OKaysez

          At the urging of friends I have finally decided to change my random blog to one mainly on the topic of recovery from addiction. (A few other pet topics will show up from time to time, however, because Digression is my middle name.) 

          Many of the things posted here will be on recurring themes taken from letters and emails I have sent to AA sponsees and friends over the years of my own recovery. My hope is they will be of help to you, too. 

Blog One follows: 

Zoom Meetings - Some thoughts from an AA Oldtimer about online meetings (and other stuff) during Covid ...         (O.Kay J. - Sobriety date September 11, 1981.) 

I am a 77-year-old No Tech who has attended in-person AA meetings for a few months shy of 40 years. So when Covid arrived and we had to switch to online meetings it was very hard for me. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to do it. I would still rather meet in thatfamiliar room with the steps, traditions and slogans on the wall and our cups of coffee or tea in hand. I miss my AA hugs. 

My dear old brother, Bob S. (sobriety date 3rd April 1981) feels the same. He struggles with the “new” (to us) technology even more than I do, but he gets to his Zoom meetings all the same. After all, what choice do we have? It is now either an online meeting or no meeting for all of us. We must now Zoom for our ongoing recovery or go it alone and risk the ever-lurking possibility of a relapse. 

My first sponsor told me alcoholism isn’t the only progressive, terminal, fatal illness out there, but it is the only one that doesn’t require some often horrific treatments like chemotherapy, or dialisis, or a daily shot of insulin (to name but a few). All I have to do to treat my disease is to get my ass to a meeting. With Zoom meetings being the only meetings on offer at the moment, then a Zoom meeting it must be. 

(Of course, in addition to our meetings, we have to continue working our program by applying the steps in our lives, helping others, reading AA literature, talking with our AA friends and sponsors, and getting through this strange Covid experience One Day at a Time.) 

But I admit it irks me more than a little bit when I hear virtual newcomers saying they “don’t like online meetings, “ and “they’re not the same,” and “I miss our real meetings,” and other whining to that effect. What’s worse, I hear those same remarks from people with long-term sobriety, too. They often stay away from online meetings and, by so doing, set a pretty lousy example for program youngsters. 

But imagine if Covid had come along ten or 20 years ago, when cell phones and PCs weren’t part of our daily reality? Imagine being in lockdown with NO meetings available to us? Where’s our gratitude? 

How about being happy for: 

Being able to zoom into a meeting any hour of the day. 

Having gratitude for meeting new friends in recovery all over the world at the touch of a button. 

Or even (my personal favorite this winter) appreciate not having to leave the house on a cold wet night and navigate icy streets to get to a meeting. 

It’s so easy to forget we all, as our literature tells us, have “a disease of perception.” But we can choose to look for and perceive the benefits of any situation - including online meetings - rather than suck our thumbs and pout about “the good old days.”