There are many points of entry into the AA community in Orange County, California. You can be sure that if you find one meeting you’re connected and can find other meetings through word of mouth or by picking up a meeting directory.

With over 1,500 meetings to choose from, Orange County is one of the easiest places to connect with AA around. You could pick a meeting in one of several of the richest neighborhoods in the United States, or you could just find a meeting in ‘the hood.’ Anaheim is a happy medium and it is also home to “the happiest place on earth” (Disneyland).

Anaheim Alano Club

Anaheim Alano Club

AA Meetings in Anaheim Feature an Interesting Mix of Newcomers and Old-timers

If you want to find a balanced meeting with newcomers as well as people with years of sobriety, there’s a lot of meetings to choose from in Anaheim. Many of these meetings are held at the Anaheim Alano Club. The club is located on Broadway street (202 W. Broadway Street, Anaheim, CA 92805), near downtown, in an old bungalow style house with a coffee bar, a pool room, a patio out back and another meeting room off the back patio so that meetings can be held simultaneously or people in a meeting can be separated from those who are just hanging out.

The Anaheim Alano Club features meetings morning, noon, late afternoon, evening and night. There are open and closed meetings, speaker meetings, women’s meetings, and meetings for young people. There are Big Book studies and there’s an As Bill Sees It group.

What makes the Anaheim Alano Club so interesting is the mix of people who attend. Many of the regulars are from sober livings or nearby rehabs. Of course, many are there on a court card as well. If you’re a newcomer to Alcoholics Anonymous, you’ll find many other newcomers around this club.

You will also find a lot of people who have worked the 12 steps and are available to sponsor you. If you have compiled some sober time already, the Anaheim Alano Club is a very good place to connect with newcomers and old-timers in AA. It’s a place where you can offer a helping hand to somebody who may be struggling in early sobriety, or find help yourself if you need it. If you’re just looking for a place to unwind, you can shoot a game of pool or order a non-alcoholic drink at the bar and just hang out and get to know the other alkies.

Other AA Meetings in Anaheim are Also a Good Option

There are over 100 meetings a week in Anaheim, which makes it a very good town to connect with AA. There’s such a wide variety of meetings in Anaheim, California that you should be able to find exactly the group you are comfortable in. There are men’s and women’s meetings, Spanish speaking meetings, meetings at hospitals, rehabs, sober living homes and churches.

If You Don’t Like One Meeting, Find Another

One helpful suggestion for AA members who may be new in an area is that if you are not comfortable with one meeting just find another. Orange County, California is one of the best places in the world to do so. With such a wide variety of Orange County Alcoholics Anonymous meetings available, if you cannot find a meeting where you feel comfortable you may want to look inside yourself to find the reason why you feel disconnected.

As a newcomer in AA, I was very critical of different groups. Because of this, I had a problem with relapse and couldn’t string together even a year of sobriety. What I eventually found after a long and painful struggle to stay sober is that I expected perfection from the group, and forgot that if the group was perfect they wouldn’t allow me in since I am far from being a perfect person.

I believe that one reason why I had such a struggle in Alcoholics Anonymous was that, after years of alcohol abuse, I wasn’t playing with a full deck. I had to surrender my expectations of what an AA group should be like and just go with the flow.

Eventually, I sobered up enough to begin to look at AA groups in a whole new way, looking for the best in people instead of being judgmental. I hope you don’t have to struggle as long as I did to find your niche and begin to heal.

 

MORE INFO ON SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AA