Young People to Celebrate Sobriety at International Conference
For four days at the end of this month, August 26-29, 2010, over three thousand sober alcoholics, ranging in age from their early teens to their twenties and beyond, will convene in New York City’s Times Square to share their experience, strength, and hope in recovery. They will come from over 34 different countries, including Japan, Mongolia and Africa. And they will be ready to party.
In a city famous for its bright lights and many bars, the sober alcoholics attending the 52nd annual International Conference of Young People in AA (ICYPAA), will be treated to a different kind of nightlife, though, including a sober sunset boat cruise around Manhattan, dances in the ballroom of the Marriott Marquis hotel every night, a game room, a film festival, karaoke, and late-night jam sessions. In addition, they’ll get to hear speakers from around the world and participate in workshops, marathons and topic meetings covering just about every subject under the sun related to alcoholism and recovery.
Held in a different city each year, ICYPAA was formed in 1958 to provide a setting for an annual celebration of sobriety among young people in AA. “The number of young people suffering from alcoholism who turn to AA for help is growing,” says the ICYPAA website (www.icypaahost.org), “and ICYPAA helps to carry AA’s message of recovery to alcoholics of all ages.”
Dave S. from Indianapolis, Indiana, started on the path to recovery just prior to his twenty-first birthday. “In my first AA meeting,” he recounts in AA’s monthly journal, the Grapevine, “I found hope that I could live a life free of the chaos, fear, and dysfunction of alcoholism. But it was at my first ICYPAA that I came to believe my future could be filled with unlimited possibilities. This belief came from large-scale and very visible evidence -- seeing thousands of sober young people together in one place.”
Fun as it is to be in the presence of sober peers, there is a deadly seriousness that runs just under the surface at any AA gathering, and ICYPAA is no exception. Says one AA from Brooklyn, New York, “Before coming into AA, I was in prison for ten years. The walls were made of alcohol and drugs. I had never grown up, had no idea who or what I was. All I knew was how to drink to survive. AA taught me, a day at a time, how not to pick up the first drink and so not get drunk, and AA is now teaching me how to live a sober life.”
Of her experience at a previous ICYPAA, she notes, “I had heard honest sharing -- sharing filled with pain, fear, acceptance, caring, hope, strength, and love. We weren't drinking or drugging; we were free. Yes, we had living problems, but we had choices and a chance to change.”
“I don't have the problems in ‘older people’ AA that I do in young peoples’ AA,” one member adds. “I am not self-conscious around the older folks; I can go for coffee, chat after a meeting, and feel perfectly relaxed and unself-conscious. But, when I walk into a group of people my own age, I start thinking, Oh, man, they've got more than me – they’re better-looking, they have more money, they are more confident -- I'm afraid they won't accept me. It feels like walking into the high school cafeteria, and it brings my fears front and center. I’m here working through it -- what I get is more than fun, it's hope and knowledge about myself.”
Historically, AA has always been concerned with young people. In 1939, the Big Book talked about “young” men: “Several of our crowd, men of thirty or less, had been drinking only a few years, but they found themselves as helpless as those who had been drinking twenty years.”
In earlier days, some AA members believed that younger people had high bottoms or weren’t “real” alcoholics at all. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions describes those people entering AA as “scarcely more than potential alcoholics. They were spared that last ten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gone through.”
But young people kept coming and by the mid-forties, several young peoples’ groups had begun around the country. By 1958, there were enough young people and groups to hold the First International Conference of Young People, in Niagara Falls, New York.
Getting involved in ICYPAA has been the highlight of sobriety for many recovering alcoholics, both young and old, and the focal point of young peoples’ AA has always been to provide other young people with a vision of sobriety that incorporates and expands on their youthful exuberance and zest for life. As quoted in Alcoholics Anonymous: “If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn't want it.”
Recounting one of the highlights of his sobriety in the Grapevine, a member from Boston described an emblematic moment that took place at the 25th ICYPAA, also held in New York.
“One of the highlights of the weekend was Saturday night's sobriety countdown. There we were in the enormous ballroom, representing numerous states and several countries, and we were asked to stand when our year or month or week (!) of sobriety was called.
“At forty-seven years (then the age of our dear Fellowship), there were none who could stand. Remember, we were mostly of the under-forty generation. At twenty-seven, one did stand, and he received enthusiastic applause. As the count went down to the single-digit years, many more stood up. I was one of the group with three years of sobriety, and it seemed that there were over a hundred of us. I loved it!
“But the best part was yet to come. After the call for one year of sobriety, the count was by months: eleven, ten (a sizable number stood). Then, it was three weeks, two weeks, one week of sobriety -- the shivers were getting us all. Six days, five days, and ultimately the most important and memorable for all of us in AA: one day of sobriety! The place went nuts when one lone young man named Michael stood up. We all started cheering so loudly, I thought the hotel people must be wondering whether we hadn't all decided to break out at once. Michael was the most important person in that room of 1,200 sober alcoholics -- and we let him know it.
“The chairperson of the entire ICYPAA weekend practically leaped over tables with the Big Book clutched to his chest. As a couple of Michael's new friends raised him to their shoulders, the chairperson gave him the Big Book, hugged him warmly, and wished him one more day of sobriety. That's what it's all about -- one moment of caring for one other alcoholic. I am glad and grateful to be a part of AA. Today, I know the joy of living.”
While the number of attendees and the years represented by the traditional sobriety countdown have increased considerably over the years, the sentiments will doubtless remain the same for those making the trip to New York this weekend to celebrate in the company of other young people in recovery: one more day of sobriety is the greatest blessing any alcoholic could ask for.