I had a very pleasant experience to be a Chief Guest of an Annual Meeting of a Unit of the ‘Alcoholic Anonymous’ (Called as AA by them for short) at Coimbatore.
Though I have noticed in Engagement columns of various papers meetings about the AA, I did not actually know what exactly was their programme. Peripherally I knew that it was an organization involved in de-addiction programmes.
But when I attended their meeting, I came to see how the members of the organization and family members had a great bonding with each other. This emotional bondage was evidently a great support for bringing out the addicts out of their problem. Each one of them called themselves a ‘Alcoholic patient’. That itself serves them to understand their problem so that they overcome the same. Many alcoholics who do not admit to their situation continue with the addiction under a misbelieve that they have a will to stop it at will, but due to their own will they are continuing. Hence, their willingness to accept their situation in life appears to be the first step to overcome it.
Their prayer was itself very captivating:
It is:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference”.
From the web I found that it is called the ‘The Serenity Prayer’ and is said to have been written by an American theologian called Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971).
The Original version of this prayer as per Wikepedia is:
“Father, give us courage to change what must be altered,
serenity to accept what cannot be helped,
and the insight to know the one from the other”.
The prayer is in essence the predicament of the human situation itself. We are not able to know what can be changed and what cannot be, by us and we are not able to reconcile to what cannot be changed.
Not only Alcoholics, but every individual requires that wisdom to know this and to distinguish between what can be changed and what cannot be.
Many of those who spoke in the sharing session of the meeting were very good speakers, who could emotionally express how they were being tormented by their addiction, how they suffered due to feeling of guilt, neglect and how they felt frustrated and angry for not being able to come out of the rut but due to the frustration and anger, further slipped into the same miserable habit.
Many of them recounted that they have been able to come out of the habit after undergoing the de-addiction programme after coming into contact with the AA and have continued to live away from alcohol since then (some said 7 years, some 9 years and so on) due to the continued support of the AA family.
People from various parts of Tamil Nadu and even many from Kerala had come for the meeting, with their family members.
In that session itself there were 14 new entrants.
The organizers informed that people could approach them even online.
Their request to me was that since Anonymity is the fundamental principle of the movement, as a non-alcoholic I should bring the information about the organization to public knowledge so that many of people who are suffering due to alcohol addictions could come to know of this movement and get benefitted by getting in touch with the organization.
The following are the original twelve steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The organization does not collect donations or is not funded by any agencies as is seen from their public document itself. The members who were present there told me that all their functions are conducted only by their own subscriptions and contributions. This is laid down in their Twelve Traditions which are guidelines for group governance. They were developed in AA in order to help resolve conflicts in the areas of publicity, politics, religion and finances. Alcoholics Anonymous' Twelve Traditions are:
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon AA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
6. An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. AA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always to maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
More information is available in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous
Their own web site also is available. It could be searched on the google.
I briefly told them that though I did not drink, I have participated in very many of such sessions and my impression had been that most of the addicts had a very high IQ, but did not know how to get attention of the world to their capabilities. I felt that the realization about their weakness was the first step towards their own strengthening because making good of ones weakness is the greatest method of becoming strong.
I came back with the feeling that the AA is an ideal way of running an organization, how a better understanding of the weakness of oneself becomes a binding factor and how it can help us overcome it and become stronger. Most of us suffer from the feeling that we are strong and therefore we do not want others in our lives.
Who are really drunk – those who have realized or who have not – their own weakness?
Who is really anonymous? Who is able to have good relationship within an organization or who keeps himself away in the society?
