Time for me for climb up on my pulpit and preach again. The subject, as you may have guessed, is the importance of meetings.

Let me first state that I believe in the twelve steps above all else. As far as I'm concerned, if there is any mistake in the first 164 pages of the big book; it where they refer to them as "suggested" steps. I "suggest" that if you don't work the steps, you will eventually drink again! And even if by some strange quirk of fate, you don't drink, your chances of living "happy, joyess and free" are far less than average.

But I wander far away from the subject at hand. Meetings. I place the value of meetings second only to the steps.

(No I haven't forgotten God. Of course, He's first. But the steps are what led me to God in the first place!).

There are three major things that lead people to drink again.
1. Unresolved resentments (The number one offender)
2. Not working the steps
3. Lack of attendance at meetings

Have you ever heard the phrase: "People who don't go to meetings are there to see what happens to people who don't go to meetings."? There's a lot of truth in that statement. My length of sobriety doesn't necessarily make me any more immune from taking the first drink, then the guy at his first meeting, shaking and still smelling of booze. But at least I've seen the dire consequences of not attending meetings. Over the years, I've witnessed many people return to active alcoholism as a direct result of quitting meetings. Unfortunately, some of those people are now dead.

It's at meetings, you're going to be reminded to work the steps, develop a relationship with God and banishing resentment from your life. Usually it's at meetings where I hear what I need to hear. On any given day I can walk down main street, anywhere USA, and easily find half a dozen people to tell me what I want to hear. I don't need that! What I do need is for people to lay it on the line and tell me how it is, weather I like it or not.

Several years ago, I recall one man relating this story: He used to attend a special meeting for those who had had twenty years or more in the program, but had slipped. One day he took an informal poll among the members of that group, asking what made them drink again. Without exception; I repeat, Without Exception they had all quit attending AA meetings!!

Let that be a lesson for us all.