Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting Report

The type of meeting I decided to attend was an Alcoholics Anonymous held on campus by a fellow University of Cincinnati student. She said that she decided to begin to hold the meetings on the UC main campus because she has had a long history of being an alcoholic and she knew that out of a university of 30,000+ students, she could not be the only person suffering from this condition. There were two additional people who attended the meeting (a male and a female), as well as six classmates who were observing the meeting, and a baby (the child of the woman holding the meeting). We began the meeting by introducing ourselves to everyone and telling the reason they are attending the meeting. The reasons ranged from being an alcoholic to being a drug addict. The meeting was a very calm and relaxing place and I think that contributed to the comfortable feeling I got while being there. No matter what was said no one was judgmental or negatively perceived by the group. I believe the positive energy I felt while in the group was because everyone participating had been in similar situations due to their problems and it helped that they can get help with people whom they can relate to. The only part I
didn’t like about the meeting that I attended was the fact that the group leader had brought her child. The toddler would constantly interrupt the meeting by crying, making noise, and bothering people while testimonies were being given. I think the distraction it caused took away from the overall effectiveness of the meeting. I do believe that Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are effective ways to treat alcohol.
Alcoholism is not something that can be treated alone many times. The more a person is dependent on alcohol in their lives, the more their brain attempts to convince themselves that they do not need help and that if they stop drinking their lives will be worse. In each testimony given, everyone had a different way they initially made their approach to get better, whether it be rehab or Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, but the one thing they all had in common was that the more meetings they attended the meetings the easier the healing process was. They all said that when they begin to miss meetings it would cause the urge to give in to the temptation to drink, and sometimes they did give
in.
This showed me that Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are the most effective method to treating alcoholism. The people attending the meeting can meet with others in the similar situations and be each other’s support system. Alternate options like rehab tend to give its participants a false sense of reality while Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are ways that people can cope with their problems while in the real world. Hospitalization is fine to help the person suffering to recover from alcohol related injuries, but that only goes so far. Also Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are free enabling anyone to attend, while some other intervention programs require some type of payment. Everyone from the homeless to stock brokers on Wall Street attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings which show how universal they are.
In conclusion, I had a good experience attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I never knew how serious alcoholism was until I attended the meeting. While us as college students’ abuse alcohol for fun, if we aren’t conscious of when to put the bottle down any one of us can be a regular member of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. 10% of the U.S. population suffers from alcohol problems and I am glad that there is a good national support system to try to help these people.