Examples Of Observation Of A Narcotics Anonymous Meeting

Observation Number One
I attended a narcotics anonymous meeting on Thursday night. The meetings are held in a classroom in Still hall. There were ten people who attended this meeting and one councilor. The councilor that ran this meeting was an addict him self, he told us he was thirteen years clean. There were five addicts in the room, two girls were there for support and there were three others there to observe. During this meeting for the first ten minutes we went over laws and how the program works. Then each person there for counseling spoke and talked about what they struggle with and how they try to overcome it every day. Some of the stories that were told were very scary to listen to because you cannot imagine how life got that way.

It is so easy to fall to the feet of drugs and alcohol and then your life spins aimlessly out of control. The guy I chose to observe was an older man who has been coming to meetings for over twenty years. I watch him all meeting and the two behaviors I saw he was shaking his leg and constantly drinking water when he was not talking. I understand he might have been thirsty, but he was constantly drinking like he always had to have something in his hand. Earlier in the meeting he said about another girl picking up smoking to keep her mind off of the craving she has been having, so maybe drinking water was what he did to overcome it. During this meeting it really touched me, because if I would of continued hanging out with the people I did, I could have been attending the meeting for help. When I left that meeting I was never more thankful for family and how they helped me through the roughest time of my life. It inspired me to help people who struggle with addictions and I have thought about helping out with groups that help young teens who suffer from addiction. I studied how the gentleman shook his leg and I could use duration to measure how long he shook his leg at any given time. I could slit a ten-minute period into one-minute intervals. If he shook his leg for the whole minute I could put a check mark and if he only did it for half the time I could put a circle. I could also use frequency in counting how often he drank from his water bottle. I could use tally marks to mark how often in one minute he drank his water.