Can It Get Weirder??? YES

Today I went to a meeting north of me. I felt God’s strong Intuition guiding me to this meeting. I have been there before and felt it is a strong group. I walked in a little after noon as I did not give myself quite enough time to get there, sat down at the table and looked up to see:

this is a fascimile of what I saw – not real AA members

I asked my neighbor – what’s that??? She said – It’s the ZOOM meeting we are all in. WHAT THE FUCK????
She told me “Share about it when you talk.” OK.

They were talking on Step 8 out of the 12×12. I definitely needed to hear that for another project I am working on – however – this was too much.

I opened my mouth “Hi, my name is Andrea and I am an alcoholic.” No it’s not. LOL. I guess I am not going to tell them my real name. “that’s not my real name but I don’t feel comfortable sharing my real name on zoom, since it is recorded. I was hoping to come here as I just moved nearby, but now I don’t think I will come back because I take my anonymity very seriously.”

Someone interrupted me and said – “it is not recording and you can sit along the side on the couches and not be in the zoom camera” OK. I got up and moved to the couches.

Sweating and exploding inside I waited for myself to calm down. There was a woman there who was celebrating 36 years. She said she lives in an assisted living facility and they are all completely locked down. She told how they have been locked down for weeks. Not allowed to hug or touch each other or leave. Wow. THIS SHIT IS TERRIFYING. She lives there so she has to abide by this bullshit. Then she went on to say that the zoom meetings have saved her, but she has nothing to hide so she doesn’t need her anonymity – because she knows she’s as sick as her secrets…

Oh shit – I guess God is calling em to talk to stand up for principle.

After she was done, I said “My name is Andrea and I am an alcoholic – and I value my privacy. I talked about Tradition 11 and 12 and about how all AA groups now have either a single person running them or a secret government running them (I see heads nodding all around me) and I can’t seem to find a group that uses principles where I have  a voice. I said some other things too. Feels like the ability to stand up for principle is starting to become a working part of my program – FINALLY- it has only taken 7 years!

– not sure if I will go back there – it is just WRONG to force people to be on zoom so since there is no way to know if I will be on zoom if I go there, I am probably NOT going to go there.

The Chairperson told me aaws told them this is ok to do this this way and that the group voted on it – I told him AAWS doesn’t use the traditions either but whatever. All I care about is that I am finally able to SPEAK UP.

Zoom records all the meetings whether you want them recorded or not.  Do you want it available to everyone that you attend AA? Watch this video from NBC Nightly news.

And besides – ANYONE can record the show off the FEED – so not just zoom.

Yes, I have God – but I also need to tether my camel.