For a long time I was hesitant to use the word sharing in regard to speaking in meetings. It seemed hypocritical as a description of what I was doing, which was more like dumping or getting my chance to say what was going in my head. My motives are still usually less than pure, but they have certainly gotten purer since I got here. When I got to AA in Sydney in 1974, there were no discussion groups and only one Steps meeting a week. The others were all what are now called ID meetings where most talked about "what we were like, what happened and what we are like now." This was usually interpreted as being about nine minutes of drinking story, a sentence or two about how we got to AA and a minute or so about the wonderful things that have happened since we stopped drinking. This omits what I now see at the real message we are meant to carry, that of recovery and how we maintain it now. In those days, Aussie men didn't talk about feelings, which I could identify with, so they tended to dwell on the worst things they did while drinking. My drinking story seemed quite inadequate and I would sometimes think about what I could do to jazz it up if I had a slip, and going through like dry didn't seem at all wonderful to me while new at trying to do it. I got the idea that the problem was just drinking and that others had pretty much solved theirs by stopping and mostly went to meetings to be reminded what it was like so they wouldn't forget they were alcoholic and drink again. It took a long time to work out that I am really here to keep handling life in sobriety, adjusting better to reality. I am here because of what I am still like, not because of what I was like 35 years ago. Since then, I have come to prefer discussion meetings, including email meetings with weekly topics. I have learned to look at how the topic relates to how I thought and acted in early sobriety, what I have learned about it since and how I see it now. In our weekly meeting here in Devonport, we still speak about whatever we want to each week. There is no set topic but we mostly talk about recovery rather than drinking, and some interesting themes tend to develop in each meeting. When there are newcomers, we tend to talk more about drinking and early recovery than we would otherwise. It works pretty well and I am seldom bored. I have sometimes found it strange that newcomers and others who have been around for many years can sit in the same meeting without either getting bored or lost, but then we are talking about basic feelings that may be kept in check but seldom go away. After I lost my desire to drink, it was replaced for many years by a desire to run away. |