Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting Report

I recently attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a comfortable house in Santa Monica, California. The room was occupied by approximately 70 attendees, and even more sitting on the outside porch. The focus of this particular day’s meeting was step six of the 12-step program. The sixth step is stated as follows: “We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character” (Wilson, 1939, p. 76). Following the definition and interpretation of the sixth step, the main speaker of the day came up to the podium to tell her story. This woman was a recovering alcoholic and ex-heroin user. She had been sober for 14 years before she relapsed, and as of now she has been sober for 16 years. She explained that she has struggled with alcohol
Whenever an ex-addict would mention feeling stressed, angry, or losing control over their sobriety, they would say they “took inventory”. I did not understand this so went home and researched what this phrase meant. Step four of the 12-step program talks about the reasons why an individual drinks and how to examine these reasons in a list (Wilson, 1939 , p. 64). By making these lists, the alcoholic reviews emotional problems and factors that trigger the physical and psychologic need to drink. According to Professor Becker (2012) there are three general categories of events that can potently trigger relapse drinking. These categories are: exposure to small amounts of alcohol, exposure to alcohol-related cues or environmental factors, and psychological stress. Laboratory studies have found that alcohol-dependent people are more sensitive to these triggers, compared to control subjects, which may increase the desire to drink (Becker,
Two speakers told the audience that they suffer from liver cancer due to alcoholism. Cancer from alcohol abuse is a major risk of drinking alcohol and is more common than people realize. A recent study has shown that alcohol consumption in the United States resulted in approximately 18,200 to 21,300 cancer deaths (three to four percent) of all cancer deaths in the United States in 2013 (Nelson et al., 2013). Alcohol has been found to increase the risk of cancer in moderate to heavy drinkers. Specifically, daily consumption 1.5 alcoholic drinks or more accounted for 26% to 35% of alcohol-attributable cancer deaths (Nelson et al., 2013). One alcoholic beverage equals one ounce of liquor, 12 ounces of beer, or four ounces of wine (Hart & Ksir,