We Who Are Next in Line

I am a twenty-two-year-old alcoholic. After several years of hard drinking I was dying of alcoholism. Doctors had told me I was incurable and hopeless. I began to recover through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and by the grace of a very loving God and AA I'm still sober three years later. Because of my recovery I was allowed to pursue a lifelong dream and I enlisted in the Air Force. This has given me the opportunity to attend AA meetings in different states and other nations and I have noticed something interesting in my travels. Where a meeting allows people to talk about drug addiction, it usually allows them to talk about everything else under the sun and they invariably do. In these meetings that have little regard for AA Traditions there seem to be more people who go back to drinking, more people who don't practice the Twelve Steps, more people who don't have (or don't use) a sponsor, more people who don't extend a safe welcome to visitors or pay much attention to newcomers.