Category: Recovery

In the late 1980s, Mac and Bob G., who attended St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Prattville, began a Big Book study on Wednesday nights at 8:00 pm.  Sometime later, Bill K. and Susan C. moved to Prattville from New Orleans and, in 1991, helped start the Open Family meetings on steps 1-3 and sponsorship on Wednesdays at 6:30 pm.

Between 1991 and 1993, meetings expanded to three meetings a week.  Bill K. left Prattville in the mid 1990s, but Raleigh W. and Nancy W. (AFG) were here, and kept the meetings going.  By 1994 there were open discussion meetings on Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday.  Sometime around 1997, a Saturday night 8:00 pm meeting was started, and the members attending these meetings began looking at starting a group.  In 1998, they wrote to the office in New York.

The first group conscience meeting of the Downtown Prattville Group was held August 24, 1998.  David K. acted as unofficial secretary for that meeting.  There was no sign-in sheet, but by all recollections the early membership included: Charles C., Carla C., David K., Fred C., Lonnie B., Melissa B., and Mike F.  Eleanor S., Paul D., and Keith P. joined soon thereafter and helped grow the group.

On August 9, 2002, the group voted to move from St. Mark’s to a small self-standing building at 326 W. Fifth Street.  The first meeting at the new (current) location was held on November 1, 2002.

Today, there is at least one meeting of the Prattville Downtown Group every day, 365 days per year.

The Chapter Nine Group began in the early 1980s with a handful of recovering alcoholics who’d gotten a taste of sobriety during a 28-day stay at what was then the Meadhaven treatement facility.  For some ten years the group met in the Meadhaven auditorium.

In the early 1990s, Baptist Medical began to remodel Meadhaven, and so the Chapter 9 group began a search for a new meeting place. A larger facility was quickly found a block away, at the Rotary Hall of the Easter Seal Rehabilitation Center. Attendance swelled until the Wednesday night speaker meeting would sometimes exceed one hundred. In November, 1995, Easter Seal management needed to use the Rotary Hall during the time Chapter 9 was meeting.

An ad hoc committee was formed to find a new home for the group.  Three sites were identified: the first had once held an A.A. meeting, but it had closed; the second was in rural south Montgomery County — it was large enough, bu the consensus was that it was just too far out to sustain membership or attract alcoholics from the surrounding area; the third was the newly-built Chemical Addictions Program (CAP) auditorium.

Heated debate arose over the proposal to move the group to Montgomery’s west side. With time running out at Rotary Hall, the steering committee decided to make the move to the groups present location. This location makes Chapter 9 the western-most meeting in Montgomery; the only meeting west of Interstate 65. It is also squarely in the heart of what many consider the least desirable part of town.

On Saturday, January 6, 1996, Chapter Nine held its first meeting in the CAP auditorium. What followed was a period of evolution. Due to Chapter 9’s new location, many who had felt comfortable on the Southern Bypass were intimidated by west Montgomery’s reputation for crime and violence. Attendance fell dramatically. But a handful of alcoholics stayed and carried the message to clients in the CAP residential program and to members of the surrounding community.  Most importantly, the handful of drunks stayed sober themselves.

Meetings are still attended by resident clients of CAP, but an increasing number of people from the surrounding community are attending, some driving as much as 30 miles to the west end of town.

The P.O.S.T. Newsletter, May 2002

The Chapter 9 Group was first listed with GSO on February 1, 1982. At that time, meetings were held at 1:30 pm on Sundays and 8 pm on Wednesdays at the Meadhaven Baptist Medical Center. Marvin M. was the first GSR and there were approximately 35 group members.  The group first appeared in the 1982 A.A. Directory.

G.S.O. Archives

The Vision for You Group was first listed with GSO on March 5, 1999.  At that time David H. served as the GSR and there were nineteen members.  Meetings were held on Wednesdays and Sundays in the Meadhaven Auditorium on South Boulevard in Montgomery.  The group first appeared in the 2000-2001 A.A. Directory.

G.S.O. Archives

The 12 Steps Group is the second-oldest A.A. group in Montgomery. [At the time, the Downtown Group was still meeting and the Capital City Group had closed its doors.]

One of the group’s co-founders, Peter B., later served as Director and Treasurer of the General Service Board.  The group met for a number of years at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church on Woodley Road.  The rector of Holy Comforter, Bob Miller, also served as a trustee on the General Service Board following his retirement as Bishop of Alabama.  The group moved from Holy Comforter in the later 1990s, meeting for a brief time at Cloverdale Baptist Church prior to moving to its present home at Heritage Baptist Church on Perry Hill Road.

The P.O.S.T. Newsletter, March 2002

The group was originally known as the Twelfth Step Group of Montgomery, which was first registered with GSO on December 3, 1971.  In December, 1973 the group sent in a Group Change Form on which it was identified as the Twelve Steps Group.  At that time the group numbered 15 members.

G.S.O. Archives