personal insights on an al-anon meeting

Personal Insights – Al-Anon 1

Running head: PERSONAL INSIGHTS ON AN AL-ANON MEETING

Personal Insights on an Al-Anon Meeting

Márcio Padilha

College of Southern Idaho

ADDS 202 – Feis-Christy

Fall/2009


Personal Insights on an Al-Anon Meeting

Knowing that attending “Twelve-Step Program” meetings would be required for

some classes I had signed up for, I took the initiative, in order to expedite the process, of

seeking the necessary information online and, once in possession of the schedules, I

proceeded to attend different kinds. On August 19, 2009, I attended a 90-minute long Al-

Anon Meeting which, starting at 7:30pm, regularly takes place at the First Presbyterian

Church, located at 209 5th Avenue North in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Uncertain as to what exactly lied ahead, I went into the room, which was set up as

what appeared to be a kindergarten classroom, approximately five minutes prior to the

start time and found out that, although nothing had been mentioned on the online schedule,

this was a closed meeting. To my surprise, however, after a quick assessment by the

chairperson, my attending and participating was accepted after determining that, in light of

having two uncles who are alcoholics, I had experienced the praxis of the alcohol-in-the-

family dynamics, the core purpose of Al-Anon.

Having nurtured fond childhood memories of these alcoholic uncles, I was a puzzled

as their alcoholic conditions had never been perceived by me as problematic. With that

being so, and being taken momentarily aback by hearing that I belonged to that group, I

couldn’t help but rationalize my childhood, reconstructing a mental picture of the reality I

then experienced as means to reevaluate the whole dynamics at play.

First off, I realized that the matter lied in the core of the status quo itself. Both

uncles were preexistent to my existence, i.e. I had never known them to be any different

than the bearers of alcoholism. In addition, as an adult, I now realized that my parents

sheltered both my sister and me from situations where their alcoholism might have


become blatantly out of control and, if it ever got to that point, my cousins never mentioned

anything. Hence, I had always been a witness to their alcoholic behavior within a scope of

what was socially acceptable by my parents. In turn, I had come to internalize their under-

the-influence behaviors as “annoying” rather than “diseased” and “detrimental” to my

perception of their beings. Lastly, I realized that my living in the United States and their

living in Brazil has limited our, i.e. theirs and mine, interaction for approximately fifteen

years now. Thus, although I have come back for visits at least every other year, these uncles

have always presented themselves in a very self-restrained mode which I contend to be

meant as to not expose much, if anything at all, of their conditions to their new “American

Niece”, i.e. my wife.

In light of the other twelve-step program meetings I had attended, I couldn’t help

but notice how differently-behaved the components of this group, comprising altogether

two males and two females, all adults, were. Whereas some of the other groups were

volatile and aggressive, intellectuality and serenity appeared to culminate the atmosphere

therein which, in turn made it very welcoming to me.

Following the Alcoholics Anonymous model, Al-Anon is a self-supporting spiritual,

yet not necessarily religious, self-help group where non-professional mutual support for

recovery is provided with anonymity being encouraged.

After introductions, the meeting started in the traditional way, i.e. by reading the

“Twelve Steps” and “Twelve Traditions”, and, as I understood, one step and one tradition

are discussed per month with supplementary material being added from Courage to

Change and One Day at a Time, both publications by the Al-Anon Family Group

Headquarters, Inc., at all meetings. Whatever the intellectual discussion out of the literature


may be, participants are encouraged to share and discuss how the praxis of the topic has

affected or may affect the praxis of their individual family group dynamics.

In terms of support, this type of meeting appeared to provide the lay person with a

pragmatic understanding and applicability of Glasser’s Choice Theory and Maslow’s

Hierarchy of Needs, both of which I believe to be essential contributors to the learning

process at large. Furthermore, I couldn’t help but associate that the praxis of such premise,

in the spectrum of family dynamics, may be reaffirmed by Brazilian Educator and Theorist

of Critical Pedagogy Paulo Freire’s statement that “dehumanization [the using] is a

distortion of being more fully human [not using], sooner or later being less human [using]

leads the oppressed [the user] to struggle against those who made them so [the cycle of

addiction]. In order for this struggle [recovery] to have meaning, the oppressed [family]

must not, in seeking to regain their humanity [positively-reinforced harmonious

transactional group dynamics], become in turn oppressors [negatively-reinforced

transactional group dynamics] of the oppressors [the user], but rather restorers of the

humanity of both [positively-reinforced harmonious transactional group dynamics]."

personal insights on an al-anon meeting

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