AA Online Meetings

About Alcoholics Anonymous Online Meetings

Sometimes online AA meetings provide an ideal support option. While alcoholism recovery support is ideally provided through live participation in group meetings and one-on-one contact, online options work well when meeting attendance is not practicable, or as an initial form of contact for one first seeking help. For gay men and lesbians, an online AA meeting can be an especially good first option when there are also concerns about being "out" in one's community, or questions of one's sexual orientation are only initially being explored.

The are different forms that an online AA meeting might take. The first uses real-time chat technology, much like the popular instant messaging services that are widely used. The second is in the form of bulletin boards or discussion forums. While these lack the immediacy of real-time chat, they do provide the advantage of a post-and-return approach that does not require one to remain logged-in throughout the online meeting.

A third popular option is email-based meetings. Here, the meeting essentially takes place within one's email inbox. Email-based meetings can provide an intermediate level of immediacy between the chat and bulletin board options. Depending on how they are structured, disclosure of one's email address may not be required so that a level of anonymity can still be maintained. Taken together, these three options for online AA meetings present a range of choices that can meet most anyone's needs.