AA Meeting Terms Glossary

Walking into your first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting means entering a community with its own language. Terms like “working the steps,” “qualifying,” “the rooms,” and “hitting bottom” get used as though everyone already knows what they mean. For newcomers attending voluntarily or under a court order, the unfamiliar language can create distance at the exact moment connection matters most. This glossary covers every major AA term, acronym, slogan, and concept you will encounter in meetings and AA literature, with plain explanations of what each one actually means and why it matters in the context of recovery.

Foundational AA Concepts

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

Founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio, Alcoholics Anonymous is a voluntary fellowship of people who share a common problem with alcohol and support one another in achieving and maintaining sobriety. AA has no dues, fees, professional staff, or governing hierarchy. It operates entirely through voluntary participation, group self-governance, and the principle that one alcoholic sharing their experience honestly with another is the most effective tool for recovery the program has.

The Fellowship

Members commonly refer to AA as “the Fellowship” or “the rooms.” Both terms describe the collective community of AA members and the meetings where they gather. The phrase captures the social and relational dimension of AA that distinguishes it from individual therapy or clinical treatment: recovery in AA happens through connection with other people who have been through the same experience.

The Program

When AA members say “the program,” they mean the specific course of action outlined in AA’s literature and embodied in the 12 Steps. The program is the active work of recovery: taking the Steps, working with a sponsor, doing service, and applying AA principles in daily life. Attendance at meetings alone is considered attending “the Fellowship.” Working the Steps is engaging “the program.” The distinction matters because AA consistently emphasizes action over passive attendance.

The Big Book

The Big Book, officially titled Alcoholics Anonymous, is the primary text of the AA program. First published in 1939, it outlines the 12 Steps, explains the AA approach to alcoholism, and contains personal recovery stories from early members. The reading “How It Works,” read aloud at the start of most meetings, comes directly from Chapter 5 of the Big Book. The book is available free online at aa.org and in print at most AA meetings.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Known informally as “the 12 and 12,” this is AA’s second major text. Published in 1952, it provides Bill Wilson’s detailed explanation of each of the 12 Steps and each of the 12 Traditions, the guidelines that govern how individual AA groups operate. Many AA study meetings read directly from the 12 and 12 rather than from the Big Book.

The 12 Steps: What Each One Means

The 12 Steps of AA are a sequence of actions, not a list of beliefs. Working the Steps means taking specific actions in a specific order, typically with a sponsor guiding the process. Here is what each step involves in practical terms.

• Step 1: Admitting powerlessness over alcohol and that life had become unmanageable. The foundation of everything that follows
• Step 2: Coming to believe that a power greater than oneself could restore sanity. The concept of Higher Power is introduced here
• Step 3: Making a decision to turn will and life over to the care of a Higher Power as understood personally
• Step 4: Writing a searching and fearless moral inventory of oneself. This is done in writing and covers resentments, fears, and patterns of behavior
• Step 5: Sharing the Fourth Step inventory with a sponsor or trusted person. The purpose is honesty and the dissolution of shame through disclosure
• Step 6: Becoming willing for a Higher Power to remove identified character defects
• Step 7: Asking a Higher Power to remove shortcomings
• Step 8: Making a written list of all people harmed and becoming willing to make amends to them
• Step 9: Making direct amends to people harmed wherever doing so would not injure them or others
• Step 10: Continuing to take personal inventory and promptly admitting when wrong. This step is ongoing
• Step 11: Seeking through prayer and meditation to improve conscious contact with a Higher Power
• Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of the Steps, carrying the message to other alcoholics and practicing AA principles in all areas of life

The 12 Traditions

The 12 Traditions are the principles that govern how AA groups operate and relate to the outside world. Where the 12 Steps address individual recovery, the 12 Traditions address the health and integrity of AA groups collectively. The most frequently referenced Traditions in everyday meetings are:

• First Tradition: Unity above all. Personal recovery depends on AA unity, and individual welfare is subordinate to the group’s common welfare
• Second Tradition: The ultimate authority in AA is a loving God as expressed in the group conscience. No individual member governs
• Third Tradition: The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. Nothing else qualifies or disqualifies anyone
• Sixth Tradition: AA groups ought never to endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise. This is why AA does not affiliate with treatment centers, hospitals, or courts
• Seventh Tradition: AA groups are self-supporting through their own contributions. No outside money is accepted. The passing of the basket at meetings funds meeting costs
• Eleventh Tradition: AA’s public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. Members maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and television
• Twelfth Tradition: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all AA traditions, placing principles above personalities

Sponsorship, Service, and Member Relationships

Sponsor

A sponsor is an AA member with significant sobriety who guides a newer member through the 12 Steps. Sponsorship is a one-to-one relationship conducted outside of meetings, through phone calls, in-person meetings, and direct work through the Steps. Sponsors share their own experience with each Step and support the sponsee in completing each one. Sponsors are not therapists or counselors and do not provide clinical guidance. Their value is experiential: they have done what the newcomer is trying to do. Read more on our article What Does AA Sponsorship Mean?

Sponsee

The person being guided by a sponsor. A sponsee actively works through the 12 Steps with their sponsor’s guidance, typically completing Step work in writing and meeting regularly to review it.

Home Group

A member’s primary AA meeting, the one they attend consistently and where they hold a service commitment. Home group membership creates accountability and belonging within AA. Members are expected to be present reliably, to vote in group conscience decisions, and to hold or rotate service positions within the group.

Service

Any voluntary contribution to AA’s functioning, from making coffee and setting up chairs before a meeting to serving as a General Service Representative at the district level. AA’s 12th Step tradition frames service as essential to personal recovery: helping others is understood as one of the most reliable tools for maintaining sobriety. Service positions within a group typically include secretary, treasurer, and GSR (General Service Representative).

Group Conscience

The decision-making mechanism of individual AA groups. When a group needs to make a collective decision, it holds a group conscience meeting, typically immediately before or after a regular meeting. Every member present is entitled to vote. No individual member or outside authority overrides the group conscience. This is the practical application of AA’s Second Tradition.

Meeting Types and Format

Open Meeting

An open meeting welcomes anyone who wishes to attend, including family members, people curious about AA, students, and people attending under a court order. No one at an open meeting will ask why you are there.

Closed Meeting

A closed meeting is intended for people who identify as having a problem with alcohol or who believe they may have one. People attending under a court order without a personal identification with alcoholism typically attend open meetings.

Speaker Meeting

A meeting format where one or more members share their full personal story, covering what their drinking was like, what happened, and what their life is like now. Speaker meetings are almost always open meetings.

Step Meeting

A meeting format focused on discussion of one of the 12 Steps, typically rotating through the Steps in sequence over a 12-week cycle. Members share their experience with the step being discussed.

Big Book Meeting

A meeting format where members read and discuss passages from the Big Book. Common in groups that prioritize close study of AA’s primary text.

Discussion Meeting

An open-format meeting where a chairperson introduces a topic and members share their experience related to it. Topics are drawn from everyday recovery challenges: gratitude, resentment, fear, relationships, and similar themes.

Chip System

Many AA groups use a chip or coin system to mark sobriety milestones. Members receive chips at 24 hours, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year of sobriety, and annually thereafter. Chips are not a universal AA practice and vary by region and group.

Core Recovery Language

Sobriety Date / Anniversary / Birthday

The date a member stopped drinking becomes their sobriety date. Within AA, this date is referred to as a birthday or anniversary and is celebrated annually within the member’s home group. Many members consider their sobriety date the most significant date in their life. Years of sobriety are often called “time” in AA conversation.

Hitting Bottom

The point at which a person’s alcohol use has caused sufficient damage, physically, professionally, legally, or relationally, that continuing to drink becomes less tolerable than the prospect of stopping. “Hitting bottom” is understood in AA as a necessary precondition for genuine willingness to change. AA also recognizes “high-bottom” drinkers, people who sought help before experiencing catastrophic loss, and notes that raising awareness of the problem can raise a person’s bottom before they lose everything.

Powerlessness

The central concept of Step 1 and the foundational premise of AA. Powerlessness over alcohol means that once a person with alcoholism takes the first drink, they have no reliable ability to control how much they drink or when they stop. AA distinguishes this from weakness of character: powerlessness is understood as a characteristic of the disease, not a moral failing.

Surrender

In AA, surrender refers to giving up the attempt to control drinking and accepting that the approach of managing or moderating has not worked. Surrender is not defeat. Within AA it is described as the beginning of recovery, the point at which genuine willingness to change becomes available.

Spiritual Awakening

The outcome described in Step 12, a change in personality and perception significant enough to produce sustained sobriety. AA’s appendix on spiritual experience clarifies that most members experience this as a gradual shift rather than a dramatic event: a slow change in perspective, behavior, and relationship with others rather than a sudden religious conversion.

Higher Power

Each member’s personal conception of a power greater than themselves. AA’s literature is explicit that this conception is entirely personal and requires no specific theological content. For some members, Higher Power is God in a traditional religious sense. For others it is the collective wisdom of the group, nature, or a generalized sense of something larger than individual will. Secular AA groups and members with atheist or agnostic orientations engage with this concept in non-theistic terms.

Character Defects and Shortcomings

Terms used in Steps 6 and 7 to describe the patterns of behavior and thought that contributed to and sustained a person’s drinking. Common examples include self-centered fear, dishonesty, resentment, and perfectionism. In AA, identifying and addressing character defects is understood as necessary work for sustained sobriety because these patterns, left unaddressed, drive people back to drinking.

Resentment

Described in the Big Book as “the number one offender” and the primary cause of spiritual illness in people with alcoholism. A resentment in AA terms is a persisting anger or grievance toward a person, institution, or situation. Step 4 involves identifying resentments in writing and examining the role one’s own behavior played in each situation. The work is not about excusing others but about freeing the member from anger that otherwise drives continued drinking.

Amends

The action described in Steps 8 and 9, making direct repair of harm done to others during active drinking. AA distinguishes between an apology, which is verbal acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and an amend, which involves behavioral change. Living amends refers to sustained changed behavior toward a person rather than a single conversation.

Relapse

Returning to drinking after a period of sobriety. AA’s approach to relapse emphasizes return rather than judgment: members who relapse are encouraged to return to meetings and resume work on the Steps. AA does not frame relapse as failure or as disqualifying membership. Research published in Alcohol Research: Current Reviews identifies relapse as a common feature of alcohol use disorder recovery, with rates comparable to other chronic medical conditions.

Dry Drunk

A person who has stopped drinking but continues to behave in the ways that characterized their active alcoholism: resentful, dishonest, self-centered, and emotionally volatile. AA uses this term to describe the condition of abstinence without genuine recovery, and the concept frames why the program emphasizes behavioral and attitudinal change rather than abstinence alone.

AA Acronyms Explained

HALT

Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. A self-monitoring acronym used to identify emotional and physical states that increase vulnerability to relapse. The practice involves checking in with these four states before making significant decisions or when craving alcohol. The acronym is widely used in addiction treatment beyond AA and is referenced in clinical contexts as a practical self-regulation tool.

HOW

Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness. The three qualities AA identifies as essential for the program to work. Members use HOW as a reminder of the internal posture required to engage with the Steps genuinely.

SLIP

Sobriety Lost Its Priority. Used to describe a relapse in terms of what preceded it: a period in which recovery work was deprioritized. The term frames relapse not as a random event but as the outcome of a process.

FEAR

Most commonly understood in AA as False Evidence Appearing Real, a reminder that anxiety and fear are often responses to imagined or exaggerated threats rather than actual ones. The acronym is also rendered as Face Everything And Recover in some groups, reframing fear as something to move through rather than avoid.

EGO

Edging God Out. Used in AA to describe the self-reliance and self-centered thinking that AA identifies as central to alcoholism. The term is used colloquially rather than clinically.

GSO / GSR / DCM

GSO stands for General Service Office, AA’s central administrative office in New York. GSR stands for General Service Representative, the elected member of an individual group who represents the group at the district level. DCM stands for District Committee Member, the person who represents a district at the area level. These roles form the structure of AA’s service hierarchy, described in detail in AA’s service structure documentation.

AA Slogans and Their Meaning in Practice

AA slogans are short phrases passed down through generations of members as practical tools for daily recovery. They are not AA’s official teachings but are widely used in meetings as accessible reminders of core principles.

• One Day at a Time: Focus on staying sober today rather than committing to a lifetime of abstinence in a single moment. The principle makes an otherwise overwhelming commitment manageable
• Easy Does It: A reminder to avoid rushing the recovery process, to be patient with oneself, and to resist the urgency and all-or-nothing thinking that often accompanies early sobriety
• First Things First: Sobriety is the foundation. Before addressing relationships, finances, career, or any other area of life, the member’s sobriety takes priority
• Keep It Simple: Recovery does not require philosophical sophistication. The program’s most important actions are straightforward. Complexity is often a way of avoiding the work
• Let Go and Let God: Surrendering the attempt to control outcomes and people. Used when a member is caught in worry, obsession, or attempts to manage situations outside their control
• Progress Not Perfection: The standard in AA is improvement over time, not flawless execution. Perfectionism is understood as a common driver of relapse when people believe a single mistake means total failure
• This Too Shall Pass: Current difficulty, whether craving, grief, conflict, or emotional pain, is temporary. The phrase is used to encourage endurance through distress without resorting to alcohol
• Live and Let Live: Focus on one’s own recovery rather than judging, managing, or attempting to change other people. Resentment and judgment are understood as threats to sobriety
• Think Think Think: A reminder to pause before acting on impulse, to consider consequences, and to use the cognitive tools the program provides before making decisions driven by emotion
• But for the Grace of God: Said when observing someone else’s suffering or destructive behavior. A reminder that the speaker’s own recovery is not the product of superior character but of something outside themselves

Anonymity: What It Means and What It Covers

Anonymity in AA operates on two levels. At the personal level, members protect each other’s membership by not disclosing that a specific person is in AA outside of meetings. What is shared in the room stays in the room. At the public level, AA’s 11th Tradition asks that members maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and television. This means a member does not publicly identify themselves as an AA member in media contexts. The purpose is to prevent any individual from becoming a public face of AA whose later behavior could damage the organization’s reputation.

Anonymity does not prohibit members from telling people in their personal lives that they attend AA. A member can tell friends, family, or a doctor about their AA membership. What the tradition asks is that members do not break another person’s anonymity and do not seek personal publicity in connection with AA.