My Experience Attending an Aa Meeting

My first experience at an alcoholics anonymous meeting was very interesting and in a way uplifting. At All Saints Lutheran Church the home group called “The Young People’s Group” there were people who had come from all walks of life. The group meeting that I thought would have been rather small slowly became larger and larger over the course of the night. I was unaware that the AA meetings had been setup with a set of codes or rules for those who struggle every day to fight this addiction. They allowed people who were new or if it was their first meeting to introduce themselves and tell their story to the fight of addiction related to alcohol. I was really impressed with the fact that the AA groups have an awards system for reaching sobriety for a certain period of time whether it was 1 month or 15 years. After the awards were given out for those who had reached a certain amount of sobriety the chapter meeting moved on to the struggles that those people in attendance were having throughout the week or weeks. A gentlemen by the name of Dave opened up the meeting with a story of him in another AA meeting. He was very upset with the reaction of a man who had been driving home on the way from work. While this particular man was driving home he described the flashing of a draft beer sign. All the gentleman could think of was the fact that his lips have been not wetted from a drop of alcohol since the previous day and he was struggling with that. Dave insisted to tell us that this angered him because although he isn’t supposed to be worried with other people’s struggles; all he could come back to was how he wishes he was that guy driving by the beer sign. Dave wished at that very moment that he could drive past that sign and allow him self to decide to either go into the bar and drink or keep driving. All he could see however, when he passed the sign was it flashing in his mind over and over again. Dave described this story because that very same night he