a year, but if I get to get any disease, there are treatments that cost me more than 2000 dollars per month. … Could you face it?

Is it profitable to drink? Just Don’t

Saving stop drinking? Yes, of course, it is. Add to that health, and you will see that it is worth trying to stop drinking.

Here and now, make your numbers and reflect for a moment, detail in writing what you could have done with that sum of money.

Stop drinking is, thanks to the savings involved, to be able to do a large number of things that you could not do before: go on vacation, buy new clothes, help your children, save money, and carry on, please.