Setting
The alcohol anonymous meeting I attended took place at East Bay in warren at a club house between 5:15 pm and 5:45pm and I will refer to the meeting as “The gathering of morals”. The room is big enough to accommodate the members and from what I learnt nothing else happens there apart from the meetings. Signs are put in the walls which are basically the announcements, 12 steps, and 12 traditions and slogans. There was a lot of coffee indeed and people freely filled there cups. There are members as young as 16 years old and older individuals making the median age to be around 45 to 55 of years. There were individuals of different social class: those who seem to be living in the street and those who seem much confortable financially. There was no much big amount in racial diversity.
Meeting occurrence
AA meeting started on time with the chairperson “Mr. Milton” calling the meeting to order. Other conversation stopped and people took their sits. It then followed a moment of silence before one of the members offered to pray then there after members recited the Serenity Prayer. The chairperson then asked if there was any person attending the meeting for the first time and their reasons for attendance. The aim of doing so was to welcome any guests or visitors. What I observed and shocked was "The gathering of morals” meeting room is not a church in but in many ways, it imitates the church among the Christians faithful space that would be familiar to any Catholic church worldwide. The sits are arranged, as in any Christian’s church, in congregational style with the podium purpose as a type of altar. Another astonishing thing that I observed was the use of "sponsors" to escort new members of alcohol anonymous this is also similar to Christian’s use of the godparents during religious functions.
What followed was the chair calling the participants at “The meeting of moral” to share and are requested to talk for between three to five minutes to allow all participants to contribute. And after the end if any one still felt like contributing he or she was be given another chance for there was time they called this session “burning desire to share”. Each speaker started by his name and admitting that is an alcoholic and the members responded as ‘hi’. If a member’s turn reached and he didn’t want to contribute he just said “I will just sit and listen to you people today”. One key thing that I noted was that no member was interrupted as they shared their experiences with addiction and another notable observation was the use of idiomatic and metaphorical language that was rolling in their tongue more frequently and quickly, Like over use of the word GOD which I later realized meant Group of Drunkards.
During contribution time the members also participate actively by clapping whenever individual choses a chip that epitomized a conventional length of continuous sobriety determine by the members in a period of their choice. Active participation also included smiling, nodding in agreement, and gasps etc. during ‘sharing’ I observed various emotions expressed by individual members during the meeting such as fear, laughter, jealousy among many others and at the same time range of emotions discoursed during the meeting like acceptance, humility, gratitude, loving and faith etc. The discussion was implicitly restricted to individual experience, hope, and strength and advice was not given. Every member was presumed to have same prospective to have an impact on the others currently present, but I observed that his in a way also varied as per the individual experiences with the group. “The old times” were individuals with longer years of continuous sobriety and are regarded as superior in a way as I observed. What they say was regarded as uttermost truth and stature.
The chairperson work had the duty of taking care of conflicts and difficulties when they occur, asking individuals to stop contributing when they were talking for too long or diverting from the topic. The chairperson also has control over the discourse of the gathering and gives chance to those who speaks.
I observed that when the meeting was about to end it paused for members to collect funds which were in the range of one to two dollars and the chairperson retaliated the fact that “The gathering of morals” was self-supporting. The meeting lasted for exactly 30 minutes and before the members left, the group stood up and joined hands and recited Serenity Prayer and finally the prayer after the meeting which surprised me as it was full of idiomatic expressions which I didn’t understand. We then parted to our homes.