Winter 2010, week 6

from my clinical journal:

I started out my rotation on the chemical dependency unit by going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the morning. I was honestly not thrilled to have to get there 20 minutes earlier, but at the end of the meeting, I was really glad that I had gone. First off, I was very surprised at how many people were at the meeting. I suppose TV shows made me have a preconceived notion of what AA meeting “should” look like. I was expecting a small circle of people who do the customary, “I’m Tom (“Hi Tom”) and I’m an alcoholic.” But the group was probably at least 100 people. As I looked around, I was struck with the familiarity of the faces around me. Business men, grandfathers, average joes, college students, mothers, and women dressed for work – people who you would see at a supermarket or a restaurant and never realize that at 6:30 in the morning, they had been at an AA meeting.

Somewhere during the meeting though, it occurred to me that this was as a church service. They were simply a group of people who professed the need for a savior and met for accountability, growth and encouragement. The leader, himself struggling through the same issues, facilitated the members in reading devotionals, encouragements, and prayer. Then others took the time to share their story, their testimony, about the struggles, victories and meaning in their journey. The doxology, the Lord's Prayer, was a unified profession of surrender and commitment, and by the end of it, I was near tears. I’ve been going to church for years and rarely had a “service” touched me so deeply. Though I don’t have the same struggle they do, in our humanity, we realize how we are all so weak for our own reasons and have a need for a higher power.