Author: webservant

What constitutes a good AA meeting? Please do not ask me for a list of questions which might draw more varied responses than this. Suffice it to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So in attempt to pare the possibilities, let’s consider the beholder. As the author I would like to point out my near-lifelong willingness to share/write about things I claim to have experienced myself. So, for our purposes here and in adherence to the prescribed article parameters, our beholder (AA meeting attendee) is a straight male in recovery from alcoholism. With this knowledge we are now able to respectfully eliminate responses from gay men and the fairer sex.

Certainly any AA meeting should contain/emit some structure. A timely opening of the meeting as published is a good way to start. Perhaps a reading of the AA Preamble and rules of participation for the individual meeting could follow. How It Works and the Twelve Traditions are great informative readings describing what we’re all about and should succeed the aforementioned. At this juncture we have a great start for what is involved in a good AA meeting. This being the “boilerplate” as it was.

However, the aforementioned has only set up an opportunity for our male in recovery from alcoholism to receive what he may require for a sober day. More succinctly what might our man require out of a meeting to qualify it as helpful? A collected and widely viewed thought is that a man should be able to view the room’s male attendees and feel “a part of.” An “ironclad” way of insuring this is to become involved in some type of service for that group.

We believe it is nearly critical for a man to feel “a part of” a group of men in recovery. Childhood issues of the individual male experience may stay with a fellow for his lifetime. On display at any men’s AA gathering are prime examples of men dealing with past male abuse issues; distrust, fear and in general a misunderstanding all together of male-machismo. Additionally on display is the resulting behaviors of men with differing, shall we say, more fortunate male experiences of; guidance, comradery, masculine friendship/bonding and trust. The mixture of these varied experiences is a wonder as men give freely of what they have and others are welcome to consider, absorb and or take what they are lacking or are attracted to. A men’s AA meeting is a great place for a man to determine that he is perhaps not so different from his male alcoholic colleagues.

If a man peruses the attendees of a men’s AA meeting he may be inclined to lose focus through various fellows, looks, demeanor or apparent state of emotion. Generally speaking, he can and will regain his focus momentarily. When a man peruses those in attendance of a coed AA meeting he will absolutely lose his focus at one time or another with virtually little or no chance of recovering it prior to the closing. I make this last statement in jest and sincere truth alike. Certainly a man can be a positive contributor/receptor of a coed AA meeting but for many men, the fewer distractions the better chance for focus. Along this line is the likelihood that the female presence can and will give different motivations to some men’s thought processes and subsequent sharing. Perhaps proving to be dissuasion from an honest share from the heart?

As with any AA meeting there are positive and negative examples of humanity in recovery or perhaps new verse more experienced is a more appropriate way to put it? For what it is worth to the eye of our beholder; if it looks like a man, talks like a man, dresses like a man, drinks like an alcoholic man, this man should be most willing to subject himself to the world of male recovery a minimum of once per week. Any AA should always pursue improvement as in enhancement to their recovery as well as the giving away of what one has so freely been given. It is beneficial for our man to learn to trust, include, serve, work with and realize the commonalities which we all share.

In closing I should like to say that the first two years of my sobriety were in men’s groups exclusively. It was not designed that way. It was simply that when women attended they rarely came back. When I began to participate in coed meetings my eyes were opened to the female side of alcoholism. I was amazed at the many commonalities, the differences and also the varied feelings regarding a female perspective of the Big Book and Its 1930’s-esqe writing. My early male dominated influence set me on a solid path albeit a double-standard and sexist one. I learned this through coed AA. I maintain that a well-informed male in AA needs both coed and men’s meetings. However, there is no substitution for that one hour per week. Thank you.

-Jon

It was started in 1976 by Marian B and B. Marvis L, Marian and Marvis were working for South Valley Counseling Services, funded by Salt Lake County, After losing their funding, they founded the Sobriety Corporation, The meeting location was across the street from Hillcrest High School, that’s why it’s called the Hillcrest Group. After the meeting, we would walk across the parking lot to the Belgian Waffle Restaurant. We also held a few meetings in the back room of the restaurant.

Over the years, the group had to move many times. We have had many landlords. After leaving the offices of the Sobriety Corporation, they went out of business. We moved to a little, white, wood frame building on State Street by the Last Outpost Restaurant. That building is now a trophy store. The group then moved to the back room of the South Seas Restaurant, now closed. We met for about two months in the Copperview Community Center. We had two or three meetings in a beauty salon in Murray. We then moved to the American Legion Hall in Sandy until it burned down. When we were at that location, we were giving a lady in the group $10,00 to bake cakes for those celebrating A.A. birthdays, Instead, she spent the money to go to school. She said she meant to pay it back, but the money was never repaid_ George, the Commander of the American Legion Hall, called to tell me that we were about 11 months past due on the rent. At the next meeting, we told the group what had happened.  We passed a basket around and collected more than enough money to pay the rent.

We then moved to our present location, St, James Episcopal Church, 7486 Union Park Avenue. Marian didn’t give chips. She made up paper bags with colored stars on them. She had a formula for the number of stars in particular colors for each length of sobriety.

When we were meeting by the Belgian Waffle Restaurant, we would randomly speak. If there was a pause in the speaking, the Chair person would call on someone to speak. When the Central Office wanted the groups to have historians, a lady named Rachel told us she wanted to be our group historian. We gave her all the group history and never saw her again. Marian kept all the sobriety birth dates on index cards in a recipe box

For many years, the group had summer picnics funded with profits from the book raffle_ A young man named Mike, hosted the first one in his grandmother’s backyard. There was a rope tied in a tree and we tried to climb it. The picnics were potluck and most of them were at Riverton Park. We would play horse shoes and volleyball. The last two were at Murray Park. I miss them.

-Reed P.

There once was a girl. She didn’t know much but that changed. She was confused about what was happening. She thought and thought and just had a gut feeling, and later found out that all of her thoughts and feelings were right, her dad was doing drugs. She just didn’t know how bad it was. She was very close with her dad, but finding out the truth made her more distant from him, she didn’t want to get even more hurt than she already was. The girl started to notice that her dad was getting worse so she asked her mom what was going on. Her mom told her that her dad was doing heroin instead of pain pills now. The girl knew that was one of the worst drugs. Her mom couldn’t handle it anymore and wanted to get a divorce. Her dad found out and went crazy. He started doing meth. He stole everything from the family to get money for drugs because he obviously didn’t have a job anymore. The family kicked him out of their house. He had nowhere to go because nobody wants a drug addict living in their house so he had to live in his car. After a while of not seeing him the family decided to meet him for lunch because their grandpa just died. The girl has never seen her dad that bad. At that point he was mixing heroin and meth together. He had all of his stuff locked up in chains because he thought somebody was out to get him. Everybody kept telling him he needed to go get help, he didn’t actually want help but he went and got it anyways to make everyone happy except for himself. Right as he got out of rehab he went right back to doing drugs, it wasn’t even two days! The girl was hurt, all she wanted was for this to be over, it was hurting her so bad. She thought the best way to make her feel better was to be mean to her dad whenever he talked to her or not even talk to him at all, but she didn’t know that it was hurting her even more. One day something really bad happened, the girls dad was so high that he threatened somebody, he thought that guy was out to get him when really he wasn’t. He got a felony for that. He would never do that when he was clean so after that the girls dad decided himself that he wanted to get better. Nobody forced him too. The girl saw her dad clean and realized she didn’t want to be mean to him anymore. She knew she would be happier if she had memories with her dad when he was gone rather than not having any memories with him at all. She also knew that in order for her dad to get better she needed to support him and be there for him. He has been clean for over 7 months now and the girl is more forgiving for his choices and not as angry with him. She still isn’t as close with him as she used to be and probably never will be but she is still working on being close with him and she will now have good memories with him, and if he chooses to go back to drugs she’s going to be more forgiving and be there for him when he needs it. She now knows that addiction takes over your whole life and what he does while he is high he can’t control it.

-Anonymous (14 years old)

Tradition 8: Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

“Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or hire. But we may employ alcoholics where they are going to perform those services for which we might otherwise have to engage non-alcoholics. Such special services may be well recompensed. But our usual A.A. “12th Step” work is never to be paid for.” Bill Wilson 1948

Alcoholics Anonymous has been around for decades. All around the world sick and suffering alcoholics have stepped into these rooms and achieved sobriety. Many relapse, some die, many make it back to the rooms. Alcoholics Anonymous is completely non-professional, and almost entirely unorganized. This works wonderfully. Spiritual experiences are flowing from alcoholics who are well to those who are sick. One alcoholic talking to another; it’s really quite simple.

Is it possible that this program could ever be professionalized?  Absolutely not. All the efforts to “professionalize” A.A have failed miserably. A.A. will not tolerate the idea of paid “A.A. Therapists” or “organizers”. This life saving program can never be diluted by “professionals”.

It is true that few subjects have been the cause of more contention within our Fellowship than professionalism. Caretakers who swept floors, cooks who fried hamburgers, secretaries in offices, authors writing books–all these we have seen hotly assailed because they were, as their critics angrily remarked, “making money out of A.A.” Ignoring the fact that these labors were not Twelfth Step jobs at all, the critics attacked as A.A. professionals these workers of ours who were often doing thankless tasks that no one else could or would do. Even greater furors were provoked when A.A. members began to run rest homes and farms for alcoholics, when some hired out to corporations as personnel men in charge of the alcoholic wards, when others entered the field of alcohol education. In all these instances, and more, it was claimed that A.A. knowledge and experience were being sold for money, hence these people, too, were professionals.

Bill W. once said, “There are people who serve us full time in other capacities such as: cooks, caretakers and paid Intergroup secretaries. These people are not “A.A. professionals”. They are just making more and better 12th Step work possible. Secretaries at their desks are valuable points of contact, information and public relations. That is what they are paid for, and nothing else. They help carry the good news of A.A. to the outside world. That’s not “A.A. therapy”; it’s just a lot of very necessary but often thankless work.”

-Candi

My sobriety date is December 4, 1986 and I was introduced to AA through the rooms of Al-anon; for the very first time in my life people listened to me and wanted to know my story. I was HOME for sure; then when I went to my first AA meeting and saw the steps on the wall I was in shock! They certainly did not apply to ME! not ME! the perfect one; I soon learned that those 12 steps would be a map through my life, those 12 steps were the key that unlocked the prison I had been living in for many years. I really thought that “doing” the steps was the easiest thing to do…well… until I started getting serious about the steps.

The 12 steps of AA are very much like a “rotorooter” service guy (sponsor) who continually says “Hey there is more ‘crap’ over here.” My first 4th step was a “piece of work” because there were so many people who had “used and abused” me and of course they were all at fault.  When my sponsor said, “what was YOUR part in all of this?” I was so stubborn about looking at my part; until she pointed out that I was the common thread in all my affairs; especially after creating a list of my character “barriers” that kept me from the sunlight of the spirit and my own peace of mind.

After many hours of back and forth conversations with my sponsor I made that list! Then she dropped the bomb on me! “Let’s create a list of the people that were damaged by your drinking, because we are going to start looking at the process of “making amends.” Oh I was hating this very much but KNEW it was the only way. Step eight states ” Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” All this step asks of us is to become willing and make a list!  Nothing more, nothing less!   But as a newcomer I made a mountain out of a mole hill.

The process wasn’t that hard since I only had a few names on that list … you know the big ones… Mother, Father, ex’s, etc. but when my sponsor said “what about putting YOU on the list” it got immediately hard!  Oh I could put my name there on the list… but become willing to make amends to ME!!!  That wasn’t going to be easy.  Getting willing was a roller coaster ride; some days I was very willing.. next day not so much and other days … NOT at all.  So I just kept praying for the willingness to be willing!  Every day, over and over, I prayed for willingness to be willing… and then one morning out of no where came the surprise visit from….WILLINGNESS!   I was there, I could feel it, taste it, and I knew I was ready.  I was “movin’ on down the road.” Next stop … STEP NINE!

-Barbara P.

The main theme of Step Seven is the continued progression of Humility, which allows us to move closer to God by moving away from ourselves and the bondage of self.  Attaining greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.’s Twelve Steps, and the key to happiness in our recovery. We have already become willing to develop humility when we did the first steps of admitting we were powerless over alcohol, and believing in and asking a Power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity. If the humility required to do this worked to rid us of the obsession to drink, then it makes sense that there must be hope for the removal of any other problem, or defect, that we have.

I have found this experience of a Higher Power relieving character defects to be true in recovery.  My understanding of the impact of this step took time. It is interesting that many alcoholics, including myself, miraculously relieved of the devastating obsession to drink, one day at a time still find it hard to believe or understand that the same Higher Power will relieve us of our character defects, such as self-pity. It is difficult at times to be open-minded and willing enough to recognize these defects in ourselves. Even harder, is coming to realize that these defects are flaws which made problem drinkers of us in the first place and must be removed in order to preserve the sobriety we have been given. Thankfully, the prior steps (4,5,6) lead us to this enlightenment. And once we understand that some type of Fear is at the core of our defects, it often becomes easier to ask for help to have this fear removed.

As I saw myself change in ways I had never realized I could or perhaps, should, gratitude to my Higher Power grew. Spiritual peace and release became a beautiful gift, enhancing sobriety and giving newfound freedom. Total belief that one day at a time our Higher Power will help with defects and problems, if we are humble enough to ask, is a precious gift of beauty and depth, always ultimately preserving our daily sobriety.

—Anonymous, Salt Lake City

“Every group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.”

This tradition may be one of the best examples of the miraculous change that can occur when alcoholics are relieved of the obsession to drink and begin to grow spiritually, letting go of self-centeredness and fear. Self-centered and dependent, often looking for a hand-out, the alcoholic had to change. The idea that recovering alcoholics did not necessarily deserve monetary support just because they were trying to stay sober, was possibly painful, but true. It was time for alcoholics to pay their own way, no matter how difficult.

At first, it was believed lots of money was needed to support the society. Then fear caused members to think that no money should be involved. As the society grew and members realized that a certain amount of financial support would be needed to ensure the message being carried, whether by meetings, literature or phone, alcoholics cautiously learned that spiritual growth was not negatively affected by minimal material support. The principle of corporate poverty was established as a tradition. In other words, A.A. must always remain poor. The society would have to support itself, no matter how poor the group might be. Trust in a Higher Power was needed.

The story of the impact of Jack Alexander’s 1941 Saturday Evening Post publication is a well-known example of the foundation of this tradition. Thousands of letters from distraught alcoholics and their families arrived at the mailbox in New York after people read the story. The 2-person staff were overwhelmed as they tried to respond to the inquiries. It became clear more help was needed, and that would require money. AA groups were asked to send voluntary contributions of a dollar a member a year. Bill relates that initially the response to this request was slow. But eventually donations began to add up, and requests for information were answered. Understanding that Alcoholics Anonymous needed funds to function grew. Small offices, phone lines and meeting places cost money but were necessary, or the help alcoholics needed would not be there. The integrity of Alcoholics Anonymous was established through this tradition, and exists to this day.

—Anonymous, Salt Lake City

I was three weeks sober when I traveled to Colorado to visit my family for Thanksgiving. I was excited, but scared. I was going back to a town filled with old drinking buddies and favorite watering holes.

I drove over with my dad, whose company helped keep me out of my head. We talked about my drinking a bit, but mostly we talked about life as we watched the mountains go by. Every once in a while I would pull out my big book and read a few pages.
We pulled up to my aunt’s house and went inside. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends greeted us with laughter and hugs. After a hug and high five, my uncle said, “Beer’s in the fridge, Pat.” I went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass from the cupboard, and poured myself some water. I was off to a good start!

While sipping my water, I heard someone say, “Just get a couple drinks in Karen, and she’ll sing karaoke all night!” I didn’t know who Karen was, but I know what “a couple drinks” does to me – and it usually doesn’t end with boisterous karaoke.

I got more anxious as the day went on. I went outside and called my “temporary” sponsor. He shared some stories and encouragement. I made it through the rest of the day, and went to bed sober. Another success!

On Thanksgiving morning, I showered and joined my family for breakfast. My uncle handed me a small bottle of vodka for my orange juice. I read the label, and passed it to my cousin. He looked at me funny, but didn’t say anything.

We talked and played board games for the next few hours. Several people had a beer or glass of wine here and there. I clung to my glass of water, refilling it every 10 minutes.

I started feeling anxious again. I couldn’t put my finger on why, other than that I was three weeks sober and trying to make it through one more day. I told my dad I needed to go to a meeting. He objected, saying, “It’s Thanksgiving! You should spend time with your family.” I looked at him and didn’t say anything. He handed me the keys to his car.

I had written down the addresses and times of a few meetings before I left SLC, so I knew exactly where to go. I parked and went inside. About a dozen people talked quietly, waiting for the meeting to begin. The chairperson welcomed us, and asked someone to read How It Works. I felt a bit calmer.

We went around the room, reading a paragraph or two from the big book. I told the group I was visiting from Salt Lake City. They gave me a sheet of paper with phone numbers I could call if I needed.

I went back to my aunt’s house feeling much freer. I had needed to talk with people who understood my problem, and the AA group was there for me. I had used the tools I learned in AA – I called my sponsor, went to a meeting, and read the big book. I prayed, giving thanks for the opportunity to be with my family, and asking for strength to make it through one more day sober.

My dad and I headed back to Salt Lake City the day after Thanksgiving. I had managed to stay sober for the entire trip. We talked about life as we watched the mountains go by. I knew that this is the life that I want for myself.

—by Patrick M