Alcoholics Anonymous: “I’ve been sober for many 24 hours”

Reinhard* is celebrating his 58th birthday the day after tomorrow. He is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and has been sober for 22 years. That’s a remarkable number of 24 hours in which he has managed not to drink alcohol. It is this 24-hour rule, among other things, that makes the AA concept so successful. “We don’t say that we will be sober for the rest of our lives. We only resolve to do that for the next day and every day,” says Reinhard.

“When we’re asked at a meeting who has been sober the longest, we always say, ‘The one who got up the earliest today,'” says Kerstin*, AA from Upper Austria. She was 14 years old when she started drinking. “I come from a non-alcoholic family, we didn’t really have any alcohol at home. But my mother had rum for baking and I couldn’t stand my life back then,” she says. At 29, when she already had a family and children of her own, she finally went to an AA meeting. “That’s how I was allowed to stop drinking.” At least for the time being.

12 steps and the “Blue Book”

Each meeting begins with the reading of the association’s preamble. It states: “Our primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.” Then the twelve steps from the “Big Book,” the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has remained unchanged since 1939, are read out. Only in the first one does the word “alcohol” appear: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – and that our lives could no longer be controlled.”

These steps are actually a concept for personal development and the “recommended recovery program” with a spiritual background on which the AA community is based. However, religiousness or belief in God is not a prerequisite for attending the meetings or the program, says Reinhard. The founders, Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, had discovered during their chance meeting in 1935 that the compulsion to drink subsided when they talked about it.

Clear rules and structures

Otherwise, there are only very simple rules at the meetings: don’t talk over each other, everyone is listened to, you only talk about yourself and – most important of all – you don’t give advice. According to Reinhard, this is one of the secrets of success: “Nobody tells me what to do.” Kerstin agrees: “Who am I to forbid an alcoholic from drinking?”

There are now AA meetings five days a week in Linz. Meetings are also held in many other Upper Austrian towns such as Freistadt, Braunau and Rohrbach. No registration is required to participate. Family members or interested parties can also come to the open meetings.

• AA meetings in Upper Austria: To the schedule

Returning after a relapse

After 15 years, Kerstin had a relapse. “It took five days and I was back where I had started: crying on the living room floor with a bottle of vodka next to me.” Today, she can’t even remember what prompted her to reach for the bottle again. But she managed to quit again. After three years as a “wet alcoholic,” the 67-year-old is now sober for the second time in 20 years.

The potential to relapse is one of the reasons why AA members remain anonymous even after years. “If you have achieved a certain level of fame and start drinking again, someone might think that AA doesn’t help,” says Reinhard. Alcoholics also tend to have an exaggerated ego and the community should be “protected from the actions of the individual.” Kerstin adds: “Pride is the highway to hell for a recovering alcoholic.”

AA works

The anonymity that characterizes AA groups makes a scientific evaluation of their effectiveness difficult. Nevertheless, their effectiveness has been proven in practice. “There is no professional program that works better,” says psychiatrist Olaf Rossiwall, who runs a psychiatric practice in Hallein. According to psychologist Daniela Buder, chairwoman of the Al-Anon family groups in Austria, the meetings are not the only therapy option, but they are certainly the best relapse prevention system.

It is difficult to estimate how many AA members there are in Austria, as the groups are not tied together and the number of participants always varies. According to Reinhard and Kerstin’s own experience, an average of ten people attend the meetings, which means that there are around 2,000 Alcoholics Anonymous members in the 200 Austrian groups. “Sometimes only two or three people attend the meetings for months, then more than 30 come to a meeting,” says Kerstin.

However, it is certain that only a fraction of people suffering from alcohol addiction seek help from AA. “Statistically, around 400,000 Austrians are pathologically addicted, and around one in six is ​​said to be using drugs in a harmful way,” says Rossiwall.

Groups for relatives

For every alcoholic, there are several people who are directly affected by their illness. “The problems and co-dependency of the relatives are often not seen as clearly as those of the alcoholic themselves,” says Katharina A., who is part of the Al-Anon family groups. Family members and friends of alcoholics can get help and support from these groups. There are around 60 of these groups in Austria, three of which are so-called Alateen groups, which are aimed at children and young people from families with alcohol problems.

International meeting in Wels

Every year, a large, international AA meeting takes place in German-speaking countries. This year, around 3,000 people affected and their families are expected to meet in Wels from July 26 to 28. At more than 120 meetings, some of which take place in parallel, people in AA and Al-Anon groups can exchange ideas on various topics such as “alcohol and suicide,” “AA in the professional addiction field,” or “How do I pass on the message?”

Further information about the program can be found here.

* Name changed by the editors