On The Twelve Steps And Summer

I’ve been following along as my fellow bloggers in the Science and Health Channel here at b5 put together our Theme Day for the month of August and… I’ll be doggoned if I can think of something to offer as a writing for applying the Twelve Steps to the topic of “Summer.”

So I’m going to completely wing it. What you’re about to see will be a series of thoughts from a weird mind

Usually, during the summer months, attendance at AA meetings is down. That’s a personal observation. Why? Could be that many folks are on vacation so where they live might see a decline yet, where they go might see an increase. And – wouldn’t that, in turn, work the other way also?

When I lived in New York, the “snow bunnies” were home from Florida and Arizona for the summer. Shouldn’t that have meant that attendance at meetings ought to have been higher? I don’t know… maybe they just offset each other.

What does it all mean? Summer vacation for an alky is a time to meet new friends, in new meetings.

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Could it be that more people relapse in the summer? Makes sense to me. Drinking at barbeques, at the beach, on boats, poolside, picnics, backyard parties. Less clothes, more skin, drink more, lose the inhibitions.

It would follow that there’d be more folks coming to a recovery program at the end of summer, don’t you think? All that partying opens the door to so much more drinking which opens the door to much more noticeable poor behavior which opens the door to rejection and judgement which leads to disappointment and finally, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization? Works for me…

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Finally, Founders Day in AA is June 10, 1935. Now, June 10th isn’t quite yet summer, but the summer of 1935 was extremely important to the beginnings of our fellowship. Once their initial meeting had come and gone, Bill W. and Dr. Bob (Big Book pg. xvii);

“Set to work almost frantically upon alcoholics arriving in the ward of the Akron City Hospital. Their very first case, a desperate one, recovered immediately and became A.A. number three. He never had another drink. This work at Akron continued through the summer of 1935. There were many failures, but there was an occasional heartening success. When “the broker” returned to New York in the fall of 1935, the first A.A. group had actually been formed, though no one realized it at the time.”