Snma Meeting Reflection

This paper is a reflective report of the authors’ personal observations, thoughts, and experiences from attending one of the ‘Alcohol Anonymous (AA) meetings’ at Burnaby Fellowship Centre Society. It is a drop-in social club for recovering alcoholics and addicts where its members describe their experiences with alcohol or drug addiction, how they came to the society, and how their lives have changed as a result of attending the program. Burnaby Fellowship Centre Society is part of the AA group which is a self-supporting and independent body. Membership is open to anyone who wants to recover from addictions and the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop the addictions. The main purpose of the AA meetings is to help its members

This week, I attended an Open Speaker session at a local AA meeting. There were about 30 participants in the meeting. They were mostly white with ages ranging from childhood to older adult. There were a even number of men and women, and they were some couples in the audience.

During the semester I attended different 12 step program in the South Bronx in churches around my community. Firstly, most of the people that attends to the meeting are Latinos. I was surprised to observe many Latinos in the meeting. My experience is that Latinos does not believe in mental health treatment. However, the room was filled of male adult’s Hispanics. The first time, I greeted the speaker who explained me how the meeting will progress. The meeting starts with a pray, and a brief introduction of each of the participants, just the name and the reason they are in the meeting. The speaker informed me as a group they focused on the abstinence and positive thinking for the most part. AA is trying to promote the idea of a superior believe

It was never my intention to work with addicted clients, but nearly every family therapy course I have taken has, either overtly or covertly, stressed the need to understand addictions. While I understand the concept on a cognitive level, I had judgements about the type of people that become addicted and did not feel compelled to work with them, until my niece died. Her drug addiction deeply affected all members of her immediate family. Her parents and her step-dad, my brother, each reacted to my niece’s addiction in different ways but none were successful and the family began to fail under the stress.

The counselor met Reynaldo for his scheduled individual session. Mr. Reynaldo denies any substances use this week. Reynaldo and I went over the AA meeting scheduled for the 24hour group in his community. Reynaldo agreed to attend two AA meeting by our next individual session. Reynaldo denies any HI/SI during the session. Reynaldo appears to be in the contemplation stage of change as evidenced by him continued to seek recovery. The counselor next individual session with Mr. Ventura is on Tuesday September 8, 2015 at 2:30pm.

On Wednesday, August 25, 2015 at 12:00pm, I went to an AA meeting at 570 Karl Road, Columbus, Ohio, Christian church. The people were very welcoming; they started by reading the 12-step fellowship. They recited their prayer and each member introduces himself or herself as an alcoholic. It is amazing to see how the group interacts among each other freely probably without any concern of being discriminate or being judgmental.

During my visit to my EDHE 105 teacher’s office, she encouraged me to attend two meetings for two organizations on campus. One was Alpha Epsilon Delta (AED), a health profession based honors society, and the other was the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), a student lead, pre-medical organization aimed towards helping better prepare students for medical school. I was unfortunately busy during the time of the AED meeting and could not attend, but I was free during the AMSA meeting and decided to see what it was like. At first, I was skeptical about going to the meeting, because I knew that I would not know anyone else there. I was even more nervous about it when I saw how many people actually showed up, knowing that I still did not know anyone.

I went to Tampa General Hospital Fall Repiratory Care Conference that was held October 27, 2015 at USF CAMLS building downtown Tampa. I chose to try and attend two events in case I could not make one. Working in patient care means that sometimes you won't get out on time to make your arrangement.

I've been working in this field for the past 10 years and I have referred clients to an AA/NA meetings many many times. I'm not in recovery and so it never occurred to me to attend one myself. What I know about those meetings are either from coworkers, from clients that I've worked with and also from school and just reading about it. When the assignment was given I was excited about the opportunity to be able to learn more personally how it feels to attend a meeting.

Like many others, my perception of AA meetings were unfortunately shaped by television shows. Initially, I was excited to learn about overcoming alcohol addiction and was amazed by the variety of meetings that catered to people’s interests. However, after I had selected my meeting, I became somewhat nervous. I felt that my presence would be an invasion of someone else’s safe space, which in turn would impact their treatment negatively. My fears were exacerbated when I read on online AA forums that participants specifically avoided open meetings because of unwanted visitors, such as medical students and researchers. However, as soon as I walked into the meeting, I was welcomed by a member. After introducing myself and stating my affiliation with FSUCOM, I asked him if my presence would be troublesome for the members. He shook his head and invited me to take food from the table as they were celebrating their sobriety anniversary. I then sat down next to a woman who assured me that the group regularly receives visitors

I also attended 2 hours KCDC meeting on behalf of my supervisor. He couldn’t attend the meeting, so he asked me to attend it. Attending the meeting made me learn more about the programs that KCDC provide and project that they are working such as treatment group class, planning new group, partnerships with other agencies, research, and many more. Moreover, we also divided into three group to have short and small group workshop. I joined domestic violence that led by PawWah. The workshop was more like discussion and we all gave our ideas and perspectives to create domestic violence video for the Karen community and we came up with the best message that we would like to share with the audiences/public. After the workshop each group had to report

On the Pre-Health Conference web page, it shows the various ways the conference can aid students looking into health careers by providing keynote speakers, panels of deans of admissions, financial aid officers, staff from health professions schools, and hands on

Going to the Medical Office Association Meeting was a great learning experience. I went to the meeting that was held on Monday March 16, 2015. The topic that was being discussed on that meeting was the Conference Meeting and Volunteering.

At the site base meeting it was noted that students are required to attend tutorials with Mr. Qualls after they have failed two consecutive six weeks. The teachers in attendance made various suggestions on how to be proactive to reach the students earlier in the semester to enable students to be successful the following six week. One common thread in the suggestions was to use 5th period as a pull-out program so teachers could work one on one with their student’s that need additional learning time in a particular subject that the student had failed the previous six weeks. Since students are currently assigned to a teacher’s attendance roster, an idea that was discussed by Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Hendrix, was to have teachers communicate with

On October 23, 2015, we had our second nook club conference with Kushiah, Khai, Yasith, Arshia, Brendan, Kevin, and I. We had Khai manage the meeting as chairperson and he was remarkable at keeping the group focused, especially because some people in the group were going off topic. When that was delt with, we had an amusing conversation about the chapters we had to read, which are chapters end of four to the end of seven. Khai had begun with asking what we enjoyed about the author’s writing style. All together, we can all agree that the author used descriptive words to captivate our imagination and gave a clear image of what’s happening. For example,