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| Your First AA Meeting - A Guide For The Perplexed |
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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.
This page is not on TxDirector.com:
Go to Your First AA Meeting - A Guide For The Perplexed
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| RE: Your First AA Meeting - A Guide For The Perplexed | |
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Post by
nealpsyd
(1)
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2007-04-16
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"Go to Your First AA Meeting..." is an excellent primer for individuals new to AA, whether that individual is a clinician recommending AA or the individual who has a desire to stop drinking. The article is comprehensive in terms of both what to expect at the different types of meetings as well as tips on how to conduct one's self at meetings. Most impressive was the discussion relating to the subjective experience of the newcomer, in particular, the "fight or flight" defense. |
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| RE: Your First AA Meeting - A Guide For The Perplexed | |
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Post by
Deirforb
(1)
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2007-03-07
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This sounded like a promising article but I kept looking for the promised "guide" and there is none unless you consider going with someone else a guide. I thought it would include what a meeting might be like. |
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