Hearts in Hawai'i
Around the Country in 50 Zoom Meetings
10/11/2020
As "luck" would have it, during the same week I was completing my career with St. Louis County, COVID-19 shut down churches, clubs and meeting halls--more specifically, every place which was hosting meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. It triggered a fresh challenge on how to satisfy my need for those meetings which had helped keep me sober since 1982.
I fought the technology. I knew there were A.A. meetings being done on Zoom, a video conferencing platform which could be accessed via computers and smart phones. I resisted this technology, using the convenient excuse of "Well, I need that face-to-face close contact with other people in recovery". My wife, meanwhile, took to Zoom quite readily and was soon doing several Zoom Alanon meetings each week. Of course, I thought I didn't need this!
I was wrong. My excuse for foregoing Zoom was really just a cover up for a far more sinister state of mind which grips some recovering alcoholics from time to time--complacency. Throw in a smidgen of ego; you know, this "Hey, I got this" dangerous mindset which has occasionally plagued me throughout my sobriety, and you have the perfect recipe for a dry drunk.
Did I reach that state of being on a dry drunk before I woke up? Perhaps. I kept somewhat in contact with a few of my closest A.A. friends via phone calls, and tried to pretend it was enough. After about a month of this quite minimal effort, my eyes opened up to a simple fact; I was thinking of myself far to much, and thinking of others far too little. Obviously, this isn't a good place to be in recovery and this is true whether I've been sober one day, one year, or 38 years.
Reluctantly, begrudgingly, I caved. I knew of close to a dozen local meetings which were being hosted via Zoom, and I started attending. Instant relief was found as I found myself surrounded (virtually) by others who were speaking of their sober lives, sharing their "experience, strength and hope" as we like to say. Some of these meetings were focused on various parts of the book Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book, as we say), and it got me in touch with the basics on how the program works. It was a part of the program I had neglected for far too long.
After a couple weeks of attending Zoom meetings, I found myself wondering if there were any such meetings happening on Maui, our favorite vacation destination. While on the island, I had found the Lahaina Alano Club just a couple blocks from the hotel where we always stayed. Were they hosting meetings? I didn't find any, but there were a couple meetings in South Maui, so I tried those out.
A gentleman attending a local meeting one morning stated he'd been to meetings in 30+ states, and the hook was set. Could I do this? Attend meetings in all 50 states? Did I want to? What did I expect from such an experience? How are meetings run in other parts of the country? Thus began the somewhat painstaking process of finding out when and where meetings were being held in the 47 states I hadn't already "visited". It was painstaking because meetings come and go and passwords which are sometimes (as of early October, always) required are added and changed. Probably 1/3 of the meetings I found using a Google search wouldn't allow me access for either of those reasons. I was, however, able to located at least a couple meetings in each state.
From that point, it was a simple matter of scheduling which meetings I wanted to check out. Attending up to four meetings a day was fairly simple when you consider that I was retired!
What did I find? While the format these meetings use varies from place to place (A.A. recommends no set format and leaves the decision on how to run meetings to the individual groups), one constant was soon clear--recovery was happening everywhere and the basic principles of honesty, willingness and being open minded were also found no matter where I looked. I was greeted warmly no matter where I went. The meetings had as few as four people, and as high as 486 people (a speaker meeting in New York City). I probably attended more Big Book meetings in these three weeks than I had attended in person over the previous 15-20 years. In the process, my "story" and my message would undergo a tectonic change as I became aware of what my message really was and how I could carry that message. From hearing and relating to so much of what was said, that idea of "terminal uniqueness" so familiar to us drunks was blown away.
I completed this process in less than a month. In hindsight, I probably attended too many meetings in too short of time; I felt almost burnt out by the time the 50th state was visited (Arizona) two months ago. But I came away with a treasure trove of meetings which I really liked and had decided to visit again in the future.
In short, I still prefer face-to-face meetings, but the experience of what I went through this summer simply can't be ignored. It was, and still is, worth it. Now I just need a webcam for my desktop PC so I don't have to be constantly hauling out my laptop. :)
Previous: 9/27/2020--Six Months Post Retirement
Index of Blog Pages
last updated november 22, 2021
|