CEFS 691 Week 3 Experiential Paper 1: AA Example

Experiential Paper 1: Two Open Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings and What They Taught a Future Counselor

Purpose and Preparation

The purpose of these visits was to see Alcoholics Anonymous from the inside, as many of my future clients will experience it, rather than only through textbooks. Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) describe mutual-help groups as a central part of the continuum of care for addiction, and a counselor who has never attended a meeting may describe them inaccurately or refer clients without understanding what they will encounter. I chose two open meetings, which welcome anyone interested in AA, rather than closed meetings, which are for people who have a desire to stop drinking. I arrived early at each, introduced myself to the chairperson as a counseling student, asked whether I could observe, and agreed not to take notes during the meeting. Out of respect for the tradition of anonymity, this paper describes members only in general terms and uses no names.

The First Meeting: An Open Discussion Meeting

The first meeting met on a Tuesday evening in the fellowship hall of a Methodist church. About twenty-five people sat around folding tables, with coffee and a plate of cookies by the door. Several people greeted me before the meeting began, and one man, learning I was a student, said simply, "Keep coming back," which I later learned is a common AA phrase. The chairperson opened with a moment of silence and the Serenity Prayer, and two members read aloud from AA's literature: the opening of "How It Works" from the Big Book, which includes the Twelve Steps, and the Twelve Traditions (Alcoholics Anonymous, 2001).

The chair then announced the topic, gratitude, and members shared for three to five minutes each. They did not respond to one another directly; instead, each began with a first name and "I'm an alcoholic," spoke about their own experience, and ended with "thanks for letting me share." One woman described a year of sobriety after losing custody of her children and spoke of rebuilding trust with them slowly. An older man spoke of thirty years without a drink and said that he still came to meetings because "the disease doesn't take a day off." Near the end, the chair asked whether anyone was celebrating a sobriety milestone, and a young man received a chip for ninety days to loud applause. The meeting closed with members holding hands for the Lord's Prayer, which I joined.

The Second Meeting: An Open Speaker Meeting

The second meeting met on a Saturday morning in a Baptist church's community room and drew about forty people, many of whom appeared to know one another well. After the opening readings, a single speaker told her story for about thirty minutes in what members called the pattern of "what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now." She described years of drinking that began in college, a series of jobs lost, and a night in an emergency room that led her to her first meeting. She credited her recovery to working the Steps with a sponsor, to service such as making coffee and later sponsoring other women, and to what she called a spiritual awakening that she described in terms of honesty and humility rather than any particular religion. After she spoke, the group passed a basket for contributions and announced service positions that needed volunteers.

Comparing the Two Meetings

The two meetings shared a structure but differed in feel. Both opened and closed with the same readings and prayers, both used first names only, and both followed the custom of speaking from one's own experience without advising or correcting others. The Tuesday discussion meeting felt intimate; members knew one another's struggles and spoke briefly about the week's challenges. The Saturday speaker meeting felt more like a gathering, with newcomers and long-time members mixed together and a single extended story at the center. A client who is anxious about speaking might prefer a speaker meeting at first, while a client who wants to build relationships might find a small discussion group easier to join. Capuzzi and Stauffer (2016) emphasize matching clients to services, and the same principle applies to choosing among meetings.

Integration With Research

What I saw in both meetings matched the research on how AA works more closely than it matched the stereotype of AA as a religious program. The evidence for AA's effectiveness is now strong. A Cochrane review of randomized and nonrandomized studies found that manualized AA and Twelve-Step Facilitation interventions were often more effective than established treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy for increasing continuous abstinence, performed as well on other drinking outcomes, and were associated with health care cost savings (Kelly et al., 2020).

The mechanisms are mostly social and psychological. Kelly (2017), reviewing 25 years of research on how AA produces change, concluded that while AA's original literature describes recovery as a spiritual awakening, its benefits for most members are carried by social, cognitive and affective mechanisms, such as changes in social networks toward sober friends, increased confidence in coping with high-risk situations and reduced craving, with spiritual change playing a central role mainly for members with severe addiction. The Tuesday meeting showed several of these mechanisms at once: the greetings and phone numbers exchanged at the door built a sober network, and the shares modeled coping with specific triggers.

Service and sponsorship, which the Saturday speaker emphasized, also have research support. A Project MATCH analysis found that people who spent the year after treatment helping other alcoholics relapsed less often, an advantage that remained once meeting attendance was taken into account (Pagano et al., 2004). The speaker's account of making coffee and sponsoring newcomers illustrates a practice that may protect the helper as much as the person helped. The literature of AA makes the same point in its own terms: the Twelfth Step asks members who have had a spiritual awakening to carry the message to others and to practice the principles in all their affairs (Alcoholics Anonymous, 2001). Research and tradition agree that giving help is part of receiving it.

Implications for Counseling

The visits will change how I refer clients. First, I will describe meetings concretely, the format, the readings, the custom of sharing without crosstalk, so that a nervous client knows what to expect. Second, I will suggest that clients try several meetings, since the two I attended felt quite different, and a client who dislikes one may find another a good fit. Third, I will use motivational interviewing to explore a client's ambivalence about attending rather than simply instructing them to go, consistent with Miller and Rollnick (2013), who emphasize evoking the client's own reasons. Finally, I will be prepared for clients who are uncomfortable with AA's spiritual language, explaining that members interpret a "higher power" in many ways and that research suggests the program's benefits do not depend on any one belief.

My Own Reactions

I arrived with more assumptions than I realized. I expected the meetings to feel somber and perhaps judgmental, and I expected members to talk mainly about drinking. Instead, much of what I heard concerned relationships, honesty and daily routines, and the tone was warm and often funny. I also noticed my own discomfort when a member described a relapse; my instinct as a future counselor was to want to fix it, but the group simply listened and thanked him for sharing. That restraint taught me something about the value of being heard without being corrected, which fits the spirit of acceptance in motivational interviewing.

Limits of These Observations

Two meetings in one community cannot represent AA as a whole. Both groups met in churches and were predominantly white and middle-aged, and meetings elsewhere may look very different. As an observer, I also saw only what members chose to share in a public setting. The research reviewed above offers a broader view, but my own experience should be read as one student's first impressions rather than a description of every meeting.

Personal Reflection

I was most moved by how ordinary the meetings were. People drank coffee, laughed at each other's jokes and spoke honestly about failures most of us would hide. The Saturday speaker's description of confession and amends reminded me of James's counsel to confess sins to one another and pray for one another, that we may be healed (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, James 5:16). I went expecting to observe a treatment and found a community, and I left understanding why so many of my future clients may find there something that counseling alone cannot provide: people who have walked the same road and are willing to walk it again beside them.

References

Alcoholics Anonymous. (2001). Alcoholics Anonymous: The story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism (4th ed.). Alcoholics Anonymous World Services.

Capuzzi, D., & Stauffer, M. D. (2016). Foundations of addictions counseling (3rd ed.). Pearson.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Kelly, J. F. (2017). Is Alcoholics Anonymous religious, spiritual, neither? Findings from 25 years of mechanisms of behavior change research. Addiction, 112(6), 929-936. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13590

Kelly, J. F., Humphreys, K., & Ferri, M. (2020). Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs for alcohol use disorder. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020(3), Article CD012880. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012880.pub2

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Pagano, M. E., Friend, K. B., Tonigan, J. S., & Stout, R. L. (2004). Helping other alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous and drinking outcomes: Findings from Project MATCH. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 65(6), 766-773. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsa.2004.65.766