SUGGESTED OPENING
We welcome you to the Solutions Al-Anon Family Group and hope you will find in this fellowship
the help and friendship we have been privileged to enjoy.
We who live or have lived with the problem of alcoholism understand as perhaps few others
can. We, too, were lonely and frustrated, but in Al-Anon, we discover that no situation is really
hopeless and that it is possible for us to find contentment and even happiness, whether the
alcoholic is still drinking or not.
We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity. So
much depends on our own attitudes and as we learn to place our problem in its true
perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.
The family situation is bound to improve, as we apply the Al-Anon ideas. Without such spiritual
help, living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us. Our thinking becomes distorted by trying
to force solutions and we become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.
The Al-Anon program is based on the Twelve Steps -- adopted from Alcoholics Anonymous --
which we try, little by little, one day at a time, to apply to our lives along with our slogans and the
Serenity Prayer. The loving interchange of help among members and daily reading of Al-Anon
literature thus make us ready to receive the priceless gift of serenity.
Al-Anon is an anonymous fellowship. Everything that is said here, in the group meeting and
member to member must be held in confidence. Only in this way can we feel free to say what is
in our minds and hearts, for this is how we help one another.
This group encourages Sponsorship as an aid to recovery. Asking someone to be our sponsor
is part of our own personal recovery in Al-Anon. If you have questions about sponsorship, refer
to the Sponsorship pamphlet or talk with someone after the meeting. Will all those willing to be
Sponsors please raise your hand?
By group conscience, we have agreed to include the following in our welcome:
➢ Please refrain from the: discussion of religion, treatment centers, self-help groups,
counseling, and the use or mention of materials other than our Al-Anon conference approved
literature
➢ In order to promote principles above personalities, please avoid cross-talk.
Cross-talk danger areas include: using the words you or should; giving advice; interrupting;
addressing an individual instead of the group as a whole. Ways we avoid cross-talk danger
areas are: using the word I; speaking from our own experience, strength and hope on how we’re
applying the program in our own life today.
➢ Please limit you sharing to 2 or 3 minutes, and avoid sharing more than once.
Please remember that in Al-Anon we keep the focus on ourselves, and not on the alcoholic. We
thank you for your cooperation in our group effort to stick to the Al-Anon principles.