Made it to my 1st meeting yesterday morning! It took another night of drinking and waking up to only remembering fragments of the evening. So I got my ass to the 7am meeting. I felt a bit awkward. I mean, just getting yourself to that 1st meeting is terrifying but then I got there and felt better. However the 2 people (gentlemen) that were there with me proceeded to tell me that I would do better in a womans group and that I should find a female sponsor. I can appreciate where they were coming from but I cant help but feel somewhat unwelcome. I took all the literature (the old guy really piled it on me) and did some reading last night. AA might not be my jam, but I will do another meeting tomorrow. Thoughts?
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Good for you to giving it another shot. Generally sponsors are of the same sex so the old guy might have directed you to a women’s group bc you will find an awesome sponsor there
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I would try not to take the suggestions of the single sex meeting too personally. I find it to be a generational thing. Many of the older people by me really push for the single sex meetings b/c it can make some people feel more at ease and less apt to ditch AA.
Just keep coming back to a meeting (even if it isn’t that one) no matter what. Sponsor or no sponsor. Speaking or not speaking. There is magic in the chairs and maybe in the coffee… it just takes a while to seep in.
If i remember, @C-sun preferred the meeting with the crusty old guys. Again – the most important thing is keep coming back. The rest will work itself out if you do that.
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If after reading the material and attending another meeting you still feel like AA isn’t your jam, there are definitely alternatives. Refuge recovery is something that I’m in the process of exploring because I’m not the biggest fan of AA. My library just notified me that the book for that program is available for me to pickup, so I’ll be doing that after work today.
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Anything new is strange. Go slow, I was a bit overwhelmed my first time too. Keep going and it will become like family.
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Hi there! I just went to my second meeting this week, totally understand what you mean! Do you have other meetings around you? They talked this week about doing 30 meetings in 30 days to find the right one, you can range from 30 to 100 meetings in so many days. That way you find the right meetings but for me, I am sticking with the original one I went to for now. I’m still trying to get comfortable there, it gets better each week. I love that it makes me think after, even if it doesn’t all make sense at the time. I struggle with some of the concepts but I’m trying to get different perspectives on it and that seems to be working. There are a several threads on here about AA you may want to search, that helped me as well as talking about it with others. Just keep going back, that’s what they told us! None of them were comfortable there at first but keep going back and the magic WILL happen! 
Good luck, reach out any time!
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I usually go to six or seven meetings a week. There are 97 meetings a week in my area. Each one has its own personality. I can see how you would have felt unwelcome today. My guess is that the older men you encountered today were trying to steer you toward a women’s meeting so that you could quickly find a great sponsor and get some phone numbers from women who can offer you support. Sounds like they were awkward in communicating that. I’m sorry.
One of the meetings I attend is women’s meeting, and I always enjoy it. My favorite meeting is made up primarily of men in their 30s-70s - usually about 35 men and 3 or 4 women. That’s just where I feel most at home. Early on I went to one meeting I won’t attend again. (Oh the drama!). Try to go to several different meetings if you can. I’m betting you will soon find your people.
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