Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a fellowship of men and women who share their experiences, strengths, and hopes with one another in order to solve their common problems and help other alcoholics to recover from alcoholism. What does it have in common with academic advising? Both the AA program and academic advising programs provide services for those needing help and guidance. Just as AA offers a number of different options for delivering their programs, including attending AA meetings, reading AA literature, and/or working directly with an AA sponsor, academic advisers need to offer a variety of options for assisting students, including individual advising sessions, Web materials, and group advising sessions. According to Richard Light (2001), “To learn from one another, students with different backgrounds and from different racial and ethnic groups must interact” (p. 190). Group advising is an opportunity to foster this student interaction, yet it is often underutilized as a technique in advising programs that emphasize one-on-one advising. By examining the structure of AA meetings, advisers can learn why group advising is an important component of their advising repertoire and learn how to apply various techniques for improving the effectiveness of group advising meetings.
While the only requirement for membership in AA is a desire to stop drinking, an essential quality for success in AA is the capacity to be honest with yourself and others and the opportunity to learn that you are not alone in facing alcoholism. The basic idea behind AA is that only someone who has been there can understand what alcoholism is like and that, by helping a fellow alcoholic stop drinking, recovering alcoholics can keep themselves sober. Though a common symptom of trouble in alcoholics is the sense of isolation from others, they soon learn from others in the group that problems cannot be solved if they are kept secret.
Similarly, if group advising is utilized, students will realize that the challenges that they are facing are similar to the challenges that their peers face. Light (2001) states that it can be extremely difficult to turn a situation around if you are struggling alone. Therefore, a group advising delivery system is an excellent way to address this issue of isolation and to provide students the opportunity to learn from their peers how they are addressing their problems. Students in group advising situations can learn to make similar connections between what they hear in group advising sessions and their own lives (Gordon, Habley, & associates, 2000).
As with an AA member, the student advisee must take the first all-important step of asking for help. Many students are hesitant to seek help and these students will not receive help if they do not share their problems with advisers (Light, 2001). It is the responsibility of AA members, as it should be with academic advisers, to reach out with a helping hand to those asking for help. Some students may feel more comfortable discussing their issues in a group setting rather than in an individual meeting with an adviser. Therefore, presenting a group advising option may be more enticing to certain students.
The sharing of experiences and solutions by AA members at meetings is the foundation of the program. AA group meetings occur in many different formats. In discussion meetings, one member opens with a particular topic, problem, or solution, and then other participants share their own experiences about that topic. Speaker meetings involve one member sharing his or her own story. For a step meeting, one person gives a 10- or 15-minute lead on one of the twelve steps and then opens the meeting to others to share their experiences on working that step. Another type of meeting is a Big Book study meeting in which members discuss a specific reading from the “Big Book,” a term applied by AA members to the program's basic text, Alcoholics Anonymous.
Some people find certain formats more helpful than others. Therefore, advisers may wish to follow AA's lead and offer a variety of group advising formats, including orientation, seminars, panels, speakers, and study groups. Additionally, AA offers special group meetings for specific groups, such as women, men, gays and lesbians, newcomers, and families of alcoholics. Likewise, advisers could sponsor group advising sessions for specific groups, such as first-year students, seniors, disabled students, honors students, undecided students, transfer students, academic athletes, international students, probation students, and non-traditional students. Academic advisers and/or graduate advisers could help facilitate the meetings in their roles as discussion leaders, much like veteran AA members do in AA meetings.
In addition to the group meetings, it is strongly suggested that all AA members seek out an AA sponsor, another member with experience in the program, to provide guidance, direction, motivation, and encouragement to AA members in their recovery process. The sponsor/sponsee relationship is built upon trust and respect for one another, with a moral obligation to respect the privacy and confidentiality of all AA members. These obligations are similar in many ways to the privacy and confidentiality obligations that advisers have to their students. During group advising sessions, the adviser should always offer participants the opportunity to meet individually with an adviser to discuss topics not appropriate for the group meeting. In addition, both the AA sponsor and the academic adviser have the responsibility to make appropriate referrals to resources and professionals when they recognize problems that are beyond their range of expertise.
Another important part of the AA program is its slogans, short sayings that serve as tips on how to stay sober. Probably the best-known of these slogans is “One day at a time.” It has been helpful for many people trying to quit a bad behavior or habit to concentrate on quitting it for just twenty-four hours. “Think it through,” another slogan, is helpful because it reminds us of possible negative consequences of our actions before taking them. A third slogan, “Take what you like and leave the rest” emphasizes that everything in AA is only a suggestion and that you need only focus on the suggestions that are helpful (Volpicelli & Szalavitz, 2000, p. 137–139). Another popular AA slogan is “First things first,” which reminds us to continually focus on our priorities. Alcoholics must view recovery as the number one priority and attend to their responsibilities in the order of importance. All of these slogans may be useful for advisers to share with their advisees as they face academic and extracurricular challenges. Taking things a day at a time, thinking through the consequences of our actions, acting on the most pertinent advice, and focusing on priorities are lessons that all of us can utilize in our daily lives.
Alcoholics Anonymous was created in 1935 and is the best-known treatment for alcoholism in the world. Much of AA's success is due to the fact that they offer both individual sponsor/sponsee sessions and a variety of different types of groups meetings. Likewise, advisers should consider using both individual and group advising opportunities for their students. Not only is group advising an efficient way for advisers to deliver information to students, it is also an important mechanism to bring students together to alleviate isolationism and to learn from one another.