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
I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I want my sponsees and the people I care about to be focused on the meeting – even the person who holds the meeting hostage for 15 minutes. By the same token, the program tells me it’s *my* inventory, not the other person’s…. so I can model good behavior, and guide those I get to sponsor… but it doesn’t do me much good to *expect* it from others. We tend to be a sick group of people, all in various stages of recovery (and some not at all).
In my own case, given my work’s demands/limitations, there are lots of times I am running out the door and away from work to get to a meeting at 5:40 or 8:10. If I didn’t come late to meetings, sometimes I wouldn’t get there at all. The weekend meetings I’m there early – the Mon-Tues-Weds ones, it’s often a squeeze.
And I have a notebook specifically filling up with classic lines and ideas I’ve heard at meetings I attend. It gives me different ways to think about concepts that are tired and old. One of the classics I
scribbledwrote down yesterday was, “The literature alone won’t save you. There are plenty of people who own multiple cookbooks who still manage to starve to death.”Even the Facebooking thing caught me earlier this year. The night I got t-boned in my old Camry, a friend of mine who came to the crash site to help me posted a picture of the half-demolished car (without my knowledge) to FB, and asked for prayers for me as I went to the hospital. Five miles away, a guy was FB’ing in the back of a speaker meeting, and after the speaker was finished , announced that I’d been in a wreck and was at the nearby hospital ER. Well, in no time flat the ER waiting room was full of concerned AA folks.
Now…do I support FB or texting during meetings? HELL no. But by the same token, given what happened to me, do I get snarked-off a bit less when I see it? ….yeah, sometimes.
I will confess this: the trifecta combination that tends to “crisp my edges” is the critter who has just smirked-and-swaggered their way to the podium to get their third white-chip in three weeks, and is either “checkin’ out the hotties” (boys OR girls), texting or FB’ing through the rest of the meeting. (It gets even worse when it’s a discussion meeting, and they have the nerve to ask, “So…..what’s the topic, again?”)
I have a habit of having close-encounters with these folks after the meetings, and inviting them to get *in* AA (and start acting serious about recovery) or go get done. My own addition to your list would be this: If someone is at a meeting, has picked up a 24-hour-chip, and is still smiling and joking around, people would be within their rights to wonder if that person didn’t need to still do some field research. As I’ve been known to share, “This is not the PTA or a ho-ho/ha-ha cookie club; we’re savin’ each others’ lives here.”
Ramblings from the Ozarks….for better or worse…. /end sermon/
You brought great enlightenment to this entry. I actually had to think a lot about the things I’ve observed and realize it’s truly a case by case situation. I’ve dealt exactly with your description at the end of your response as well… it can be very frustrating that’s for sure. Thanks again for the good response!
I will be honest here….I knit during meetings. I have nervous habits, probably from my days of being a smoker and constantly needing something in my hands. I knit as it is very habitual for me to be able to relieve the stimuli necessary for my hands while concentrating upon what is being said. I like to be read to so that I can hear the reader express their emotions within the words being read. It is the same as viewing a painting you have seen a thousand times; I know what the painting is symbolizing yet I want to understand what it symbolizes for you not me. So, I will watch your first reaction to the presentation of the piece not my description of it. The same for me applies to the words in the BB and 12×12. I know these words, I read them daily. I want to hear your emotion in your words and understand your perspective on those words. Perhaps I agree, or disagree it doesn’t matter. What matters is that knit in order to listen better.
This article continues to help me see another side of things because you’re the third person who told me about certain behaviors that were just part of their meeting routine that wasn’t about not being focused on recovery. I’m glad you shared this because it helped me to see the other side of the coin! 🙂