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Old 02-07-2014, 09:48 PM
  # 6 (permalink)  
Riverbird
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 285
One of my home groups had a big to do over this a while back. The meeting has been a closed meeting since it began, but recently we got a huge influx of people from a sober living community. Some of them were alcoholics, some addicts. When one of the girls introduced herself as an addict, she was asked to leave the meeting. (She didn't just get kicked out...a couple of people went out with her and talked with her separately). That turned in to a firestorm with an endlessly long group conscience meeting that thank god I was out of town for because really I could care less. It's an open meeting now, which annoys me a little not because I care if people are addicts, but because I don't like having random al-anon folks, people doing projects for school, etc. coming in to the meeting. (There's about a million other open meetings in the area for that purpose...I liked that this one was safe from that...but that's an issue for another post).

I don't have any experience with NA, but I think there is definitely a shift within AA. Very few alcoholics these days haven't at least had some experience with drugs...especially the younger generation. The only time it bothers me is when addicts start going in to detail about stuff that really doesn't relate to alcoholism at all...like talk about drug dealers or specific methods of doing drugs. Otherwise I think it's all the same...we're all using various substances to avoid or alter reality.
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