You can tell a lot about how healthy a person is in their recovery by simply observing them in the meetings they attend. Ok, I’ll admit it that I actually do this quite a bit, but maybe that’s because I didn’t take my own recovery all too serious for more than a decade. And this was always rather apparent by the behaviors I exhibited at most of the meetings I attended during all those years. So I decided it would be beneficial to write a list today of meeting indicators to pay attention to that are usually great indicators of an unhealthy recovery program, most of which happen to be ones I was definitely guilty of at one point in time myself.
- Spending the majority of a meeting surfing the Internet.
- Spending the majority of a meeting on Facebook.
- Spending the majority of a meeting texting someone.
- Routinely taking smoke breaks during a meeting.
- Habitually leaving a meeting to answer phone calls.
- Regularly sharing at a meeting about nothing more than drama and negativity.
- Consistently arriving late to a meeting.
- Consistently leaving early from a meeting.
- Making jokes during almost every share.
- Joining a meeting and then barely attending it.
- Taking a position in a meeting and not fulfilling it.
- 13th Stepping a newcomer at a meeting.
- Using a meeting as a dating pool.
- Doodling and scribbling during a meeting, especially in the books provided.
- Receiving 24-hour chips over and over again.
- Overly exaggerating one’s importance during every share.
- Constantly holding a meeting hostage with very long shares.
- Constantly trying to make a meeting be about oneself.
- Altering elements of a meeting to suit one’s own comfort without asking anyone else.
- Stealing money from the collection at a meeting.
- Overly complaining about a meeting’s format.
- Telling people at a meeting there are better ways to find recovery than the 12 Steps.
- Telling people at a meeting you don’t need a Higher Power to have good recovery.
- Gossiping to the person next to you in a meeting about the person sharing.
- Lying to everyone in a meeting about anything, such as one’s sobriety date.
I’m sure I could come up with plenty of other meeting indicators of an unhealthy recovery program if I thought about it more, but these are the ones I really think demonstrate it the most. Thankfully, none of them are characteristic of me anymore and I believe the strength of my recovery shows that quite clearly nowadays. I’m grateful to my Higher Power, to the 12 Steps, and my dedication to them both for helping me to finally take my recovery serious, not only in all the meetings I attend, but in the rest of my life as well…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson