Alcoholics Anonymous' Separation of the Sexes : Good or Bad ?

For more than ten years, I have been attending Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA meetings. The program has helped me immensely and I am very grateful for everything that I have learned while attending AA meetings. While I firmly believe that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works better than any other method of trying to stay sober, I often wonder about the un - written and un - official policy of maintaining frequent separation of the sexes in AA. This unofficial rule, or tradition is not something that is easily noticed, even by regular attendees of AA meetings.

I first noticed a tendency at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and rehab centers of maintaining a separation of the sexes early in my sobriety, in 1999. At that time, I repeatedly heard rehab counselors and AA meeting chairpersons' stressing the importance of men associating with men and women associating with women while undergoing alcohol rehabilitation. What I also noticed was that many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were strictly men's groups or women's groups and that there was a distinct separation of and / or lack of interaction between the sexes at AA meetings. Among the reasons for the separation, especially in early sobriety, that were explained to me by staff members, were that people in early sobriety needed to focus upon themselves and that members of the opposite sex tended to distract them from doing so. Also, the cultivation of relationships between recovering alcoholics was strongly discouraged, because it was stated that doing so would mean that the persons in recovery would be taking on another recovering alcoholic's problems, in addition to their own.