My first meeting

WOW is all I can say! Just when you think you are so alone in the world you find out different but the best part is finding out there is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel.. but sometimes the tunnel will be VERY dark inside and not easy to navigate. However it can't be any worse then how things are now.

The meetings are structured very much like AA or Al-Anon, at least I assume having never been to one of those types of meetings. There is/are a 12 step program, values and traditions you go thru and the first is it admit we are powerless over other people and we must not strive to control them but ourselves.

The first meeting you are whisked away from the larger group into a smaller group with others that have worked the program or are living the principles. They share their story with you and you can tell them why your there or not, its up to you.

I found myself being able to relate to all of them in some fashion and I found myself in tears listening to them recant their story and having had similiar things in my life. Feelings of shame, guilt, never being good enough, always feeling if I just did this or that better so and so would love me more, being a workaholic, always keeping busy to avoid your pain... It cut straight to my heart. But I left with smiles and with HOPE! HOPE that while it won't be easy, that I can learn to begin to LIVE my life and not just exist in it.

If there was anything I didn't like about the whole thing is the smoking.. UGH! The meeting itself is non-smoking but after the initial hour meeting is over you are free to light up... there is a smoke eater exhaust type thing in the room but when you have a small room and 5+ peeps lighting up... I drove home with my car windows down and left them down in the garage to air out my car and I HAD to take a shower the second I walked in the door.. But I do believe inspite of the smokyness after the meeting, I will be going back. Its a heck of a lot cheaper then a shrink and these people have lived in my shoes, not just peeps trying some text book cure they learned in Phyciatry school...