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Free Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting Essay Sample
Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings are for persons who want to get better treatment from alcoholism. People who attend these meetings do not pay any amount and hence they are allowed to come to the meetings as many times as they wish. In these meetings alcoholism is described as a disease which is spiritually related. The Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings are of two types, open and closed meetings. Open meetings are of two types and they are categorized according to how they are conducted. The first type of the meetings is operated by one speaker at a time. By being open they mean that, even those people who are non alcoholics can attend (Jarlais, 2006).
In these meetings the alcoholics narrate one by one how they got into the drinking problem. They also tell how they got to be involved with the Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings. They also tell how their lives have changed since they got to attend the meetings. The other type of Alcoholics Anonymous is the discussion meetings. In this kind of meetings a person first describes his or her story with alcohol and then a discussion is opened. The discussion is held for the whole time they are in the meeting. This way they share ways in which they can get solutions to their problems.
The other type is the closed meetings, the way they are conducted is the same way the open meetings are done, however the only difference is that this meetings are exclusively for the alcoholics and those who face the fear of becoming alcoholics in future (Jarlais, 2004). Many of the meetings held are closed meetings because everyone has a common story that they can share. Also, this people are most committed to recover. The alcoholics are also comfortable when giving their stories. I once attended an open Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting and when everyone was giving their testimonies I did not have words to say why I was there. It would have been wrong for me to say that I was there to observe how the meetings are conducted for my school work.
Since it was an open meeting where one speaker speaks at his or her time, where they allow non alcoholics to attend, I had to come with a story that I had an uncle who was really struggling with alcoholism and had refused to come for the meeting. I had also to say that I had the fear of becoming an alcoholic as a result of seeing how my uncle had been messed up by alcohol. So much was going through in my mind and I thought they would think that in was living in denial. The meeting that I attended was held in a church. It had a total of 20 people present, seven of them were women and the rest were men.
Majority of people in the meeting were between the ages of 41 and 55. 5 persons were between the age of 30 and 40. 3 people were around the age of 60s. Among the 20 people in the meeting 15 of them were whites while 3 of them were African American. In the meetings there are steps that people follow in the path to recovery. The alcoholics are taught to be humble so that they can be able to tell stories that they have lived in with alcoholism. I have to admit that before I entered into an alcoholic anonymous meeting that I had always thought these meetings were horrible. I thought that people in such meetings were unruly and actually came to those meetings drunk. This idea came to me as a result of what the media displays using movies.
On attending the meeting I found that the people behaved normally at least by the appearance that they posed. In fact one cannot be able to know that they are alcoholics. This people were not depressed as I would have thought because they believe in God and consider the Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings as a safe haven for them. The most important step towards recovery is that of denial. The moment they stop living in denial then the road to recovery because they have to admit that they are sick and they need help.
The alcoholics are encouraged to keep off from drinking as they continue attending the meetings each day that passes. The Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings uses group therapy to help the alcoholics improve their condition. It uses philosophy because the problem with drinking is all in the mind. The main reason that most of them want to change is because they want to learn about the abuse of drugs. I then realized that some of the people in the meeting had been attending these meetings for years while others had been attending for months.
The location for these meetings needs to be convenient for the alcoholics so that they do not become discouraged. The Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings uses a 12 step treatment program. This treatment program is said to work well and most alcoholics recover from this program. This program works like the way self help groups are run. The patients are supposed to become very dependent on the group therapy to enhance the treatment. They had moving stories and these stories displaced that they desperately wanted to get well seeing that they were missing out on things that were going on in their families and the society in general (Hiller, 2004).
I had a choice to talk to two people from the Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting. One was a white man and the other an African American woman. The African American woman who was 35 years old told me that she started drinking when she got laid off from work. She tried to look for another job but to no avail. She decided to become prostitute and that is where she picked the habit of drinking. However she did other drugs but mostly abused alcohol. She told me she had three beautiful daughters and that she was a single mom. She realized that she had to become a better mom to her daughters.
She also wants to look for a better job so that she can become a role model to her girls. At that time she told me that she was staying with her sister who was very supportive. Her sister had promised to help her look for a better job the moment she was done with drinking. She told me that she has been attending meeting for 5 months. She told me that dealing with alcoholism was not that easy in fact; at first she thought that she could never overcome her problem. She was however happy with the progress that she was making. She highly recommends the Alcoholic Anonymous Meetings for people who have a problem dealing with alcoholism.
I then talked to a white man who was about 29 years of age. When I asked him how he got into the drinking problem. He said that he had started drinking while in high school. His drinking problem came from peer influence. It started out innocently but later he became addictive. He gets very good jobs but he cannot keep them because sometimes he drinks too much and goes to work late. Lately he got a very good job and he is very determined to keep it. He also has a wife and a young girl called Stacy.
He decided to come to the meetings because he wanted to change and also because his wife threatened to leave him if he did not stop drinking. He was very humble; sometimes his wife came to the alcoholic's anonymous meetings with him. His wife was very supportive and he did not enjoy the pain he was inflicting to them. When he is done with the therapy he decides to give inspirational talks to students in high school who involve themselves in responsible drinking. He likes the way they share their experiences at the Alcoholic's Anonymous Meetings because they encourage each other. According to what he has gone through there are people who are worse than him.
I realized that majority of people do not view alcohol as a drug this is because it is legal. Alcohol is to a large part most misused drug as far as abuse of drugs is concerned. Alcohol is also said to cause so many deaths. This is because it is used by majority of people. The government and the society promote it because they view it as a social behavior. The number of alcoholics keeps rising decade after decade. Blame is put to the bad economy that is being experienced globally (Hiller, 2000).
Majority of persons who lose their jobs become frustrated and seek solace in alcohol. However, with the alcoholics anonymous meetings majority of people with the disease of alcoholism have improved their condition and some of them have stopped drinking completely. The Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings have been opened in many areas. Research is still being carried out, on better ways in which the alcoholics can be rehabilitated.
