Non-alcoholic trustee Mani Mehdikhani on what the 2020 AA membship survey tells us

Meet Clinical Psychologist at Greater Manchester West NHS Mental Health Foundation Trust, Mani Mehdikhani, one of AA Great Britain’s non-alcoholic trustees on their General Service Board. 

Among other duties, Mani and his committee prepared the quinquennial AA membership survey which went out to Alcoholics Anonymous members in Great Britain and English-speaking Central Europe Region groups in 2020. 

A remarkable thing happened as they prepared to put these questions before members: The COVID-19 pandemic. As members transitioned from primarily face-to-face meetings to online gatherings, here was an opportunity to collect data on how members were adjusting. The GSO Board did just that. 

Here is what members told us.

• Less than one-in-five (18%) Great Britain AAs had experience with online meetings, pre-pandemic.   More members in the Central Europe Region were inclined towards online AA. 
• By the time the survey of 2020 was collected, 93% of members/groups were able to transition to online (Zoom, etc.) means of connecting with each other. 
• Early in our adaptation to online AA, members greatest concerns were: (i) helping newcomers, (ii) doing service work, (iii) sponsoring members and (iv) “carrying the message.”

Zoom was not a better way of doing things for everyone. And some members were already attending phone or video meetings anyway. A few months into lock-down the key drawbacks among people who were not in love with ‘the new normal’ were: (i) a lack of technical skills, (ii)online meetings not a suitable replacement for face-to-face (f2f) meetings (33-36%), (iii) concerns about privacy, (iv) no access to bandwidth or IT devices, (iv) group was continuing to meet f2f. 

New questions were asked about higher power (beliefs and spirituality.

Last episode we explored survey results based on the written report. What added benefit came from speaking with the survey’s architect directly? 

Well, personally, I had   extrapolating some of this data from what it says to what it means; Mani’s scientific observations helped me reel-in some of the hypothetical conclusions I was already starting to draw. “That’s human nature,” he kindly suggested to me. But it was also reassuring to hear that the Board also did not have their full appetite satisfied and they would love to ask follow-up questions to try to direct their efforts most effectively. 

The purpose of these membership surveys (in General Service regions such as Great Britain or USA/Canada) is: (i) inform the public and professionals that interact with alcohol use disorder about the demographics and other characteristics of AA members and meetings and (ii)use the data to inform the Board in terms of where their future efforts would best serve the membership of AA. 

Mani and the General Service Board say they view with great interest how online AA will both aid the still suffering alcoholic but how virtual spaces will alter the service structure which has—based on geographical locations of members and their meetings before—divided groups/members by geography and how shall the service structure adapt to our more global makeup of meetings and member-interactions?

Review the entire 2020 Great Britain AA Membership Survey

Also discussed in this show: The 5th Biennial International Conference of Secular AA (UTC time schedule) Other time zones (North America)

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