I talk often about being "involved in AA" or having a "strong Program." Someone in an email recently asked me to be more specific.
Okay.
Specifically:
1. Regular meeting attendance at the same meetings. (So people can get to know you and you can get to know people.) For many years in my sobriety I went to a meeting almost every day. Now I have a set schedule of four a week and often wind up at an extra for one reason or another.
2. Service commitments at meetings. At least one service commitment at a 12 Step meeting during the week. And treat that commitment like a job -- the best damn job you ever had.
3. Sponsorship -- a 2-way proposition. Have a sponsor and have sponsees. Be going through the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) with sponsees to work the 12 Steps with them as laid out there, and pretty much following your own sponsor's lead on your step work, which again is largely rooted in either the Big Book and/or the 12&12.
4. Prayer, Self Examination and Meditation. The AA literature calls those three things, when done in concert, "an unshakable foundation for life." Some regular, daily routine encompassing all three of those is essential.
5. Outreach. Talk to people that are new at AA meetings. Introduce yourself. Introduce them to others. Make an effort to help them feel comfortable and make them welcome. Follow up by calling them just to say hello, with no other agenda than to be helpful. Try to be consistent and make a point of welcoming them back the next week.
6. Sharing. Open your mouth and participate in the meeting. Regularly smash through the "what will they think of me?" ego/vanity fear. (Unless you are one of those share-at-every-single-meeting types. If that's the case then you've done your part, and I can say in all honesty that you've likely been a great spiritual teacher to some of the people in the room. If you share at every meeting you go to, perhaps now it is time for you to listen more, for a little while.)
7. Fellowship. The "meeting before the meeting" and the "meeting after the meeting" are where the strongest friendships may develop and people get a sense of what AAer's are really like. It is "a program of attraction, rather than promotion" so this is actually very important 12th Step work. Show up early and help welcome people and visit before, and/or invite people out for coffee or a meal after the meeting.
I can honestly say that over the years I've done all of this most of the time or most of this all of the time. It is both a vanity and a pillar in the foundation of my self esteem that when it comes to Alcoholics Anonymous I walk my talk.
Of course, that's no more laudable than congratulating a man who's been badly sunburned for not going back out in the sun.
It is not an act of heroism to have a "strong program" -- it is an act of self preservation.
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