Aa Meeting Paper

I attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The meeting I attended was on a Sunday morning at 8am. A group of 11 gathered to share their experiences under the deadly addiction of alcoholism and it was an open lead meeting. It was a very interesting experience for me. I have never been to an AA meeting, so I really didn't know what to expect. When I got there everyone was really friendly and I explained that I was a UNK student and I was just there to observe because I had to write a paper about AA. The first part of the meeting was a reading from the big book as they call it.The first reading summarized the AA creed and the second was a passage from the â€Å"book. † I noticed that almost everyone had a copy of it. It looked just like a Bible, and indeed, they treated it as such. A guy reading the mission of AA started the meeting and then a different man read the 12 steps that an alcoholic follows to gain sobriety. Then the lead was introduced and he had everyone go around th e room and say their name. When everyone said their name they would say, â€Å"My name is â€Å" ¦and I am an alcoholic. † The guy giving the lead told about how he started drinking and the various experiences that he went through while drinking.Some of the things he talked about sounded really rough. It was surprising to me that someone could stand up there and tell their life story and all the awful things they had done. After he talked about her alcoholism, he then began to discuss how he became sober and how great it feels to have his sobriety. Following was a guy in his early 50s who spoke about his sobriety ,he discussed about his struggles with alcohol and how he feels like he don’t have a ‘’real family â€Å", joining these meeting gives him a family that was After the lead, the group leader came up and read announcements.Then a collection basket was passed around, and everyone put some donation into the basket. Then the group leader asked for everyone to hold hands and say the â€Å"Our Father† prayer. After the prayer, the meeting was over with. There were some brochures at the front of the room about addiction and AA. I thought that having brochures was a great way for people to get information. On my way to the meeting I had all kinds of images of what an addict look like , as it turned out I was wrong , an addict don’t look a specific way , everyone looked normal , my first impression was ‘’ wow they look like an everyday normal personal.I thought they were going to look dirty , smelly it turns out that I was , the men and women that was there had families , grand kids , they weren’t criminals , except for one who was a dope dealer . After the meeting I spoke with one of the lady who’s been AA for almost five weeks , she ‘s a CNA with two kids and is currently engage . One of the things brought up which I thought was very interesting was during the times of her struggles with this disease she didn’t want to admit to her problems because she felt like he had an Image to keep at work ‘’. It really changed my view of what an addict alike .