AA Meeting Guide
By Roger C
Want to find an AA meeting?
Want to find a secular AA meeting?
Well, it’s easy these days. You can find them on your mobile device. All you have to do is download the app. And yes, secular is one of the eight types of meetings included in the Meeting Guide.
When looking for an AA meeting you can choose a location, a day, a time and a type.
The Meeting Guide is free of charge and provides meeting information from AA service organizations – Intergroup and Central Office websites – in a very easy-to-access format.
There are currently over 100,000 weekly meetings listed, and the information is refreshed twice daily.
More information is available at the Alcoholics Anonymous website.
And of course these days many meetings are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. This is also shared on the meeting guide app. My own meeting, held at the First Unitarian Church in Hamilton, is now closed as you can see in the bottom of the photo on the right (a screenshot from my mobile device). When you click on the meeting you get the full details. What they don’t indicate, however, is that groups are now holding Zoom meetings to replace the Face to Face meetings. That is what the We Agnostics Hamilton group is now doing on Mondays and Thursdays.
I first learned about this app from Ralph B and Bryan F, members of the Many Paths group in Langley, British Columbia. Their secular AA meetings are on the app. And all meetings in North America – that are listed with the local Intergroup or Central Office – should be a part of the Meeting Guide.
In the meantime, download and activate the Meeting Guide App! Make sure your group is listed in the Meeting Guide, and if that’s its type, that it is listed as a secular AA meeting.
The Meeting Guide App does not contain the SecularAA Listing. To view SecularAA Meetings Worldwide it is necessary to use the SecularAA Website at https://secularaa.org/meetings/ . It is also not necessary to have a seperate Mobile APP as this listing is optimized for Mobile Devices.
Things change so fast. Where the meeting doesn’t matter any more; what is the Zoom ID. I was at a meeting on Queen St. W (Toronto), Kawartha Freethinkers, We Agnostics in Toronto and a San Francisco Agnostic meeting at 10 PM my time (EST). I hope meeting finding will adapt. Face-to-face meetings just isn’t a thing anymore for so many of us.
Damn religion may wind up being the death of the human species – oh well – acceptance is the answer – and a half hearted LOL.
Shalom Eddie C
The meeting guide app is dependent on local meeting lists to upload to it. Not all areas, districts, or intergroups currently participate. As they do, the listings will appear. Those secular meetings will only get listed as such if the particular Intergroup or District has a secular “type” in their meeting list. This is why I keep asking for folks to get involved in their local intergroup or district (whichever does the local meeting lists in your district/intergroup).
Thanks for pointing this out John. As you said, our group is listed but not as a secular group because our intergroup doesn’t use that category.
You can ask them to add it. And they should because that category exists in your area. Want me to beat them up?
Good for AA! Maybe this will provide me the motivation to use my cell phone.
Actually, the Meeting Guide App does indeed contain listings of secular AA meetings and includes “secular” as “type” of AA meeting that is searchable within the app. The app was not originally intended to include “secular” meetings. However, I recall arguing with our local Central Office webmaster about the issue when the software they and other central offices were being provided by GSO changed. As part of that discussion, I also learned how to get in touch with those setting up the new AA Meeting Guide app. I subsequently engaged in an extended email discussion with a designer of the app who originally rebuffed me and said he’d have to check with a committee to see if “secular” meetings could or should be included as a type of meeting in the app. Obviously, they decided it could be. I’m inclined to think it’s because some of us kept bugging them about it. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that anyone associated with the Secular AA website or our international secular AA organization had much to do with it.
Thank you for your bugging. It makes up part of AA.😃
What about on-line meetings in LONDON due to the coronavirus.
This is a key moment for AA. Throughout the fellowship’s history the message has always been “MEETING MAKERS MAKE IT!” There’s pressure in many quarters to make at least a meeting every day for years at a time, even once you have several years of clean time. One of our local clubhouses’ service board voted to stay open even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and several people I’ve talked to in recent weeks are continuing to go to physical meetings there. I don’t know how I feel about it but I certainly understand why they go. I’m certainly not endangering myself and others by showing up there during this time but I also understand the feelings of those who seem to feel their sobriety and lives are depending on continuing to show up.
At the same time virtual meetings, a format that has been maturing especially in alternate and secular recovery circles for years now, will get a real boost from this crisis situation. The antiquated notion that there’s something intrinsically magical and necessary in showing up in the same physical location as other recovering addicts and alcoholics is being proven fallacious. Meetings themselves aren’t what keep us sober, especially once people have some time and their feet underneath them. It’s simply the decision and commitment to change directions once and for all and cultivate a new way of living. Meetings can be a helpful tool but they’re hardly necessary and in times like this may in fact be counterproductive and even dangerous, especially to the community at large.
I don’t find that category listed in my area. As we just began our secular meeting, you prompted me to contact them (appsupport@aa.com) to request the add.
Thanks for the prompt.
I contacted the Santa Fe webmaster to request the type “secular “ be added to to options. No problem. Was there ASAP.
I also specified, just in case, that he be sure my group was hooked up to the search.
The appsupport email rendered no response. My local Intergroup was the ticket. I think it’s that way because not all areas have the same types. 🤷🏻♀️ For instance, we have a meeting that is for the hearing impaired.