On page 162 of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”, Bill W. wrote “someday we hope that every alcoholic who journeys will find a Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at his destination”. These were amazing words for him to write, because at the time he wrote them, there were fewer than 100 recovering alcoholics in Ohio and New York.
Eighty years later, alcoholics journey all the time. I am one of them. I was lucky enough to go on a vacation in the first year of my sobriety. My sponsor suggested that I should attend a meeting (or 7) while on vacation. He explained to me that my alcoholism didn’t take vacations, even if I did.
I promised him that I would go to meetings, and I am so glad that I did. I remember those meetings even though 28 years have passed.
I am now in a position where I travel overseas for work. So I make it a point to go to meetings when I travel for work. As of today, I am lucky enough to have attended AA meetings in 14 countries.
I hope that you do not mind if I share some of my experience in locating and attending meetings when I travel. I hope that my experience is helpful for you.
It helps me to do a little bit of research before I travel. Since I have an internet connection at home (and I don’t necessarily have one in every destination), it helps to find a meeting schedule in advance, and print it out.
It helps me to commit to someone else (my sponsor, my wife) that I will go to a meeting when I am travelling. The truth is that travel is hard. Sometimes I don’t have a lot of energy after flying for 14 hours. But since I have made a commitment to someone else, I feel obligated to go to a meeting.
It helps to have cell phone (mobile) service when I travel. If you travel internationally, make sure your cell phone works in your destination. This is helpful for navigating from your hotel (or apartment) to a meeting.
It is really helpful to do a bit of mapping, in advance, if you are travelling to a large foreign city. Some places are complicated. Going to meetings in Tokyo, for example, is very complicated (at least to me). The layout of the city was confusing for me the first time I travelled there.
One of the great benefits of going to meetings in other places is that I have met wonderful people, and attended some of the best meetings I’ve ever been to. Here are a couple of travel stories from some of those meetings:
1) My wife and I attended a meeting in Bermuda. At the meeting, three gentlemen started talking to us, and were surprised that we were attending a meeting where this meeting was located. They graciously noted that the neighborhood was not very safe for visitors, and they escorted us to the bus after the meeting. Theirs was a kindness I have not forgotten many years later.
2) I recently attended a sunrise beach meeting in Florida. I did very little advance preparation (I ignored my own advice) and I came to the meetings with only a towel. I noted that every other person at the meeting had a beach chair, but I didn’t think much of it. A few minutes into the meeting, I felt some pain in my feet and my ankles, and I realized that I was being eaten alive by a swarm of fire ants. I spent the rest of the meeting watching these ants carry parts of my body away for breakfast. Next time I’ll bring a chair.
3) This year I visited Africa for the first time. I arranged to attend a meeting in Johannesburg. I connected with a wonderful man at Intergroup, and he picked me up at my hotel and took me to the meeting. The people there were so passionate about their sobriety. One thing they did that I’ve never seen before- they lit a Serenity Prayer candle at the start of the meeting. I stared at that candle for an hour, during one of the best meetings I’ve ever attended.
4) Lastly, I attended a meeting many years ago in Hawaii. At the end of the meeting, it was the chairperson’s prerogative on how to close the meeting. This chairperson announced that we were going to hold hands, and sing the first two verses of “Mustang Sally”. I kid you not, we sang the first two verses of Mustang Sally.
I do hope that you have the opportunity to attend some meetings when you travel. And as it says on page 164 of the Big Book, “may God bless you and keep you until then”.
With Love,
The Recovering Urchin
