For the past year-and-a-half, volunteers from Alcoholics Anonymous have been holding weekly meetings with prisoners at Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility who have an honest desire to stop drinking. 

The meetings vary in size from a few to sometimes a dozen offenders. As well as an opportunity to be of service, many of the AA members that come into the meetings find them invaluable for their own recovery from alcoholism. Here is one volunteer’s experience:

“One day at a meeting, a special experience touched me enormously. We were reading Alcoholics Anonymous, and the section 'surrender and faith' held much significance to where I was at, on the day. As I shared, I tried to hold the tears back, alas that did not happen, they flowed freely, and I shared that the reading hit exactly the spot it needed to, for me, at that moment. I observed several women share tears of their own, and as others shared, so too the tears came, and a raw sense of honesty and gratitude filled the room. Tears of gratitude, of surrender, of acceptance and relief. It was the most powerful, inspirational and incredible AA meeting I have been to.

“I can honestly say, it is always such an honor and privilege to share a part of the women’s journey in sobriety, and to watch them unfold like a flower blossoming, so gently, and often freely, yet at times, like us all, fear creeps in. As each meeting unfolds, like any AA meeting, the women settle into a sense of trust and comfort within the room, and share from their heart, their experience, strength and hope, and support others within the room.  As the weeks pass by, we have witnessed many women look forward to their weekly AA meeting, and we see that faith helps and action works.” 

The Department is currently reviewing processes to support released offenders to ensure that they have access to information relating to AA meetings within the community.      

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