y of Mercy). I attended this meeting on Friday, November 20th, at 8:00 p.m. The approximate number of people who attended the meeting was about 25 people. There was a fairly equal amount of men and women in the room. Most of those who attended the meeting were Caucasian, and there were some minorities, which were of Spanish descent. There were no African-Americans attending the meeting, and the people seemed to all come from the middle-class. I believe that these characteristics do reflect the demographic make-up of the surrounding community. It is a community of mostly Caucasian, middle-class people.One of my first impressions of the meeting was that there was not as many people as I presumed there would be. I have watched movies and t.v. shows where there were 80 or more people attending the meeting, so this came as a little bit of a surprise. As I entered the room, one woman smiled and greeted me by saying, Hi, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. This remark made me feel a little more comfortable. I examined the room thoroughly and found that there was table and a podium in the front of the room where apparently the speaker would stand. There were rows of chairs set up so that they were facing the front and people had already seated themselves. One thing that I noticed that interested me was this enormous paper on the board, which I later found out was a preamble or constitution that they read about their illness.The meeting began with one man, a host, who made announcements of anniversaries and times of different meetings. He specified that it was an open meeting, and that there were two speakers from a different town coming to speak that night. He also said, Hi, my name is for example, Bill, and Im an alcoholic, the audience responded by saying Hi, Bill. Each time a person went up they would say this and the audience would respond in the same manner. The people then read this preamble and the man announced the first ...
