Social Observation Report Of Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting
Alcoholics’ Anonymous (AA) mission is to offer a safe space and act as a treatment and support group for people recovering any form of substance addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous is a therapy group, which helps its members, change behaviors, coping mechanisms for personal problems or rehabilitate themselves after a social trauma. The group uses solution focus therapy techniques to explore coping questions, future-oriented questions, goals and strengths as well as normalization the group is not by health care professionals but by alcoholics using the buddy system or what is known as a sponsor to help each other gain and maintain sobriety. Alcoholics Anonymous as the name implies strives on anonymity, a complete judgment free zone and is open to anybody seeking help regardless of gender, age, race, and sexual orientation. All are free to attend meeting as a persons’ social, academic and or financial background are never a criteria for membership.
Today’s meeting begins with the seven members present all from different works of life reciting the sobriety prayer. Each member goes on to say their names and how long they have being sober, with sobrieties ranging from three months up to thirty years. The group leader goes on to call individual by name and in a clockwise motion ask how have you been since we last met? This to my knowledge will be considered an open ended question as the question seeks to empower the member to come up with ways that will work better for them. Most of the group members were quite eager to talk about what has been going on in their lives, the highs and the lows in the past seven days however there was a member who seemed to think one of group members keeps repeating what they had said over and over taking up too much time. The leader of the group eased the situation by saying the said individual was so proud of their accomplishments in the past seven days that they just could not help themselves. This got everyone laughing and giving each other high-fives. There was an individual who seemed very reluctant to participate in the meeting and the individual kept muttering words under his breath. I later discovered the courts had made his attendance mandatory and was not seeking help voluntarily. The said individual states “I have no business being at this meeting so what I had a can of beer before seeing my daughter, big deal”. This seemed to get another member of the group irritated and replied “So what you better than us now?” Group leader asks everyone to calm down and he goes on to say “We all here to support each other through all the challenges we may face in our daily lives as no one is better than the other”
With everyone cool and calm at this point, the group leader asks if anyone had anything else to share, group responds by saying no. The leader then goes on to say it is 9:37pm let us recite the sobriety prayer, light refreshment and call it a night. Throughout the two hour meeting, I felt most of the members took sobriety as a daily struggle with one foot in front of the other. Personally I see recovery from substance abuse as marathon not a sprint and with the right support system sobriety is attainable.
References
- Corcoran, J. (2012). Helping skills for social work direct practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Grady, M. D., & Dombo, E. A. (2016). Moving beyond assessment: A practical guide for beginning helping professionals. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Hepworth, D. H., Rooney, R. H., Rooney, G. D., & Strom-Gottfried, K. (2013). Forming and assessing social work groups. In Direct social work practice: Theory and skills Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. Toseland, R. W., & Rivas, R. F. (2012). Introduction. In An introduction to group work practice Boston, MA: Pearson.
