My Aa Meeting Experience
For my Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting assignment I attended an AA meeting held at Annunciation RC Church in Paramus. I was a bit nervous before coming in to the meeting. I had my own personal feelings towards alcoholics for some time. I had a few relatives that dealt with alcohol with some of their lives. Like most families from my background, talking about alcoholism just never happened. It was something that was kept secret and never discussed. My religion tells us that drinking any kind of alcohol is a sin but my background is from Southern Russia, were drinking alcohol is very common and normalized. It is very interesting to live in a community like mine where you have people that are very religious and pray five times a day and
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I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people were there. It was so packed I could not find a place to seat. I nice gentleman actually offered me his seat. There was at least 75 people in the meeting. I was surprised to see a conglomeration of people. There were men, women, younger and older people, black,white, hispanic, and Asian. Whenever a person spoke they introduced themself by their name and state they are an alcoholic. I sat next a nice woman that was very friendly to me. Overall, all the people were very nice and welcoming. There were a couple speakers that told their stories of how they ended up in AA. One thing I found pleasant was the use of humor. One speaker told his story of his journey to AA. He used humor and was even suggestive at times but everyone laughed with it. He used his humor to related to people and I believed it tooked. I looked around as he spoke and many people were nodding their heads in agreement. They understood what he went through and is still going through. I liked the used of humor because it broke the ice. It was not as serious as I thought it was going to be. At end of the meeting everyone gathered in the circle and joined hands to say a prayer. Even though I am a Muslim I was welcomed to join hands and participate in the prayer. I was really a touching moment. I felt the unity of the
I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people were there. It was so packed I could not find a place to seat. I nice gentleman actually offered me his seat. There was at least 75 people in the meeting. I was surprised to see a conglomeration of people. There were men, women, younger and older people, black,white, hispanic, and Asian. Whenever a person spoke they introduced themself by their name and state they are an alcoholic. I sat next a nice woman that was very friendly to me. Overall, all the people were very nice and welcoming. There were a couple speakers that told their stories of how they ended up in AA. One thing I found pleasant was the use of humor. One speaker told his story of his journey to AA. He used humor and was even suggestive at times but everyone laughed with it. He used his humor to related to people and I believed it tooked. I looked around as he spoke and many people were nodding their heads in agreement. They understood what he went through and is still going through. I liked the used of humor because it broke the ice. It was not as serious as I thought it was going to be. At end of the meeting everyone gathered in the circle and joined hands to say a prayer. Even though I am a Muslim I was welcomed to join hands and participate in the prayer. I was really a touching moment. I felt the unity of the