Alcoholics Anonymous Group AA Meeting

The members found tremendous strength in the group. I could feel the importance of the community, the no-judgment zone, and sharing their story with peers. The meeting promoted empathy and allowed people to feel supported and understood in their struggle with alcoholism. More importantly, the meetings show them that they are not alone. They could talk about their actions under the influence to others that truly understood

Group therapy has evolved so much that the participant are learning how to help themselves and others. Self-help groups are one of the most popular forms of group therapy. One of the most known self-help groups is Alcoholics Anonymous also known as A.A. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an international organization produced to assist alcoholics to recover and live alcohol free lives. It was founded by Bill Wilson and Robert Holbrook Smith in 1935. It is a program, complete with twelve steps and twelve traditions, that was put together to help addicts

For the support group observation assignment, I attended the Gateway Group’s Alcoholic Anonymous (A.A.) meeting. The Gateway Group is part of a larger organization called the Tri-County Intergroup Association of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Tri-County Intergroup serves A.A. members in Franklin, Wake, and Warren Counties and is broken down into 113 separate groups. As the preamble states, the purpose of all A.A. group meetings are for A.A. members to share their experience strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. There are no dues or fees for being an A.A. member, and the only requirement for membership is to have a desire to stop drinking ().

Lastly, the chairperson recounted her own personal story with addiction. I was surprised how the group handled her story in a positive way. I noticed at times members laughed and even smiled and others making brief supporting comments. Rather than judge the events of her life, the group members seemed to connect in a personal way. I liked how the meeting was honest and open. Afterwards different members of the meeting read brief AA literature, "How it Works," the "Twelve Traditions" and "The Promises." I listened to each of them very closely

For this assignment, I observed an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting held at The Meeting Place on Wednesday, September 28, 2016. There were 15 members in attendance, 12 men and 3 women not counting myself. The group leaders were both women and sat at the front of the room. For confidentiality of the group member names will not be included. The meeting began with the group leaders reminding the attendees of the rules of AA and the process of the meeting. Several of the attendees read the declaration of AA and the documents associated with the meeting structure. After the introduction, several of the members gave their testimony regarding their own experience with drinking. Following the short declarations, a passage of the big book was

Alcoholics Anonymous is a group composed of men and women who want to stop drinking and help each other stay on the path towards sobriety. They are not affiliated with any other organization, denomination, or institution and the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking (Fisher & Harrison, 2013). They meet at least once a week, if not more to support one another and to share their experiences, struggles, and successes.

Following the “Guidelines” literature. It was brought back to the leader, he stated “My name is_____, and I am an alcoholic” which he followed by a topic for conversation and proceeded to speak on his encounter related to the topic he mentioned. After he was finished, the members responded with “Thanks, (name).” He then opened the meeting for discussion. At, first people were hesitant to verbalize their experiences and thoughts. One of the long-time members spoke first. I know he was a long-time member form the story he shared. Once he concluded his story, several others followed. Consequently, this section of the meeting took most of the hour allotted. When it came close to an hour; the leader started to bring the meeting to a close. He asked if anyone else would be willing to lead the next meeting. He read a statement, that explained that the meetings were self-supporting and any donations would be used to sponsor the meetings and its requirements. While he read that statement another member passed a collection basket. Once the basket had made its way back to the beginning the leader mentioned that he would now pass out the sobriety tokens. I had recognized these form a client I had worked with at my social services agency I interned at this year. The different color tokens represent the various stages of sobriety for each individual. As soon as, all the tokens were handed out the leader asked everyone to

I attended an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting at the Great Bridge United Methodist Church, in Chesapeake, VA. This was an open meeting held at 0730, entitled; Ready, Willing & Able. This meeting had a variety of individuals in attendance. After the meeting was started, today’s agenda was to read a quote from a book titled, Living Sober, distributed by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Each person in the room was asked to comment about the quote or “pass”. There were 18 people in attendance and the meeting lasted 60 minutes. Each person was allowed to respond to the quote for 2-3 minutes. Everyone was given chance to speak, that wanted to. Some of the participants that were engaged spoke a lot more than others.

Attending a local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was a humbling and informative experience. To be completely honest, I had no idea what to expect going into the meeting. Right before I walked in, I felt somewhat uncomfortable and embarrassed. I felt as if I was intruding on someone’s personal life with my presence, even though I knew I was welcomed since the meeting was listed as “open”. Alcohol abuse is a very sensitive topic to me, as someone quite close to me is an alcoholic: my Uncle. I know that he is a recovering alcoholic, but I never quite know what is going on with him because I don’t ask questions and he never shares what he is feeling with me. When I was younger, I remember that he was always the life of my family parties, but I know now it was because he was drunk. When I see him now, he isn’t as energetic as he used to be and often avoids situations where alcohol is involved. Although my Uncle did not personally tell me, my father has shared with me that he attends AA meetings at a church in my hometown. I never understood what AA meetings really entail and didn’t grasp how they helped alcoholics recover. Attending this local AA meeting helped shed light on what my Uncle feels, and I am more understanding to his addiction. I am thankful for this assignment because I know that my Uncle is not alone; the AA community is so supportive and the members all have the best intentions of getting

The objective of this study is to write a reaction on a 12-step meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with the focus of the meeting being attitude modification. The meeting attended was the Stairway Group meeting in Decatur, Alabama. The members who attended this group meeting were of all ages, of both the female and male gender and were white, black, and Hispanic individuals. The majority of the attendees were males.

Everyday, more and more people are being claimed by alcoholism. The most important message AA makes is that there is help available, and there are people who want to help you, just as other helped them. Louis, a 79 year old AA member reciprocates his AA experience by “try[ing] to help the younger people find sobriety and happiness the way I have. I tell them, “If I can do it, so can you” (AA pamphlet). This is just one of many stories AA members have to offer an observer.

group was that AA has one purpose. That purpose is to help alcoholics deal with

n Wednesday afternoon I drove to the Alano Club, a building in Florence, KY that holds approximately 17 Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) meetings each week. This meeting was open to the public meaning it was open to anyone - addicts/alcoholics, their loved ones, anyone in the community, etc. Every time that I attend a meeting I get this irrational fear that I would recognize someone and they would think that I am an alcoholic and tell everyone I knew but realistically this would not be the case since this group relies on anonymous participation and privacy outside. After previously attending an AA meeting my expectations for the amount of and diversity of the people was much more open but I still was surprised when I walked in and saw children that

Support groups, how well do support groups actually benefit individuals and how are these support groups incorporated so that the techniques can actually assist someone? In researching this particular topic of Alcoholic Anonymous the results indicated that there is a diversity of AA groups. Although they all have the same objective there are variations in methods and techniques which are implemented to be able to infiltrate the message to the individual. An example of such, is an offered AA group named Hope and healing which aims towards the same objective however gives emphasis to its information through spirituality. Alcoholic anonymous has been able to aid an array of individuals, what started as individuals looking for assistance to their own misfortune in regards to alcoholism continued by learning that they could support one another and develop a fellowship.

Noteworthy, AA celebrated their initial start date on June 10, 2015, citing the derivation of the self-help support group as June 10, 1935 (Shamra & Branscum, 2010). Alcoholics Anonymous is a substantially influential group considering that they acted in changing the public’s perception of alcohol addiction from being a sin to alcohol addiction actually being a disease (Tavris, 2014). There are more than two million members involved with AA universally, and the typical duration of sobriety for these members is greater than seven years (Sifers & Peltz, 2013). A major benefit of AA is the fact that the programs popularity allows widespread accessibility that individuals have the opportunity to access in the United States and abroad during a diverse amount of time intervals (Shamra & Branscum, 2010). In addition, another benefit of AA membership is that the cost of membership is free; AA requires no financial support from its members (Galanter, 2014). Moreover, AA gains its support by receiving charitable donations from its members and other supporters (Sharma & Branscum, 2010).