AA Meeting Summary

The obvious and best solution to the problem of the normal anxiety and discomfort that are associated with attending one's first AA meeting is to go to the meeting with someone who knows the ropes. If no friend or acquaintance who happens to be an AA member is available, contact can always be arranged by calling the local AA Central Office and asking for a volunteer to telephone one. Although many people avail themselves of such measures to reduce the stress of their first AA meeting, many others find such logical preliminaries themselves too frightening and therefore do not follow them. It is principally to this last group, to those solitary and always frightened and confused "first timers," that this brief introduction is oriented.
Although there is a great deal of information about AA available on the web and in traditional print, there is surprisingly little to be found that deals with the practical concerns and fears of the individual who is attending or thinking of attending a meeting for the first time. The result is sometimes a kind of "culture shock" which takes place when the newcomer attends and is temporarily overwhelmed by the newness and …show more content…
It represents merely one person's attempt to describe some of the common features of AA meetings. There will be many individual variations and exceptions to this or to any other relatively brief attempt to sketch the principal outlines and common experiences in a program as diverse and unregulated as AA. The best way to regard what follows is as one of those primitive and only half-correct maps drawn by the early geographers. Not everything in such maps is correct, and much that is important is omitted. But in favorable cases the map does serve as a rough guide to the territory to be explored, and provides at least some major landmarks by which the traveler may hope to orient and guide himself in his own explorations of the