Alcoholics Anonymous  has started to meet on campus at St. John’s Catholic Church and will continue to meet throughout the school year. 

AA, which was founded in 1935 by Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson, has come back to Creighton’s campus for the second time in the university’s history. One AA member said that there used to be AA meetings held on campus in the past, but the group stopped meeting for unknown reasons.

The same AA member expressed excitement that the organization has returned to campus. 

“I’m hopeful that it will serve a need,” said the member. “It’s been hugely important to me. It allowed me to be around like-minded people who want to get and stay sober.”

Even though these AA meetings are being held at St. John’s, Creighton had no involvement in bringing the national organization to campus. Instead, AA is a self-supported entity with the meeting locations organized by its members. 

According to the Rev. Larry Gillick, S.J., the lower level of St. John’s is one of roughly 500 locations in Omaha where AA members meet every week. Gillick said this needed presence was evidence of “a real problem” in today’s society. 

“But it’s one that’s easily swept under the table,” said Gillick. “It’s a family disease, it really is, and everyone who knows about alcohol knows that, but society doesn’t want to face that.”

Gillick said that alcohol has a prominent presence in our culture. As proof, he brainstormed various colloquialisms that are synonymous with the word “inebriated” — “pickled”, “plastered” and “bombed”. He also spoke of the ways in which the friends and family of alcoholics can often be codependent. 

“Creighton, in some ways, is codependent,” he said. “To have CARE and TRAAC and AA is some attempt at reducing codependency.”

Though AA is not religiously affiliated, it is not insignificant that members have started to meet on the campus of a Jesuit university considering that many of AA’s 12 Steps are influenced by Ignatian spirituality.

“There’s a tremendous influence on organizing the 12 steps and exercises,” said Gillick. 

The first step on the AA website states, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.” 

Regarding this first step Gillick said, 

“That is the basic humbling truth.”

Gillick said that there are many sayings that AA members often use. One is “the road to recovery is always under construction.”

AA will continue to meet every Friday from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s in the Father Thomas Halley SJ Memorial Chapel Room.