The meetings are a gathering…a place I go to see and hear and talk to people like me. That they are like me connects us because we all suffer from an illness that’s about brokenness, not being whole and healthy. It’s an illness that’s physical (the craving that starts when you practice whatever the addiction because you put the thing you’re “allergic” to into your body); it’s mental (your mind is obsessed with the desire to change your mood with whatever substance or means you use to get the mood change) and it’s spiritual (because you haven’t or don’t know how to connect to something greater than you and so there’s a void/emptiness that you try to fill with the addiction). This illness, ironically, connects us. We all have the disease that can make you well, so to speak.
If you are in recovery and working the program, the illness can put you on a path to wellness. That path requires that I do certain things: work the steps, go to meetings which is the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, be “of service” to others, find someone to talk to that I can trust and respect (a friend or friends in the program or a sponsor who have ethical standards and healthy moral values; for newcomers that person is your sponsor who takes you through the steps and listens to your craziness with a sense of empathy and helps you find balance).
Going to a meeting is putting yourself in a gathering (around a campfire, so to speak) where you hear stories (from the podium or around the table and after the meeting) that keep you courageous enough to live your life without picking up. Where you hear stories that give you hope and faith because you see others living a changed life, approaching life in a different way w/o alcohol (doing things like…. letting go of the need/urge to control and letting God do things in God’s time, or like…relying on a power greater than ourselves to get us through whatever the trouble is or the problem might be). Where you hear stories that teach you, by example, that you can use different ways/coping skills or “tools of the program” (the steps are the basic tools) to keep going w/o drinking …whether times are good (because we drank when times were good) or whether times are bad (and for sure we drank over the bad times).
Going to meetings reminds us that we are bonded…a family of sorts, ragtag as we may be. We are bonded because sobriety is a journey, a process, something never ending. Something that all of us walk in/toward/through every day. When we go and feel that bonding taking place through the stories we hear, we stop wanting to hide, to be secretive, to isolate, to listen to and follow the ideas that come from the craziness of our disease (the committee, the monkeys, etc.). When we go, we feel safe and secure. We know we’re in a place where we are not judged. Where there are others who’ve done the same things or worse than we’ve done (and still do them sometimes). So we don’t feel that debilitating sense of shame anymore that sent us right back to the bottle and that drunk/drinking cycle.
AA is much more, at bottom, than staying stopped from drinking; it’s really about change. Which boils down to a shift in your values, attitudes and behaviors…how you do it differently, that is, approach the bumps in life’s road, the obstacles, the disappointments, the happy times, successes, all of the things life throws at you. And because I want to embrace change and not run from it anymore, I go because I can find out from other people sharing how to do that. I go there and I hear people like me talk about how to grow up, how to live without a crutch, how to make peace with who I am, how to be a better me. We help each other learn how to live. We’re not alone and struggling or suffering anymore.
And so, I go to learn how to live. I go to learn how to put away my old coping skills that are of no use now and are, in fact, toxic. I go to learn how to use new coping tools (the steps) in my every day life. I go to learn how to change for a happier, healthy, better life. I go there because I’ve earned my seat and nobody can put me out. It’s my place. It’s where I belong. And all my life I’ve looked for a place to belong, for a sense of belonging. A place where I’m accepted with all my flaws—because of my flaws, in fact. I go there because it’s a sanctuary. A respite from a crazed world that seeks to make me as crazy and confused as it is.
I go because God gave me back my life and since I have been graced with recovery, I go and tell my stories to I give back.
