AA is a group of sick people working to get well, we go to learn how to live a quality life without alcohol (and/or drugs). With the help of those who came before us, we watch the others, we take what we need and we leave the rest, we try to live a day at a time without hurting one another, and we work on our individual shortcomings rather than pointing out the shortcomings of others, these are all things that do not come easy for the alcoholic, which is why we keep coming, and in time, things get better. We learn about things like patience and tolerance, we hear and see slogans on banners that say things like, "Live and Let Live" and they suddenly start to mean something to us, we are able to reflect back upon our own behavior in early recovery, and we start to see how sick we truly were, and years later, if we keep doing the next right thing, we can still see how sick we continue to be, or still are! We learn how to be grateful that this is a journey not a destination, nothing is meant to be done perfectly. I have days where I want to jump out of my own skin rather than to listen to someone dumping their problems on the group, however, I also have days where my problems feel like the most catastrophic issues of the world and when I try to talk about them everything comes out like a manic cyclone of drama and emotion... I don't want to be viewed as the over dramatic psycho, but maybe that is my fear of people actually getting to know who I am inside, childish, grandiose, and insensitive...