Member-only story
Before I get too far, let me say this. I owe my life to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The fellowship I found in the rooms and the work of doing the 12 steps put me in a position to be able to live my life. I don’t know that I would still be here if not for AA.
Still, I fell out of love with AA. My meeting attendance went from daily to weekly to monthly over time. Somewhere around year six, I lulled myself into the belief that I didn’t need AA. I haughtily thought that I was better than AA and that I needed some higher level of recovery.
I found myself attending meetings when I felt out of sorts and, although I usually felt better after a meeting, I wasn’t feeling that same magic I had in early recovery. Sometimes, I didn’t feel better. Sometimes, I encountered folks in recovery who were, shall we say, less than charitable when I revealed that I didn’t attend meetings very often. And sometimes, I went so far as to develop a resentment against some of those folks and AA. I stopped going to meetings altogether, and I put away my Big Book.
I joined a private online recovery community. I listened to podcasts. I started seeing a therapist again. I purchased self-help books by the truckload. I began attending yoga, including trauma-informed yoga. I started sporadically attending meetings for Adult Children of…
