Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting Experience

During the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I attended, my eyes were opened to the disease of addiction. When I walked into the meeting, I introduced myself and announced that I am a nursing student and was there to observe. In sync, all of the people attending the meeting greeted me. Twelve people took turns to read the twelve steps on the road to recovery. After the twelve steps were read everyone introduced themselves and then everyone greeted them at once. It was announced that each person that was there for addiction had only had five minutes to share their story. The Alcoholics Anonymous meeting was definitely a reality check for me. There were many people that were there that announced that they were an addict that did not look or
act like an addict. Many described the third step to be the most difficult of the twelve steps. The third step is transferring yourself to God or a higher power to get you through your addiction. At first this did not make sense to me, but I realized that addicts naturally need control over situations. So when they hand over themselves and their addictions to a higher power it is like they are stepping down from having control. It is as if they will not make any wrong decisions because their higher power is in control. So if they do make a wrong decision they feel it is not their fault which I do not agree with.
The difference between NA and AA is that AA believes you are clean as long as you did not have any alcohol, but NA believes you are clean as long as you did not have any mood or mind altering substances, which includes alcohol. I definitely enjoyed NA better than AA because it was more fulfilling and not so ignorant to the actual idea of addiction. AA believes in trading one addiction for another even if it is more dangerous than alcohol. It is not said at the AA meeting that this is the case, but that is what I got from it. At the end of the meeting they also said the serenity prayer like the NA meetings in a circle.