Aa MeetingEssay Preview: Aa MeetingReport this essay12 Step MeetingThe meeting I attended took place in Bothell on a weeknight at 7:00 pm in the evening. The meeting was held in a local church and there were 17 people in attendance, excluding myself. Among the 17 people, there were 6 women and 11 men. The average attendee was approximately between the ages of 40-50, 4 people were under the age of 30, and two were somewhere around 60. Of the 17 people, 16 were white and one woman was of an Asian-American descent.
The focus of the meeting was Step #2 -humility. There were a few AA birthdays and in general the meeting consisted out of birthday-people reliving their stories and some talking about humility.
Prior to the meeting I was expecting to enter into a room filled with smoke and nervous, agitated people. My impression of AA and of alcoholics mostly came from movies and my own prior experience with population suffering from different psychiatric disorders. I was expecting a lot of smoking, coffee drinking, twitching and general nervous behaviors. To my surprise the meeting mostly was attended, by normal in appearance people, that I would never suspect of having any addiction problems. The people were not twitching (to my surprise), but instead were very calm, cool and collected. Many talked about God and holding AA as the higher power in their lives.
The meeting I attended best compares with the meetings I saw in the film 28 Days. While in rehabilitation center Gwen attends a series of inside the rehab meetings. As in the 28 Days meetings, the meeting I attended was held in a circle with people facing each other. There were no outbursts as in the movie, but there was an official “huger” who dispensed hugs as needed, be it a birthdays or a new attendee such as my self. Movie consisted of constant outbursts at therapy sessions, emotions of the film characters were all over the place, people were angry, happy or depressed. The people at the meeting I attended were mostly quiet and most seemed very depressed. I came away form the meeting,
I was told there was more work and more time for me, and I was going to be there. My first visit of the therapist was to my parents in Los Angeles last year, they were just so relieved that I could come in and assist them in their final visit. At the same time, they asked the therapist for photos and I got a chance to meet them a little bit. After an interesting presentation, our therapist was in my room again and I had to talk to her. The therapist showed me, I felt bad and sad, but the truth is that I felt better about it. I couldn’t have been anything. I didn’t feel like the bad part. In the end, I was able to return, my body could only support my mental health. After 2 months of going through it, I made a decision to return to therapy and be part of it. I think at the time, there was no other therapy to go through. I had no family to support, I couldn’t look after my kids, I didn’t even know this about my parents. Even though, with the therapy that I had done I knew it was the right thing to do, I still feel a little weird to feel nervous about a professional who did what nobody I had any respect for felt good about. With all that said, I am extremely proud of my therapy and I plan to leave for rehab. The following article is an excerpt from a series by Dr. Peter Luskin, MD, that focuses on the causes of depression and OCD. Dr. Luskin notes that certain disorders commonly associated with OCD occur with severe, but somewhat frequent, repetitive behaviors:
“It is one of the most common and specific causes of OCD – as well as various other disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder—and not just of people who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder; especially those who are not in the DSM-III, but are in the family of people with psychiatric illnesses, often with the condition of depression.”
There is significant research suggesting that one of the main mechanisms that causes OCD is the emotional and psychological processes that are carried out by the individual to overcome, but not overcome by the community, in a normal functioning human being. According to the NIAH Research Institute in 2008, “…one of the main manifestations of OCD is the sense of depression and suicidal thoughts, and an increased likelihood that person will experience feelings of distress. It has been reported that up to 80 percent of posttraumatic stress disorder patients develop an OCD relapse and only 5 percent of OCD patients do so for a long enough period of time to develop such a relapse.”
The NIAH Study also finds a greater need