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Your First AA Meeting

Old 12-21-2007, 06:03 AM
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Your First AA Meeting

Your First AA Meeting
An Unofficial Guide For the Perplexed
Floyd P. Garrett, M.D.

Introduction

Locating a meeting

Types of AA meetings

Discussion meetings

Big Bookand Step Study meetings

Speaker meetings

Clubhouse and church meetings

Meeting size

Smoking or non-smoking?

The diversity of AA groups

Rituals and readings: What goes on at a typical AA meeting

The problem of fear

90 Meetings in 90 days? You must be CRAZY!

Arriving late, leaving early

Anonymity and confidentiality

What should you say if you share?

God, Religion and Spirituality

Dogmatism and dogmatists

Sponsors and sponsorship

Principles before personalities

Before and after the meeting

Brainwashing, mind control and cultism

Slogans and other superficial things

A New Vocabulary: Acceptance, Humility, Powerlessness

AA and Psychiatry. The Question of Medications

The AA Preamble
The Serenity Prayer
The Twelve Steps of AA
The Twelve Traditions of AA
The Promises of AA
Links to AA resources(Big Book, meeting finders, &etc.)
Introduction

Practically nobody looks forward to going to their first AA meeting. In most cases this in fact is an occasion of extreme shame, dread and despair. The majority of individuals going to AA for the first time are doing so reluctantly, either because they have promised someone else to go or because they have been directed to attend by a judge, an employer, a therapist or an addictions treatment program. Even first timers who "go on their own" are usually in an intensely ambivalent and negative state. Nobody wishes to require the help that is provided by AA, and as a result virtually everyone attending their first meeting wishes that they were someplace else doing something else.

It is in fact an act of great courage to walk into an AA meeting for the first time. Many people with severe drinking problems simply lack the courage to take this first step under any circumstances. They commonly hide their fear by critical, often cynical remarks about AA and the people who do have the courage to attend. They may indulge themselves with elaborate philosophical, scientific and even political rationalizations for why they will never attend a single AA meeting. But at bottom they are simply too afraid to walk through the door. Still worse: they are unable or unwilling to be honest with themselves and others about their real feelings and hence continue to cloak their fear behind irrelevant and insincere theoretical objections. (See Obstacles to Recovery for more about shame, dishonesty and personal exceptionalism in addictive illness.)

The obvious and best solution to the problem of the normal anxiety and discomfort that are associated with attending one's first AA meeting is to go to the meeting with someone who knows the ropes. If no friend or acquaintance who happens to be an AA member is available, contact can always be arranged by calling the local AA Central Office and asking for a volunteer to telephone one. Although many people avail themselves of such measures to reduce the stress of their first AA meeting, many others find such logical preliminaries themselves too frightening and therefore do not follow them. It is principally to this last group, to those solitary and always frightened and confused "first timers," that this brief introduction is oriented.

Although there is a great deal of information about AA available on the web and in traditional print, there is surprisingly little to be found that deals with the practical concerns and fears of the individual who is attending or thinking of attending a meeting for the first time. The result is sometimes a kind of "culture shock" which takes place when the newcomer attends and is temporarily overwhelmed by the newness and strangeness of the experience. Even worse, people who seriously consider attending an AA meeting may decide not to do so because of the natural human fear of the unknown.

This guide is neither an official one nor affiliated in any way with AA itself. It represents merely one person's attempt to describe some of the common features of AA meetings. There will be many individual variations and exceptions to this or to any other relatively brief attempt to sketch the principal outlines and common experiences in a program as diverse and unregulated as AA. The best way to regard what follows is as one of those primitive and only half-correct maps drawn by the early geographers. Not everything in such maps is correct, and much that is important is omitted. But in favorable cases the map does serve as a rough guide to the territory to be explored, and provides at least some major landmarks by which the traveler may hope to orient and guide himself in his own explorations of the terrain.

An excellent source of "official" AA information is available at the Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Web Site. Anyone curious about AA and contemplating going to their first meeting should read the brief descriptive information available there, including the following:

A Newcomer Asks
Is AA For You?
44 Questions and Answers About AA
AA Fact File
Those seriously interested in this topic are advised to read The Addict's Dilemna, Addiction, Lies and Relationships, Excuses Alcoholics Make, and Resistances to AA Attendance for more information.

Locating a meeting

There is a famous old English recipe for ox tail stew that begins "First, kill an ox." The first step in attending one's first AA meeting is to locate a meeting to attend. The best way to do this is to have or ask for a specific recommendation from someone who is familiar with both the prospective attendee and the meeting in question. Most cities have what are called "Central Offices" for AA that are listed in the local phone book under "Alcoholics Anonymous." Mental health facilities and hospitals usually have a current directory of meetings or a contact number. And the internet is an excellent resource for locating meetings anywhere in the world.

http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/ectroff.html lists Central Offices by state.

http://alcoholism.miningco.com/healt...msubmeetaa.htm lists on-line AA meetings, mailing lists, and also face-to-face meetings by state.

atlantaaa.org is the web site of the Atlanta, Georgia Central Office. This contains a meeting schedule that is both searchable on-line and downloadable. Meetings in the greater Atlanta metropolitan area are listed and described.

The local Central Office can provide suggestions for a nearby meeting, a meeting schedule, and other information about AA.

http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/econtent.html is the web address for Alcoholics Anonymous. This site provides much useful introductory information, including the database of Central Offices just described.

http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/em24doc1.html is an "AA Fact File" that answers many questions newcomers usually have.
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Old 12-21-2007, 09:35 AM
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Life the gift of recovery!
 
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Thanks for the great post. My thank you button is broken.
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Old 12-21-2007, 11:17 AM
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We also have 2 informative links about your first AA meeting
over on the 12 Step Forum. One is a video from the UK.

If interested....click here

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...-about-aa.html
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