Small Meetings

First, my own recovery, maintaining my recovery, and my spiritual/philosophical development is of primary importance, not supporting OA, or a meeting that is not helping. OA is not high on my list of priorities. Unless OA is helping me, I will not care about your meeting and/or program. This must be the starting point.

You must have recovery before you can spread it, and with food/weight issues, time is required. I have eaten meals with some of these "compulsive", claiming to be in recovery, but if they are in recovery... what were they before?

Secondly, I am a man, so my opinion instantly meet opposition from some of the ladies. I just let it slide, since I know my recovery, and trying to change one of  those control freaks |(wild emotional personalities) is beyond my pay grade or place.

Small meetings are one issue, but how is the recovery of the core group? Weak meeting with no recovery, meeting run by a 450 pound control freaks, meetings with no recovery, meetings with just dumping, meetings without a space (space is not open), meetings with no format, and in a noisy environment... Any meeting of this sort are just a waste of time. Do not expect even a long timer to keep coming back?

I have a choice of  six OA meetings, FA in Recovery and SMART to choose from. In addition, TOPs. There is also HOW, FAA, OA+, and all those others online. The program must garner market share or it will die.When there is a control freak in the group, we will live within her "permitted" activities, topics, and meeting formats. There is no other reasonable choice.

Meetings that follow very tight formats are ok some of the time, but I have learned much more in coffee before and after than I ever learned in the meetings. Meetings that just follow a 12 and 12 format
study are fine the first few times, but then?

The best meetings are the storey meetings, where the topic is usually not one of the routine topics, steps, or traditions. But then along comes control freak and.........

The easy way to solve a meeting problem is to stop attending. That is happens a lot. Meetings need to stay fairly small to develop recovery in depth. Also, no rational person will go up against a problem personality who wants to keep coming, and does not recognise that they are the problem personality.

My solution is his blog circle you have just entered. You may become part, just join and read, start you own, whatever.

But what do I know. My tranquility is paramount to me.