When you are recovering from something, an illness, or an injury, you must vent out your emotions because they create energy blocks in the body, making you heal slower. So, psychologists and energy healers insist on expressing emotions and stabilizing them for a quicker healing process in the body.

The same applies in the case of recovering from alcoholism. Doctors regard addiction as a disease. You ought to treat it accordingly. Local AA meetings can complement your treatment and help you heal faster, as they provide a platform to express yourselves and meet like-minded people.

What’s an AA?

AA is no therapy center or something; it is just a gathering of a group facing the same challenge (alcoholism) and working towards achieving the same goal (sobriety).

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings encourage people to share their stories and feelings, which helps to clear their minds and focus better on the future.

Every participant must perform 12 traditions of AA, which help in overall mental and physical healing.

Although there is nothing compulsory in a meeting, the members insist that everybody should perform all 12 steps in chronological order.

You should not jump to any step, nor should you miss any. If you do any of the two, you lose important components of your recovery process. They are needed for complete recovery.

Until and unless you don’t handle your emotional side, you won’t be able to ditch alcohol completely, say therapists. More than 90 percent of alcoholism cases are linked to emotions.

Sharing and caring

The meetings help you connect with other people. You are likely to make sober friends or friends who share a common goal with you (of quitting alcohol). They are different from your friends back home who urge you to have a drink.

In a meeting, you can share your stories of how alcohol affected you and your family. You can express your feelings, such as how you felt when you had your first drink and how you felt when you realized you couldn’t stop drinking. You can also talk about how you felt when you went sober for a consecutive week or month. Talking about this gives you a sense of achievement.

Talking heals you. You are, gradually, opening your emotional side.

Nobody is forced to talk in a AA meeting. This is purely a choice. You may choose to sit quietly during the whole meeting and listen to others. Talk when you are comfortable. However, you must share a little at times because staying all bottled up won’t help you in the long run.

“Just say it and forget it. You are all light and empty inside. Now, you have space to take in the positive side of life,” remarks one of the recovering addicts in an AA meeting in Maryland.

So, if you are looking to treat your “alcohol illness” completely, leaving nil chances of relapse, time to address your emotional side. You may also take the help of therapists, apart from attending meetings, if you feel you can’t handle this on your own. The ultimate aim is to heal.

Search for “meetings near me” and find one in your area.

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