Reason for the picture
I selected the above picture because I believe that it represents what brings so many to these AA meetings: Alcohol has become their center of attention, leaving everything else a blur. Even life can become a blur, not remembering what happened during the time spent under the influence. These individuals may have began drinking for a variety of reasons and may have found solace in it for a time, but it came to dominate their life, sometimes accompanying other poor decisions. Alcoholics Anonymous has helped so many of these individuals to feel understood and find the help they need to overcome and live a better life, one which involves sobriety rather than drunkenness.
A look into the experience
Walking into the meeting a few minutes late, I was grateful not to be the only one. Two other ladies came in at the same time as me and noticing my worry perhaps, one of them was quite kind to me, asking me if I was okay. I found the place very welcoming and inviting. People seemed to care about how others were doing. As I listened to the stories, I was appalled at first, hearing of the decisions which so many individuals had made, scared hearing about stealing, violence, jail time, drugs and alcohol. I even worried some for my safety. Their stories made me realize the humility which the program had brought to them. They had come to recognize their faults and that was a beautiful, wonderful thing to see. I felt the spirit as I saw the change that had happened in these individuals and saw the effort they had been putting in towards living a better life. People talked about the way they used to blame everyone else and how they had come to take responsibility. My personal experience led me to understand both mindsets. Seeing how messed up home lives or even poverty contributed to such issues, hearing people talk about alcoholism as a family disease, and recognizing how it was thinking about my own family, made me understand that perspective. However, on the other hand, I believe in accountability and could see the importance of taking responsibility and some point and turning your life around, being different. It taught me a lesson I needed to hear about not just blaming my life on my circumstances and while impacted by whatever background I might have, it is critical for me to look at my life, take responsibility for my actions or behaviors, and make my own decisions. Learning from these individuals in such a positive light surprised me a little bit. It made me ponder how I thought about individuals with such trials. I felt compassion for them, love for them, immense love for them. They reminded me of most of my dad's extended family and of many of my dad's coworkers. I felt at home around them, realizing I had not been around individuals like this in a while. However, at the same time, I felt that the decisions made when drunk were terrible. I felt for their friends or family. I worried about the students I might have coming from these homes. I worried about how parents struggling with this might treat me as a teacher. Regardless of this though, I felt impressed by how much this program seemed to help and how the people in it cared for each other, coming back after years of sobriety and helping be a support and mentor for others who were where they had been. It taught me a lesson about paying it forward and reminded me that sometimes our trials help us to better understand other people and help other people. One man had been sober almost as long as my dad and his story and age made me think of my dad and realize that if being an alcoholic is something which does not necessarily change, though people can overcome it by working towards sobriety, then my dad truly is a dry alcoholic. I never would have attended such a meeting without this class and went thinking about how my grandpa's dad was an alcoholic, not realizing that the majority of my dad's family had been impacted by the problem. It helped me understand the world and the people in my life through different eyes.
Questions & Disruptions
Whose responsibility is it?
As mentioned earlier, the concept of responsibility leaves me feeling torn. With so many issues in life, I consider how a person was raised or how I was raised when seeking to try and understand actions, feelings, or beliefs. I generally find that I have more compassion for individuals when I do use my understanding of families and development (which I have spent quite a bit of time studying due to my early childhood education major and family life minor) to better comprehend why a person may be the way they are or act the way they do. I can imagine how growing up in an area where alcohol and drug use is the norm would feed into a person's addiction problems, and early on too. I can imagine how a hard home life where that sort of behavior was practiced by parents would impact a child. How else do you live, they might wonder. If they had seen nothing else, regardless of whether or not they wanted to repeat such behavior or have such a life, they may follow in footsteps because that is familiar. How about children who are born addicted? How is it their fault? It's not, at least, not the start. Thinking about my dad's family and the patterns set and the way these sort of problems reverberate throughout makes me question how much responsibility a person really has regarding these issues. My dad was given his first cigarette by his sister when he was five years old. Was that really his fault? And yet, the actions which are taken are not okay. All this does not keep a person from being responsible, at least in some part. With this I struggle, and yet, in order for these individuals to come up out of these situations, they had to take responsibility for themselves. They personally had to decide to stop, decide they wanted to stop. They had to recognize the issues and take responsibility for pain they may have caused other people. How do we have compassion for them and yet have compassion and love for those whom they have hurt? By accepting that somehow we should do both and can do both means needing to forgive and needing to love, which can be a difficult thing to do. It means recognizing that if these matters apply to them, they apply to me too. I have to take responsibility for my actions. Backgrounds do not make us exempt from responsibility. When our actions hurt others, we have to be humble. As much as I might beat myself up about stuff, humility still comes as a challenge. I identify with a statement made by one of the individuals at the meeting. I am an "egomaniac with an inferiority complex."
Are these people really bad?
Much of my life, I have spent judging people who had made decisions like individuals at the meeting had made in their past. Because I had been taught differently and lived differently and had never acted in such a way and believed I never would, I felt that I was in a position to do so. I wasn't. We never are. I had been taught many times the idea that they are not bad people, they have just made some bad decisions, and I could understand that because so many people I grew up around had made these sorts of decisions. People at church who had even less exposure than me made me straight up mad when making assumptions about people and judging. And yet, I too, judged. When we hear about crime or about making bad decisions, I feel that it is normal to group those people, especially people we do not know, into a group of "bad people." When I consider their backgrounds and feel of their care for one another and desire to improve and as I learn from them, I wonder how they could be bad. So how does this work? Is a person bad until they change? Are people ever bad? Or do we all just make poor decisions from time to time, with some individuals seeming to make more, at least in certain areas of their life? I have a hard time with this concept because I do believe so strongly in good and bad, because I have been taught to religiously. I also struggle with it because I feel like if it applies to this, it applies to other things too and I just don't want to think anything other than the KKK are bad people. But if we are supposed to forgive or try to understand then does this apply to them too? I am not sure I want to accept that. One might say alcoholism only affects the individual, but it isn't true. People there admitted to stealing and to beating up family. That is more than just impacting them. But if I accept the notion that these choices do not make them bad people, but they are bad decisions and they must be responsible, how does that apply to more controversial issues where what is right and wrong may be gray area? Then, I end up judging their actions and perhaps I am back to square A. How do I accept someone's background and try to understand while not condoning behavior which hurts others?
How do we help people feel like they belong so that they do not turn to alcohol for comfort?
The topic of the night was a sense of belonging. A few people touched on this and talked about how they had never felt that they belonged and so they had turned to alcohol for solace. This put some of them in a predicament where they did not want to be around people and yet wanted to at the same time. They tried to drink their problems away but only made them worse. When they drank, no one would want to be around them. Hearing this hurts me heart, so my question is: how do we prevent this? How do we help people to feel welcomed and loved from the time they are children so that less of them become dependent on drugs or alcohol as adults? Is it our fault if people do not feel they belong or is that a personal decision based on attitude? All we may do is love, but what if they do not allow us to do that? I heard someone say recently that the way to stop mass shootings was to help people feel less isolated. How do we do this though? Could doing this help with problems like alcoholism as well?
What impact will alcoholism have on some of the lives of my students?
I am sure that some of my students will come from homes where their parents or loved ones are alcoholics. This will affect those students' home lives and likely impact the way they act at school. That may be the example they have and alcohol may lead to other problems just as other problems led to the alcohol, spiraling on and on. As a teacher, I need to be watchful to consider the homes my students come from and love both them and their parents, to try and understand and try to care and somehow forgive without condoning anything. To care enough to figure out what is best for the student and not just what I may feel most comfortable with as a teacher and not just complaining about what worries me or makes me uncomfortable, but truly thinking about the students' well being and parents well beings and possible reactions to anything I might say or do.
As mentioned earlier, the concept of responsibility leaves me feeling torn. With so many issues in life, I consider how a person was raised or how I was raised when seeking to try and understand actions, feelings, or beliefs. I generally find that I have more compassion for individuals when I do use my understanding of families and development (which I have spent quite a bit of time studying due to my early childhood education major and family life minor) to better comprehend why a person may be the way they are or act the way they do. I can imagine how growing up in an area where alcohol and drug use is the norm would feed into a person's addiction problems, and early on too. I can imagine how a hard home life where that sort of behavior was practiced by parents would impact a child. How else do you live, they might wonder. If they had seen nothing else, regardless of whether or not they wanted to repeat such behavior or have such a life, they may follow in footsteps because that is familiar. How about children who are born addicted? How is it their fault? It's not, at least, not the start. Thinking about my dad's family and the patterns set and the way these sort of problems reverberate throughout makes me question how much responsibility a person really has regarding these issues. My dad was given his first cigarette by his sister when he was five years old. Was that really his fault? And yet, the actions which are taken are not okay. All this does not keep a person from being responsible, at least in some part. With this I struggle, and yet, in order for these individuals to come up out of these situations, they had to take responsibility for themselves. They personally had to decide to stop, decide they wanted to stop. They had to recognize the issues and take responsibility for pain they may have caused other people. How do we have compassion for them and yet have compassion and love for those whom they have hurt? By accepting that somehow we should do both and can do both means needing to forgive and needing to love, which can be a difficult thing to do. It means recognizing that if these matters apply to them, they apply to me too. I have to take responsibility for my actions. Backgrounds do not make us exempt from responsibility. When our actions hurt others, we have to be humble. As much as I might beat myself up about stuff, humility still comes as a challenge. I identify with a statement made by one of the individuals at the meeting. I am an "egomaniac with an inferiority complex."
Are these people really bad?
Much of my life, I have spent judging people who had made decisions like individuals at the meeting had made in their past. Because I had been taught differently and lived differently and had never acted in such a way and believed I never would, I felt that I was in a position to do so. I wasn't. We never are. I had been taught many times the idea that they are not bad people, they have just made some bad decisions, and I could understand that because so many people I grew up around had made these sorts of decisions. People at church who had even less exposure than me made me straight up mad when making assumptions about people and judging. And yet, I too, judged. When we hear about crime or about making bad decisions, I feel that it is normal to group those people, especially people we do not know, into a group of "bad people." When I consider their backgrounds and feel of their care for one another and desire to improve and as I learn from them, I wonder how they could be bad. So how does this work? Is a person bad until they change? Are people ever bad? Or do we all just make poor decisions from time to time, with some individuals seeming to make more, at least in certain areas of their life? I have a hard time with this concept because I do believe so strongly in good and bad, because I have been taught to religiously. I also struggle with it because I feel like if it applies to this, it applies to other things too and I just don't want to think anything other than the KKK are bad people. But if we are supposed to forgive or try to understand then does this apply to them too? I am not sure I want to accept that. One might say alcoholism only affects the individual, but it isn't true. People there admitted to stealing and to beating up family. That is more than just impacting them. But if I accept the notion that these choices do not make them bad people, but they are bad decisions and they must be responsible, how does that apply to more controversial issues where what is right and wrong may be gray area? Then, I end up judging their actions and perhaps I am back to square A. How do I accept someone's background and try to understand while not condoning behavior which hurts others?
How do we help people feel like they belong so that they do not turn to alcohol for comfort?
The topic of the night was a sense of belonging. A few people touched on this and talked about how they had never felt that they belonged and so they had turned to alcohol for solace. This put some of them in a predicament where they did not want to be around people and yet wanted to at the same time. They tried to drink their problems away but only made them worse. When they drank, no one would want to be around them. Hearing this hurts me heart, so my question is: how do we prevent this? How do we help people to feel welcomed and loved from the time they are children so that less of them become dependent on drugs or alcohol as adults? Is it our fault if people do not feel they belong or is that a personal decision based on attitude? All we may do is love, but what if they do not allow us to do that? I heard someone say recently that the way to stop mass shootings was to help people feel less isolated. How do we do this though? Could doing this help with problems like alcoholism as well?
What impact will alcoholism have on some of the lives of my students?
I am sure that some of my students will come from homes where their parents or loved ones are alcoholics. This will affect those students' home lives and likely impact the way they act at school. That may be the example they have and alcohol may lead to other problems just as other problems led to the alcohol, spiraling on and on. As a teacher, I need to be watchful to consider the homes my students come from and love both them and their parents, to try and understand and try to care and somehow forgive without condoning anything. To care enough to figure out what is best for the student and not just what I may feel most comfortable with as a teacher and not just complaining about what worries me or makes me uncomfortable, but truly thinking about the students' well being and parents well beings and possible reactions to anything I might say or do.
Connections to the Lessons
Lesson 5: Language and Culture
I appreciated that AA meetings were offered every day in both English and Spanish. Since both are very popular languages in the area, I appreciated that both were available, so that both English and Spanish speakers could have access to the meetings. However, I did worry about those who may speak a language other than those two. How do they get help? What can be done to aid them in recovery?
When it comes to culture, I consider what different cultures may think of drinking or how popular it may be as a form of coping or even just a social activity. Different cultures may have more of an issue with this than others, though I am not sure if all cultures would approve of a group like AA to try and overcome these trials.
The language at the meeting was quite different than the language I observe in other areas of Utah. I heard quite a bit more cursing than I otherwise do, but that was acceptable there. It was common and expected. I got used to it just as I was in high school or in my family, in other places were that sort of language fit with the culture or community, where it was accepted.
Lesson 6: Race and Ethnicity
The people at the meeting were predominantly white. I saw maybe three or four people which were not white. There was a pamphlet available entitled, "A.A. for the Black and African American Alcoholic." I was not quite sure how to feel about this. Opening the book up, I did not feel that it was initially inviting. I felt that it was geared at a particular race and that it sounded like it was written from a perspective other than that of a black or African American. However, there were personal stories included later in the book which may have been helpful. It bothered me that there would be one pamphlet regarding race though because I felt that it singled out a particular group of people and I felt uncomfortable with that. With that said, reading through the pamphlet made me feel more like A.A. cared about everyone feeling welcome though. I am just not sure if it was presented as well as it could have been.
Lesson 7: Class and Poverty
Looking around at the people at the meeting, I felt that I was one of the best dressed ones there and it made me feel out of place. It was not that I was trying to judge based on appearances, though I know that is exactly how that may sound, but it made me think that perhaps these people were rather financially struggled. I had always considered that it was perhaps because of the drinking that alcoholics may be more poor - spending money on booze rather than other things. However, having learned more about poverty through readings, videos, and conversation for class, I considered that perhaps people turned to alcohol as an escape from the struggles that accompany poverty, from the pain and stress and emotional and physical burden. The alcohol consumption could also contribute though, leading people to lose jobs if they cannot function without it and do not act their best with it.
At the same time, the pamphlet for African Americans gave a personal story which said that the A.A. meeting was filled with mostly white-collar Caucasian workers, so one may say that alcoholism can affect individuals of any class.
Lesson 8: Language and Immigration
I did not observe much regarding this topic, but as mentioned earlier, Spanish meetings are available, so I am grateful to know these meetings are accessible for individuals who may otherwise have language barriers or who may be denied certain rights due to immigration. The various times in many areas close by help this program to be more accessible to people in a variety of circumstances.
Lesson 9: Religion
Alcoholics Anonymous draws on spiritual beliefs to help individuals overcome addiction. While looking to a higher power really does appear to help the individuals who participate in this program, I felt concerned that it may be predominantly Christian and those of other faiths may not feel comfortable or welcome. I also worried about atheists or agnostics who may not be able to draw upon that. With that said, I was able to observe the way religion is able to help certain individuals to deal with trials and seek to overcome.
Lesson 10: Ability
I have no idea about this in relation to A.A. It was not something I saw being attended to, though I am sure that chooses in where to sit could help with simple ability differences such as sight or hearing.
I appreciated that AA meetings were offered every day in both English and Spanish. Since both are very popular languages in the area, I appreciated that both were available, so that both English and Spanish speakers could have access to the meetings. However, I did worry about those who may speak a language other than those two. How do they get help? What can be done to aid them in recovery?
When it comes to culture, I consider what different cultures may think of drinking or how popular it may be as a form of coping or even just a social activity. Different cultures may have more of an issue with this than others, though I am not sure if all cultures would approve of a group like AA to try and overcome these trials.
The language at the meeting was quite different than the language I observe in other areas of Utah. I heard quite a bit more cursing than I otherwise do, but that was acceptable there. It was common and expected. I got used to it just as I was in high school or in my family, in other places were that sort of language fit with the culture or community, where it was accepted.
Lesson 6: Race and Ethnicity
The people at the meeting were predominantly white. I saw maybe three or four people which were not white. There was a pamphlet available entitled, "A.A. for the Black and African American Alcoholic." I was not quite sure how to feel about this. Opening the book up, I did not feel that it was initially inviting. I felt that it was geared at a particular race and that it sounded like it was written from a perspective other than that of a black or African American. However, there were personal stories included later in the book which may have been helpful. It bothered me that there would be one pamphlet regarding race though because I felt that it singled out a particular group of people and I felt uncomfortable with that. With that said, reading through the pamphlet made me feel more like A.A. cared about everyone feeling welcome though. I am just not sure if it was presented as well as it could have been.
Lesson 7: Class and Poverty
Looking around at the people at the meeting, I felt that I was one of the best dressed ones there and it made me feel out of place. It was not that I was trying to judge based on appearances, though I know that is exactly how that may sound, but it made me think that perhaps these people were rather financially struggled. I had always considered that it was perhaps because of the drinking that alcoholics may be more poor - spending money on booze rather than other things. However, having learned more about poverty through readings, videos, and conversation for class, I considered that perhaps people turned to alcohol as an escape from the struggles that accompany poverty, from the pain and stress and emotional and physical burden. The alcohol consumption could also contribute though, leading people to lose jobs if they cannot function without it and do not act their best with it.
At the same time, the pamphlet for African Americans gave a personal story which said that the A.A. meeting was filled with mostly white-collar Caucasian workers, so one may say that alcoholism can affect individuals of any class.
Lesson 8: Language and Immigration
I did not observe much regarding this topic, but as mentioned earlier, Spanish meetings are available, so I am grateful to know these meetings are accessible for individuals who may otherwise have language barriers or who may be denied certain rights due to immigration. The various times in many areas close by help this program to be more accessible to people in a variety of circumstances.
Lesson 9: Religion
Alcoholics Anonymous draws on spiritual beliefs to help individuals overcome addiction. While looking to a higher power really does appear to help the individuals who participate in this program, I felt concerned that it may be predominantly Christian and those of other faiths may not feel comfortable or welcome. I also worried about atheists or agnostics who may not be able to draw upon that. With that said, I was able to observe the way religion is able to help certain individuals to deal with trials and seek to overcome.
Lesson 10: Ability
I have no idea about this in relation to A.A. It was not something I saw being attended to, though I am sure that chooses in where to sit could help with simple ability differences such as sight or hearing.