Dear Mills07,

My name is Joe and I am a young person who regularly attends S meetings in the atlanta area.  I identify with your fear.  I have been in only one S meeting where there was somebody younger than me!  I am 25 and I've been going 4 times a week for 8 months now.

I can tell you this: the love, acceptance, and the freedom from the isolation that I found attending meetings and working the steps of SLAA have smashed my fear of being with a bunch of old fogies.

I have found incredible friendships--friendships that go beyond any social boundaries such as race, sexual orientation, gender, and yes, age.  For example, one of my best "program buddies" (a person I call on a regular basis to talk about what's going on with me) is 40+ years old.  We have a wonderful friendship based on equality and trust. We are true equals--two "bozos on the bus" as someone once said.  In other words, we're both addicts, fighting for our lives against this deadly disease.  And this makes our petty differences meaningless.

At the end of the "SLAA Preamble" with which most SLAA meeting open, it says "we find a COMMON DENOMINTOR in our obsessive/compulsive patterns which renders any personal differences of sexual or gender orientation irrelevant."  They could just as well have added "personal differences of age, race, etc" to the list.  When you find someone who shares your obsessive/compulsive patterns--however remotely--my feeling is, the relief is so great that I never want to do or say anything that might threaten that life-giving support.

I hope I have helped.  I understand your fear and the "I'll do it next week" syndrome.  I said the same thing to myself for several months.  Remember this: nobody can go to your first meeting for you.  But walking into a meeting for the first time is the last thing you will ever (ever!) have to do alone. 

See you around.

peace,

Joe 

Hi there, I'm sorry you didn't get a response earlier. I am sure there's no group for younger people. Most people don't seem to become committed to recovery until they are past teens and 20's. I'll ask Mike Z, SA coordinator in GA to also respond to your question.

I would not be apprehensive about being around older addicts. You'll get a lot of support (and a lot of comments like, "boy, you're so lucky to enter recovery at your age. I wish I had been that smart.")

This is a totally unscientific observation, but from my contact with SA people, there are more people who already have families of their own and also tend to be more religious and conservative in their thinking. You might find younger crowd in SLAA.