Today was cold, rainy, with a flourish of wet snow for a finale. I could have stayed home, but I went to AA instead, two meetings, in fact. I’m glad I did. I needed to be with people, my beautiful friends. I like AA because all of the crap we cling to in the non-AA world falls away. And we sit down to learning how to live in this less than perfect world.
Meetings
13 Wednesday Nov 2019
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Dispatches From Dystopia 
Aren’t the meetings depressing? I don’t think I can handle hearing about pain over and over from different people experiencing all kinds of setbacks and hardship and trauma.
And I definitely can’t talk about my own. The older I get the more I realize talking about it doesn’t help me. I talk about it with my shrink but that’s all I need and want to talk about it. And even then it’s to process it and cope with it. To learn. Not to commiserate. Not to dwell in it. Not to gather sympathy or pity or friends.
I think it’s a great place for people who can’t quit otherwise and it’s a good way to form a community, but I drive by those places and see just something else to be addicted to. I suppose having compulsive personalities makes it easy to jump from one to another. I can’t escape that myself.
I’m glad you get something out of it though. I’m glad they exist. I love the mantra. I’m glad you get the support you need. That makes me happy.
I didn’t need to say anything that came before those last two sentences. Did I?
Actually meetings are rarely depressing. They could be, but usually they aren’t. The real work of recovery is in working the 12 Steps.That is done with another alcoholic who has done the Steps him/her self.
Yes. We all could use mentors in life. I’ve written a post about it. How much more successful everyone could be if that was standard throughout life.