Go to as many meetings as you can when you are new

It makes early recovery MUCH easier when you MAX OUT on meetings. It really helps a LOT, as the penny drops a bit sooner rather than later. As you can probably tell by now, there is actually rather a LOT of information to process with this thing, and meetings help to teach us, so attending more speeds up our education. When used wisely of course.

Alcoholics hate people to think they have nothing to do, so there is this thing where people want to get back to 'normal living' asap, which is fair enough, but, if used wisely, meetings can be very liberating places. Ample opportunity to help others in greater need than ourselves, frank accounts of the irrationalities of the things we tell ourselves, and every self defeating belief we can think of. Plus endless opportunities to learn tolerance from all the people we can't stand! I call it grass-roots spirituality.

You would learn very similar things in the refined atmospheres of ashrams or high end mediation centers for £150 quid a day, but aa teaches us the same stuff, but in a more 'new York taxi driver' sort of a way. No messing. No navel gazing bullshit. I see it as the same wisdom, but delivered in a different way. But the best part is that the act of participating assists in healing others. And that's priceless. You don't get that in ashrams. As far as I know! I've never actually been to an ashram, as I'm not really into the guru ? thing.

I kind of 'lived' in meetings for ? Years but then my brains were pretty badly fried I think. Anyway, I do not regret that as I formed a unbreakable connection with a 'gang' of AA's that exists to this day, even though we are scattered to the four winds, and have developed very individual ways of practicing our programmes. What I mean is that makes me feel totally 'knitted' into the matrix of AA now, even if I only attend one meeting a month. Or less. Hard to describe, but a substantial connection has been made and it just seems to carry on no matter what.

I'm not saying you should curtail your life to include more meetings, but just that going to more helps. To begin with anyway.