I had just turned 23 when I found myself walking into my very first meeting of AA. I was lost, scared and emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.

I like to take cookies, lots of cookies, to our AA meetings. I take lots of cookies because the open speaker meetings in my area are well-attended.

In June of 2019, my wife and I checked into Michigan’s Algonac State Park on the St. Clair River about 35 miles north of Detroit.

When I was drinking, I was the opposite of ambitious. On paper, my professional life was fine, but my career had plateaued.

I love my home group. We meet on Wednesday nights at 7:00 in a cozy little room next to a little white church in Soquel, California, two miles inland from beautiful Capitola Village.

Sobriety has been good to me. I now live a life I only dreamed of and often fantasized about from a barstool.

Our cars pulled up to Trout Pond and we hiked back along the lake to the campsite. We pitched our tents around the campfire site like alcoholics circling up for an AA meeting.

Although it seems odd to me today, prior to coming into AA I would not have been able to think of anything fun that didn’t involve drinking.

In my Monday evening Women’s Step Study, our small group’s routine is to go around the room, giving each person the opportunity to read a paragraph or share or simply introduce herself

Ever since I started in AA, I’ve always been involved with our Third Legacy of service. The Traditions were not a big part of my early recovery, or so I thought.

The laughter at our AA meeting always reminds me that we’re not a glum lot.  Jokes and one-liners offered up during our meeting each week put my emotions right back to how they were bef

Jimmy S. is an old musician buddy of my husband, Guy. In the 1980s, we “grew up” together in the excellent fellowship of the Vallejo, California AA community.

I never needed a reason or an excuse or any justification to drink alone. I had a job and I had money and I did what I wanted, end of story.

When the Covid virus hit, it suddenly became no longer safe and acceptable to hold hands in our AA meetings and offer each other a friendly hug.

Deciding to get sober was not easy. It was especially hard in March of 2020 when the COVID pandemic closed everything—including meetings.

About 15 years ago, I knew a couple of AA guys who had been life partners for more than 30 years. They met as newcomers and then stayed together and remained sober from then on.

I’m a land surveyor by trade. I now enjoy working on the drafting side of the business and rarely make it into the field, but I spent 15 years in the woods taking measurements.

I’ve been sober since February 2007. I hoped that sobriety would help improve my family relationships, but not all of them got better.

As a blossoming alcoholic at age 24, I was presented with my most important lesson in life—the secret to happiness in every circumstance—though I didn’t realize it until five years late

The Eleventh Step is my favorite. That’s because my connection with my Higher Power has been an ongoing unfoldment throughout my sobriety.

I came to AA in 1982. I was young and didn’t know what I didn’t know.

At five years sober, I met the woman who would later become my wife. She was struggling to get sober. Our relationship began as Twelfth Step work.

“We all go about being a sponsor in our own way,” my sponsor once told me. “God made us different to serve different people.”