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Your first AA meeting...And fear.

Old 02-22-2012, 05:54 PM
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Your first AA meeting...And fear.

I found this site and it's a guide to your first AA meeting...I thought it was worth a look if this is something you are interested in. Covers a lot..This is what it says about fear...Which I think most of us feel when we go to our first meeting. I see a lot of new people that have all kinds of reasons they can't go and at least try an AA meeting... Maybe this can help someone out. It does mention anxiety and depressive conditions and "dual diagnosis". Hope you get something out of it.

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The Problem of Fear

Regardless of the type, size or location of their first AA meeting, newcomers face a predictable series of challenges that must be overcome in order to begin to benefit from AA. By far the greatest problem most individuals experience when beginning AA is how to deal with their fear.

Fear is the great enemy of recovery from alcoholism and indeed from any serious addiction. Intensely negative emotions such as fear, shame, and guilt obstruct the road to recovery and detour the alcoholic-addict away from what is good for him(for example, AA meetings, therapy, rehab) and toward what is bad for him(isolation, secrecy, alcohol and drugs). Even when a person has supposedly "hit bottom" as a consequence of his addiction and sincerely, desperately desires to overcome it and begin leading a healthy life, the painful and aversive affects of shame, guilt and fear often conspire with his addiction to thwart him and bring his hopes to naught. In all too many cases the fear of the steps necessary for lasting recovery may be greater than the alcoholic's fear of relapse into alcoholism, resulting in the familiar "On again, off again" pattern many alcoholics and addicts display as they begin to flirt with but not yet commit to recovery.

It is the rare newcomer to an AA meeting who is not at least inwardly quaking in his boots. Fear of the unknown and of strange situations is a perfectly normal human response. In fact, it is a necessary response: for without the capacity for fear, no individual would survive for long. Fearful anticipation and resulting hyper-vigilance serve to protect people from harm in strange situations.

The fear of the typical newcomer to an AA meeting begins but by no means ends with this normal and adaptive apprehension in regard to the unfamiliar. The newcomer is vulnerable to many other fears which usually cause far greater distress and may eventually cause him to run away, to adopt a combative attitude, or simply to be unable to profit from his AA experience.

It is probably true in general that the famous "fight or flight" response is the characteristic response of most higher organisms to perceived threat. If a danger is spotted one must either overcome it, usually by attack, or run away to escape harm and even death.

The majority of alcoholics dispose of their fear –dread would probably be a more accurate word- of AA meetings(and alcohol treatment) by the classical phobic-avoidance method: they stay as far away from them as possible. This phobic avoidance is commonly rationalized in various ways, some of which may be superficially plausible. But the underlying problem in almost all cases is fear.

The alcoholic who actually attends an AA meeting, therefore, is the exception to this rule of avoidance. The "normal" thing is for the alcoholic to shy away from AA and anything remotely resembling AA. And the chief reason for this avoidance is fear, followed closely by the intense shame that is characteristic of most advanced addictive disease.

What is the alcoholic so afraid of that he is willing to go to any length -sometimes even to die- to avoid AA meetings? Every individual has a unique story – but there are some common factors which, while varying in relative importance in each case, actually constitute the principal explanation for the typical alcoholic's fear and loathing of AA.

We should keep in mind that the alcoholic attending his first AA meeting seldom does so in a state of mental calm and physical equilibrium. Usually there has been a drinking-related crisis of some kind that has prompted the first visit to AA. A considerable amount of "energy" is required to lift the alcoholic from his normal, i.e. drinking "orbit" into the initially much more aversive AA "orbit." And it is the nature of addiction that mere rational analysis seldom provides sufficient energy for such a drastic change of state. Something more, and often something painful and undeniable, is usually required in addition to whatever intellectual insight the alcoholic may possess. Attendance at one's first AA meeting does not take place in a vacuum but in the context of an existence that more often than not is riddled and riven with turmoil resulting from alcoholic drinking and behavior.

Something else to keep in mind when considering the first AA meeting is the usually highly abnormal and unstable physical state of the alcoholic. For whether he is still drinking, has attempted to cut down, or has recently stopped altogether, his brain is seldom in a healthy functional state. More often than not these days, drugs besides alcohol are likely to be part of the picture as well. All of this undermines the clarity and stability of the newcomer's psyche and makes the chore of correctly perceiving and interpreting the meeting environment more difficult.

The basic fear of the average alcoholic attending his first AA meeting is loss of face, i.e. fear of painful narcissistic injury, humiliation, or social embarrassment. To attend an AA meeting means to acknowledge that one is or might be an alcoholic who has been unable to control his drinking! This fear originates and is maintained solely in the alcoholic's head and is largely independent of external influence – especially external influence that might be thought to ameliorate it. Thus the newcomer at an AA meeting is frequently ashamed to be seen there despite knowing full well that everyone else present is also an alcoholic. This is because the "seeing" that pains him is his own seeing of himself as someone with a drinking problem who is in need of help. Well-meant reassurances from other people are of little help here and may even make the shame worse. For the alcoholic is ashamed in his own eyes and before himself, feelings that commonly overflow and then are projected upon others. The self-critical and ashamed alcoholic thus experiences his own internal self-condemnation as external criticism and disapproval coming or threatening to come from others.

A soldier on night sentry duty on the frontier of hostile and dangerous territory will naturally be alert to every sound and shadowy movement as possibly indicating the threatening presence of the enemy. His attention is focused and organized to detect and act upon signs of imminent attack. Everything else has been put on the back burner for as long as he stands sentry duty. Such a soldier is not interested in, nor would he be very good at learning various kinds of new information about the theory of standing guard, the politics of warfare, or the geologic history of the landscape he is presently patrolling. His survival depends upon the capacity of his mind to weed out such extraneous or distracting input and to remain fixated upon the immediate task of survival through vigilance and readiness for quick response. Not merely his weapon but the soldier himself is "locked and loaded," i.e. ready for combat.

In the same way the individual exposed for the first time to an entirely new and, in his mind, potentially threatening environment such as an AA meeting will be in a state of heightened defensive vigilance, scanning the environment and the behavior of others for any signs of danger. This is by no means the optimum state of mind to make objective assessments and to draw reliable conclusions about what is going on. People under conditions of perceived high threat view, organize and interpret their environment just as the soldier-sentry described above does: they are watchful, suspicious, cautious, and prepared to fight or flee on a moment's notice.

In brief, the high anxiety and selective attention of many AA newcomers causes them to experience and evaluate their meeting environment and the people in it in a distorted fashion. Only by coming back a number of times with a diminishing level of fear and anxiety do individuals unfamiliar with AA meetings begin to acquire a more rounded, accurate and in-depth view of what is actually going on – as opposed to what they fear is or might shortly be going on.

All of the observations made above apply with even more force to those not infrequent instances in which the newcomer, in addition to suffering from alcoholism, also suffers from a significant anxiety disorder such as "social phobia" or "social anxiety disorder." A very high percentage of alcoholics, 50% or more in some studies, show evidence of an associated anxiety or depressive condition in addition to their alcoholism. In these cases faster progress in AA and sobriety is usually made when separate professional treatment is obtained for the "dual diagnosis" condition.

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Here is the site...Covers everthing about a first meeting...I hope you are lucky enough to attend one..

Your First AA Meeting<
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Old 02-22-2012, 07:30 PM
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Thanks for posting this, I've been trying to overcome fears of attending a first meeting. I think that I will go some days and then I find excuses not to. This excerpt helps to understand it a little more.
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Old 02-22-2012, 07:35 PM
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Thanks for this post. Personally, I feel like the shame and fear are one of the biggest issues I struggle with, so it's good to know I'm not the only one
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Old 02-22-2012, 07:35 PM
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Check out the site...They talk about getting sponsors...What to share in a meeting..It's pretty well done..
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Old 02-22-2012, 08:21 PM
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Though I appreciate the post, I have to say that my first meeting really turned me off of AA/NA/CA meetings. The first group I went to was like a damned social club. These people had been sober for years, and it was like their own private party, They ignored the newcomers, and when i said what I was there for, they began to act very strangely. They were extremely negative, and dismissive. My father lost it, and told them that they, "forgot where they came from".
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Old 02-22-2012, 08:33 PM
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So that was the only one you tried...?

I don't know if you read it or not...But this made sense to me.

In brief, the high anxiety and selective attention of many AA newcomers causes them to experience and evaluate their meeting environment and the people in it in a distorted fashion. Only by coming back a number of times with a diminishing level of fear and anxiety do individuals unfamiliar with AA meetings begin to acquire a more rounded, accurate and in-depth view of what is actually going on – as opposed to what they fear is or might shortly be going on.
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Old 02-22-2012, 11:09 PM
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Beyondthesky I am very sorry you had such a bad experience at a first meeting. I have to say that it’s an uncommon experience, (so uncommon that I have never heard of it actually). Where I’ve attended meetings the meeting changes quickly to a discussion a new person will more likely benefit from (when it is known a newcomer is present). I would suggest that you try another meeting in your area. My hunch is that if you went back to that same meeting you would find a lot of folks with their tails between their legs and hear at least a few apologies. Even so, I think a different meeting would be best. It's worth a try, it really is.
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Old 02-22-2012, 11:12 PM
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Sapling this is a wonderful link! Great info on fear. It IS so important to not forget where we came from.
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Old 02-22-2012, 11:42 PM
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Originally Posted by beyondthesky View Post
Though I appreciate the post, I have to say that my first meeting really turned me off of AA/NA/CA meetings.
Each group is different, the first one I went to, I didnt feel a part of, even though I tried a few times. My current one, is great. You should not use one bad experience to put you off something for life, after all how many bad hangovers , regretful things said when drunk, embarrassing moments, etc have you suffered through alcohol , and yet you still went back to it.
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Old 02-23-2012, 02:37 AM
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It's all trial and error....Some bars I liked to hang out in..Some I didn't care for...Well...It's not that I didn't care for them...I just didn't go to them often.
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Old 02-23-2012, 06:44 AM
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Thanks for posting that sapling.

God bless.
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Old 02-23-2012, 09:06 AM
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Sapling,

Thank you so much for posting the article. It describes how I feel about attending AA perfectly. It makes me feel so much better to know others have felt the same way. Really inspires me to overcome the fear
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Old 02-23-2012, 09:35 AM
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thank you

I'm going to my first meeting tonight...thank you so very much, from the bottom of my heart. This really helps.
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Old 02-23-2012, 09:55 AM
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Damn....I put this thread up...I was thinking...If this could get one person to go to an AA meeting and maybe get something out of it...That would be amazing...That's two right there...That makes my friggen day...I hope and pray it does for you what it did for me.
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