Personal Narrative: My First AA Meeting

The experience of attending my first AA meeting was nerve racking as well as interesting at the same time. I felt uncomfortable at first, but learned a lot of interesting information on the psychological and physical aspects of an alcoholic. For psychological aspects, I learned an alcoholic's psychological dependence to alcohol as well as their mentality. They always thought about when was it the next time they will get a drink and they talked about how alcohol altered their brain function by making themselves lie to others. For physical aspects, they talked about their psychological dependence to alcohol. For example, if they didn't have alcohol in their system for a certain amount of time, then they experienced some withdrawal symptoms such …show more content…
The first speaker’s name was Heather. Heather was an alcoholic. She started using alcohol in ninth grade. She mentioned a backpack that she still has. It resembled her alcoholism. In this backpack, she put her alcohol in it as well as the things she had lost such as her job and family. The second speaker’s name was ED. ED was an alcoholic. He started using alcohol at fourteen years old. He came from an overextended family. Him and his family were constantly moving from place to place. His story first talks about him graduating high school and going off to college for one semester. After one semester, he dropped out. He talked about how we partied too much and that his parents enabled his behavior by partying with him too in high school. This example, shows the following example of communication, cooperating and collaborating. His parents are allowing him to use alcohol by drinking with him. He also talked about getting multiple DUI’s and getting a divorce. He went to rehab several times but kept getting addicted to alcohol easily. One thing that striked me the most was when he talked about an awakening he had. He said that he had heard god. God was saying to him that he needed help. That’s when he realized he should get help. From hearing both of these addict’s stories, I learned that alcoholism is a severe disease; it alters the addict's brain function and it isn’t an easy addiction to overcome. It is very easy for an addict to start their addiction again; therefore it is important for both the family and the addict to go to counseling to help the addict see that their addiction is affecting their loved