Myself and a couple of other people recently started a weekly Zoom recovery meeting. It’s been a great experience (though not an easy one at times) which has given us a new permanent meeting space for our recovery. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way…
1. It’s easier than ever to setup a recovery meeting…
All it took was three people and a zoom account to get our meeting up and running. We agreed we wanted to start one, set a date, invited a load of people we knew and that was it. After the first meeting we began to attract some regular visitors and submitted ourselves to the official AA listings as well as aa-london and that was it. It’s never been quicker and easier to setup and run your own recovery meetings…
2. While setting up is easy, keeping things running each week can be difficult
Finding speakers, dealing with internet trolls, having people drop out from service positions, not to mention endless Whatsapp notifications, group conscience meetings and being responsible for keeping meetings running smoothly and a safe space can all be things which add pressure and stress to hosts when starting out. Things were really difficult in the first few weeks, my advice is to quickly speak to regular members and get some help in running the meeting as soon as you can…
3. You won’t be able to keep everyone happy
In my head I had a very specific idea of how the meeting would run, the types of people that would be there, the kind of sharing and vibe that we would end up creating. Unless you’re creating a private meeting which isn’t listed on central recovery listing then throw all of this expectation out of the window.
Some people I thought would love the format and meeting left after a week or two, never to return. One thing I had to learn to let go of fairly early on was that you’ll never be able to effectively run a meeting if you try to keep everyone happy. Just concentrate on running the best meeting you can, carry the message and create a safe space. Those who like it and get something from the meeting will stay and hopefully keep coming back, others might come and go and that’s perfectly ok. Everyone’s recovery is their own…
4. The vibe can change from one week to the next
A meeting can change hugely from one week to the next depending on who’s attending, how energetic they are, what mood they’re in and how their week has gone. It takes a while for the meeting to find it’s feet, be prepared to expect the unexpected. As long as you’re creating safe space for people to work their recovery you’re doing your service, everything else is beyond your control. Don’t worry about the meeting vibe changing over time, it’s perfectly natural and something which happens over time at any meeting (whether online or physical). Just concentrate on creating a safe meeting space with a strong message and people will open up, share and make the meeting their own over time…
5. Zoom meetings are here to stay
Even after the world opens back up, this experience has me convinced that online recovery will be here to stay. Despite the drawbacks to online vs physical meetings, the ease of which we can create new meeting spaces and work on our recovery is nothing short of incredible and literally life-saving. In a post pandemic world I’m sure that while lots of meetings will move back to physical spaces, we will see a whole host of permanent online rooms open up, which can only be a good thing…
Despite all the stress, It’s totally worth it…
It’s a great act of service to create a new meeting space for people to come and get well. You’ll get to meet lots of great people in the process and it’s a real joy to see people coming back regularly, hearing those people connect and share with others in the group and witness recovery in action.
It can be stressful, especially in the early weeks and months when there’s not much there in the way of support, there were weeks when I wanted nothing more than to close the meeting permanently due to the stress it had caused me during the week, but despite those feelings the meetings nearly always eventually ran smoothly and seeing the positive impact it had on others made me realise that everything I was doing was absolutely more than worth the stress…
