Category Archives: Meeting Topics – 2026

February 8: Casual Sex

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Pg 81 BBNow about sex. Many of us needed an overhauling there. But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. It’s so easy to get way off the track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes—absurd extremes, perhaps. One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex; who be-wail the institution of marriage; who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes. They think we do not have enough of it, or that it isn’t the right kind. They see its significance everywhere. One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct. We all have sex problems. We’d hardly be human if we didn’t. What can we do about them? We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been self-ish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at fault, what should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it. In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life.

De, alcoholic.  These passages about sex played a major role in my recovery journey.  I am of the generation when casual sex was the norm while at the same time women were scorned for having casual sex. Many of my resentments and fears came from the shame I felt seeking the love and attention I thought casual sex provided.  

When I was 17, the attention I got from a sexual partner was “love” and I ended up pregnant. My daughter had been adopted soon after birth and I met her when she was in her early 40’s.  I was fortunate that I found myself in a single partner relationship in the early days of sexually transmitted disease.  

When I first thought about a share about sex I recognize that younger generations may have different feelings about casual sex.  I was in my mid 30’s when I got to the rooms and I had no idea what my morals, opinions, or preferences really were until I had spent some time on the steps sorting out my behaviors.  I was an only child with an emotionally absent father and raging/depressed mother.  I looked for “fun” and usually followed those that did not have my best interests at heart.   My coming of age was a time of confusion and mixed messages.  There were really no role models, we were making it up as we went along.  I carry a lot of shame around from those days.  Alcohol was a lubricant that I used as an excuse for what others labeled unacceptable behavior.   

By whose measure was behavior unacceptable? This is exactly what I needed to figure out for myself.  Working the steps allowed me to see for myself what I thought was important, what values I wanted to adopt and what I wanted others to see in me.  Over time I have become a woman value, appreciating what I have and feeling grateful for where I am in my life.  

Pg 84 BB To sum up about sex: we earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing. If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others. We think of their needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperious urge, when to yield would mean heartache.

This can be used as guidance for any behavior we have that isn’t doing us any good.  Helping others takes us out of ourselves.  Praying for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity and the strength to do the right thing.  The Serenity Prayer is my go to for this.  What is it in the situation I cannot change?  What can I change?  Wisdom is knowing that I have a choice and the steps offer a way to work through anything.  

February 1:  Step 2

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Step 2:  “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

My experience with Step 2 was a mixed bag. I was happy to learn that I might someday be more like “Earth people,” but I didn’t think my Higher Power wanted to be involved. Looking at it now, I see that when I was on  Step 2, I thought my HP was powerless. That’s not exactly correct, though. I’d spent decades deciding what my Higher Power was. I’d concluded that God created me, gave me free will, and expected me (all of us, really) to take it from there. In my mind, God wasn’t powerless. He just had better things to do. And he expected me to do my part.

I talk about an “old man” in my Virginia meetings who really helped me with this dilemma. He pointed out that God would restore me to sanity where alcohol was concerned. He wouldn’t speak to my non-alcohol-related insanity, of which there was plenty. Mike’s explanation made it easier on me. I didn’t have to cure myself, an assignment I didn’t feel very confident about. I could do the Step and let my Higher Power take care of the alcohol part.

As for my insanity in general, that was going to be a much bigger project. My mother couldn’t cope with my emotional nature, so she explained to me and many others that I was insane. I was a child, and I believed her. So, I carried that baggage with me until after I’d returned to AA at 49 years old. By the time my alcohol insanity was solved, I wasn’t buying mom’s old story any more. I mean, everyone in AA was insane in their own way. I was just one nut in that big basket. I’d figured my mother out by then, too, so I was finally okay with me.

One thing I’m particularly grateful for is that Step 2 begins with the words, “Came to believe…” It told me I didn’t have to become sane immediately and that I would have some very powerful help. I could take my time. I could let time take time. Recovery isn’t a race or an endurance test. It’s a process, and Step 2 is an important part of that process for me.

I hope you’ll share with us your thoughts on Step 2. Where are you with coming to believe? And how has Step 2 contributed to your recovery?

January 25: Living in the present

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I first want to thank everyone for the sober birthday wishes! I just celebrated 11 years this past Tuesday, and I couldn’t be more grateful for my sobriety. I have been under a lot of stress lately at work and in life with a lot of changes happening, and I couldn’t imagine going through it all without being sober. 

There is an excerpt from Chapter 15 in the Big Book: “We learn how to level out the emotional swings that got us into trouble both when we were up and when we were down. We are taught to differentiate between our wants (which are never satisfied) and our needs (which are always provided for). We cast off the burdens of the past and the anxieties of the future, as we begin to live in the present, one day at a time. We are granted “the serenity to accept the things we cannot change” – and thus lose our quickness to anger and our sensitivity to criticism.”

I specifically love the part about casting off burdens of the past and the anxieties of the future because to live anywhere but the present is detrimental to my sobriety. With all the chaos and change I am going through in my life right now, it is easy to sit and think about the past and worry about the future. I have found myself lately just repeating the serenity prayer over and over, and I find so much peace in it. Otherwise, my anxieties could really take over, and in the past, my solution to dealing with those anxieties was to drink them away! Of course that was never really a solution. If I stay in the present, I focus only on what is in front of me and find peace in knowing wherever life takes me, it’s not my problem today. Thankfully this program keeps me so grounded that I have been able to get through all of this chaos lately without even once thinking about a drink. That is a true miracle!

I’d love to hear about your experiences with living in the present and finding your peace while weathering life’s storms.  Speaking of storms, where I am, we are going to get a big snowstorm tomorrow!  I hope anyone else in this storm’s path stays safe and warm!

 

January 18: Contempt Prior to Investigation

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Topic for the week: Contempt Prior to Investigation

    “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

     –HERBERT SPENCER

This quote first appeared in one of the Stories in the Back of the Book, first edition, titled An Artist’s Concept. The story was dropped from subsequent editions and the quote was moved to appear at the end of Appendix II called “Spiritual Experience”. This would be on page 570 in the Third Edition and Fourth Edition. I like reading the material that is the closest to the beginning of the formation of the AA construct to get a better comprehension of our program at our roots.

Here is a snippet from that story…

“The next day I met over twenty men who had achieved a mental rebirth from alcoholism. Here again it was not so much what these men told me in regard to their experiences that was impressive, as it was a sense or feeling that an invisible influence was at work. What was it this man had and these other men exemplified without their knowing? They were human every-day sort of people. They certainly were not pious. They had no “holier than thou” attitude. They were not reformers, and their concepts of religion in some cases were almost inarticulate. But they had something! Was it just their sincerity that was magnetic? Yes, they certainly were sincere, but much more than that emanated from them. Was it their great and terrible need, now being fulfilled, that made me feel a vibratory force that was new and strange? Now I was getting closer and suddenly, it seemed to me, I had the answer. These men were but instruments. Of themselves they were nothing.

Here at last was a demonstration of spiritual law at work. Here was spiritual law working through human lives just as definitely and with the same phenomena expressed in the physical laws that govern the material world. These men were like lamps supplied with current from a huge spiritual dynamo and controlled by the rheostat of their souls. They burned dim, bright, or brilliant, depending upon the degree and progress of their contact. And this contact could only be maintained just so long as they obeyed that spiritual law.

These men were thinking straight-therefore their actions corresponded to their thoughts. They had given themselves, their minds, over to a higher power for direction. Here, it seemed to me, in the one word “Thought”-was the crux of the whole spiritual quest. That “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” and so is his health, his environment, his failure, or his success in life.

How foolish I had been in my quest for spiritual help. How selfish and egotistical I had been to think that I could approach God intellectually. In the very struggle to obtain faith I had lost it. I had given to the term faith a religious significance only. I had failed to see that faith was “our common everyday manner of thinking.” That good and evil were but end results of certain uniform and reliable spiritual laws. Obviously, my own thinking had been decidedly wrong. Normal most of the time, it was abnormal at the wrong times. Like everyone’s thinking, it was a mixture of good and bad, but mainly it was uncontrolled.

I had been sticking my chin out and getting socked by spiritual law until I was punch drunk. If one could become humble, if he could become “as a little child” before this powerful spiritual thought force, the pathway could be discovered.”

This writing is absolutely beautiful, and sums up what was intended for us to be once we recover-light, a lamp.

Lamp: a device for giving light

This morning I was thinking about all the concepts, beliefs, and systems I have had contempt for prior to investigation, and what I currently do….I wrote the following in my notebook:

“Sh*tting on things I “oppose”  (in my case it was western medicine) is an act of avoidance so I don’t have to put in the footwork to investigate. If I am “anti” this or that so I can fit comfortably inside my team’s box or bubble, then I have contempt, or resentment. Our book says:  Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.” pg 64

-and resentments block me from the light that fills my lamp to be of service to the next sick or suffering alcoholic-my primary purpose for being sober.”

So I ask the group to share on your current “contempts prior to investigating” that are currently blocking you off from your maximum source light/HP ;or perhaps something you have worked through, and now see how your perception, belief systems and fear kept you from investigating the other teams side…not necessarily to become apart of that team, but just to keep an open mind and heart to new information and remove resentment??

 

January 11: Rapt attention

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On January 9th, I reached 38 years of continuous sobriety. Part of acknowledging my anniversary is chairing this meeting the following Sunday. I will also celebrate at my home group next Wednesday Night. This January, four of us with anniversaries this month will all collect our medallions at Wednesday’s meeting. It feels special because there will be one with 15 years, me with 38, another with 48 and one with 49. Together it totals 150 years!

That meeting reads from “Each Day a New Beginning” and the reading from last Wednesday was on having rapt attention to each other.  When I first came into sobriety there was such a roar of thoughts, comments, criticisms and judgements swirling around in my head every minute that I had to learn HOW to listen to the people as they shared in meetings. I asked my nonexistent higher power to help me hear what I needed to hear in order to stay sober another day.  I found it so exhausting that I would often come home limp from the effort – but with the one memorable thing that resonated with me and helped keep me sober.

Over time, I found it awesome that when people shared during a meeting, everyone else was silent and attentive. They listened to hear what was being said, not to respond.  It remains the one place in the world to me where that is still true.  Particularly in women’s meetings it is that deep respect we give one another that allows her to be heard and to have her experience witnessed, validated and shared. Something profoundly healing occurs during that singular attention.

At last week’s meeting, one woman had relapsed and totaled her car so asked for rides to meetings, another in early sobriety remarked she had just come from arguing with her husband and realized now that she had not listened to anything he had said, just waited for an opening to respond, three women let the group know they had reached 60 and 90 days of sobriety, another announced she had 27 years sober, and one woman tearfully described having spent the day at the hospital holding her daughter. The daughter had attempted suicide while in her father’s custody.  You could hear a pin drop while each woman spoke.

I try to listen with that deep respect anytime someone in the program calls, or shares her experience with me.   I believe simply listening, not “fixing”, not “giving advice”, not “complimenting or correcting”, lets her know that she is important to me, that she matters, that her experience is valuable and worthy of notice. It also lets her often figure out what the solution is to her problem, or gives her clarity on why she is feeling the way she is, and she always sounds lighter by the end of the exchange.

I only learned that because I reluctantly came into the rooms of AA and let this magical program of recovery show me how to live a life richer than anything I could have dreamed during my drinking years.  I thank all of you in this meeting for sharing your truth, your experience, your struggles in your shares. I still read every share and find something I needed to hear to make my sober life better every day.  Thank you!

And in that spirit, please feel free to share on topic or off, especially if there is some problem putting your sobriety at risk. I swear that honestly sharing the problem out loud de-fangs it so it is no longer a problem