Have never gone to a new AA meeting alone. Nervous!
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 3
Have never gone to a new AA meeting alone. Nervous!
I have been to plenty of AA meetings, stopped going, relapsed and am now required to go once a week. Before I had a lot of sober friends my age (I'm 24) and we would go to new meetings together. But I live in a different area now and I don't have any friends, and have no one to ask about what the different meetings are like and what would be best for me.
I'm getting dropped off there and have considered walking to the gas station instead, buying a pack of smokes and waiting to get picked up again.
I know I don't have to do or say anything. I guess I just am afraid what this meeting will be like. What kind of people will be there. Will they all be my age (I am nervous around people my age)? Will they all be old (I'm nervous I'll be judged as naive)? My worst fear is that the meeting is tiny and only 6 people are there.
I guess I'm just venting because I'm nervous.
I'm getting dropped off there and have considered walking to the gas station instead, buying a pack of smokes and waiting to get picked up again.
I know I don't have to do or say anything. I guess I just am afraid what this meeting will be like. What kind of people will be there. Will they all be my age (I am nervous around people my age)? Will they all be old (I'm nervous I'll be judged as naive)? My worst fear is that the meeting is tiny and only 6 people are there.
I guess I'm just venting because I'm nervous.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: NYC
Posts: 1,225
don't let your mind argue you out of going. Just go. even if you hear one thing that helps, it will be worth getting the courage up to do it.
I went to my first meeting alone. Had never been to one before. I figured it would be filled with old men, in dirty raincoats, smoking. But I knew I needed help. I was pleasantly surprised.
I've also walked into a new meeting where there were only a few people. They were often some of the best meetings I've been to.
good luck getting up the courage.
I went to my first meeting alone. Had never been to one before. I figured it would be filled with old men, in dirty raincoats, smoking. But I knew I needed help. I was pleasantly surprised.
I've also walked into a new meeting where there were only a few people. They were often some of the best meetings I've been to.
good luck getting up the courage.
Member
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Northeast, US
Posts: 1,052
If you are "required" to go once a week don't you need to get a signature or something? I went to all of them alone and I agree it can be a bit intimidating walking into them solo the first time.
Autobrew Anon Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: USA
Posts: 599
every meeting i went to, i went alone. and i hate doing things alone. but actually it wasn't bad. the group i went to was small, but i never felt i had to say anything and several of the people had been going so many years they were really glad to have a new face. one of them actually paid for my big book for me (it was a $5 donation) i will never forget that person. go with an open mind, you never know - there may be someone else there like you that will be glad you showed up.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Between Meetings
Posts: 8,997
Here's an interesting read...
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.
Source
Your First AA Meeting<
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.
Source
Your First AA Meeting<
Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Vancouver BC Canada
Posts: 384
I have yet to see a meeting of AA be anything but welcoming of the newcomer , the people coming back and people from out of town.
I went back, alone , but I guess I was more fearful of drinking again than going back to AA.
I was nervous but that did not last long. I was more beaten down physically , mentally and spiritually that a hand shake and a smile wiped my fear out in record time.
I preferred the humility of going back than the humiliation of continued drinking and its outcomes.
It would have been a darn shame to not go back and be off drinking myself insane. Shame is a very negative thing for me , humility is very much on the right beam.
I went back, alone , but I guess I was more fearful of drinking again than going back to AA.
I was nervous but that did not last long. I was more beaten down physically , mentally and spiritually that a hand shake and a smile wiped my fear out in record time.
I preferred the humility of going back than the humiliation of continued drinking and its outcomes.
It would have been a darn shame to not go back and be off drinking myself insane. Shame is a very negative thing for me , humility is very much on the right beam.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Inbetween dances
Posts: 548
Well, you could take comfort in knowing how meetings are ran? The people at those tables are there to help you, not hurt you and it's almost like a universal language. Ask yourself this : are you more afraid of walking into a room and getting help? Or are you more afraid to continue down the path you have been on and end up dead? I know the answer for me, and as scared as I was walking up those steps, I am grateful I did, because I already feel a connection with these people!!! I'm excited about going tonight. And the cool thing is, I only had to be scared once, then it felt like I belonged there! Good luck!!
Member
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Between Meetings
Posts: 8,997
Originally Posted by fallingtogether 
Well, you could take comfort in knowing how meetings are ran? The people at those tables are there to help you, not hurt you and it's almost like a universal language. Ask yourself this : are you more afraid of walking into a room and getting help? Or are you more afraid to continue down the path you have been on and end up dead? I know the answer for me, and as scared as I was walking up those steps, I am grateful I did, because I already feel a connection with these people!!! I'm excited about going tonight. And the cool thing is, I only had to be scared once, then it felt like I belonged there! Good luck!!
A Day at a Time
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Grand Rapids MI
Posts: 6,435
There is positively, absolutely, nothing to fear. No body wound up in AA because they were on a winning streak. Everyone at the tables has been where you are at. Scared, broken, desperate but that is the beauty of the program. Nobody but an alcoholic can understand because they are the only people that have been there and done that.
AA's as a group are the nicest, most understanding, non-judgmental people you will ever meet. They only want one thing. They want to see you get better and be all that you can be.
I know that for me it was the first time in my entire life that I felt a belonged.
AA's as a group are the nicest, most understanding, non-judgmental people you will ever meet. They only want one thing. They want to see you get better and be all that you can be.
I know that for me it was the first time in my entire life that I felt a belonged.
Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
