Alcoholics Essay Research Paper Alcoholics Anonymous is

Alcoholics Essay, Research Paper

Alcoholics Anonymous is a self-help organization made up of men and women, young and old, who come together to share their experiences with alcohol, and to express their hope and strength with one another so that they can overcome the illness of alcoholism and then help others to recover. A.A. was first started by two men in 1935. One man from New York, Bill W., who was a stockbroker and another man from Ohio, Dr. Bob who was a surgeon. At one point Bill had wondered how one of his friends had achieved his abstinence, and his friend told him that he achieved it through religion. His friend explained that it was based on the principles laid down in a movement known as the Oxford Movement. .This movement advised people to live according to certain principles, and these were related to Bill by his friend.. (Block, page 150). His friend gave him a set of steps to follow, but he could not follow them because he had lost religion in his life long ago. After Bill had been through many trips to the hospital he had finally admitted that alcohol had defeated him. He began to devote more time to these steps and began to feel better and better. Bill had tried to help others and even though his attempts were unsuccessful, his efforts seemed to improve his own outlooks. After his improvements in life, his improvements in work came along. He took a business trip to Ohio, after about a year of being sober, but what he had desired to do had failed. He then had a great desire to drink again, so he decided to come up with the alternative to seeking out and speaking with another alcoholic to prevent him from taking that first drink. He managed to come into contact with Dr. Bob and so A.A. began. They founded A.A. to help others who suffered from the disease of alcoholism and to help and maintain their own sobriety. This idea of alcoholics helping each other spread slowly throughout until 1939. At this point, a group of a hundred sober members wrote and published the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which they refer to now as the .Big Book.. In 1941, A.A. become widely known because of an article printed in a national magazine that was widely read, The Saturday Evening Post. (Kinney & Leaton, page 268).

In A.A. there are no dues or fees, the only requirement is a desire to stop drinking. .One of the basic tenets of this group is that the alcoholic is biologically different from the nonalcoholic person and therefore can never safely drink any alcohol at all.. (Ray & Ksir, page 253). Alcoholics Anonymous includes a creed which is made up of twelve steps and twelve traditions. The Twelve steps are briefly: 1) admitting that one is powerless over alcohol, 2) to believe in a power greater than themselves, 3) a decision to turn their will and life over to God .as they understand him,. 4) making a moral inventory of themselves, 5) admitting the exact nature of their wrongs, 6) ready to have God remove all defects of character, 7) humility, 8) making amends to those they have harmed, 9) making amends to those wherever it is possible, 10) admitting to taking personal inventory when wrong, 11) praying for a better contact with God, and 12) spreading the message of what has been learned to others with the problem. (Hayman, page 171). These steps must be followed and understand thoroughly in order to understand how and why A.A. operates. It is crucial that people meet these requirements in order to succeed in Alcoholics Anonymous. The twelve traditions are also extremely important in the strength and viability of Alcoholics Anonymous. If these are also understood than Alcoholics Anonymous will continue to be successful, since personal ambition, individual enterprise, and material benefits are all incorporated by the twelve traditions.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, there are four primary types of contact which the group has developed. These types of contact are: 1) There are large meetings, which may sometimes have hundreds of members, at which several will tell their personal stories and experiences, 2) After the meeting there is a social period where there is more social contact and intimacy, 3) There are social gatherings where convivial and personal relationships are possible, and 4) There is a system of sponsorship, where the sponsors carry out the message to others. Included in this is a neophyte, which is called .the baby,. a person who is a newcomer. The sponsor introduces the person to the organization, encourages him, answers his doubts and is always there for the neophyte. In A.A. the newcomer is taught that alcoholism is an obsession of the mind, and that they should in time accept the disease concept of alcohol. They are advised to live twenty four hours at a time (the .24-hour plan) without a drink, and if they then feel the urge for a drink, they neither yield nor resist, they merely put off taking that particular drink until tomorrow. There are different types of meetings, there are open meetings and closed meetings. In open meetings spouses, relatives, friends, alcoholics, non-alcoholics etc. are all welcome, and closed meetings are restricted to alcoholics only. The meetings can have speakers or discussions. Meetings with speakers usually have one to three speakers who tell their experiences and what their life is like now in their sobriety. A discussion meeting is smaller than a meeting with speakers and there is usually a facilitator. Alcoholics Ano