Alcoholic Anonymous coins are tokens given to AA members indicating how long an individual has been sober. The coins are usually small- the size of a casino chip- and in different colors. This practice of acknowledging recovered alcoholics has been in use since the 1947. However, before this time, recovered alcoholics used to carry personal mementos to remind themselves of how important it is to remain sober. 

 

In addition, the Oxford group introduced the celebrating of birthdays, which was a celebration of their spiritual rebirth- the date where an AA member had his or her last drink. Nonetheless, this celebration was riddled with a number of downfalls, including relapse of a number of members. While the cake celebrations were scraped off, this did not stop the practice of acknowledging recovered alcoholics. Instead, members got accolades in the form of AA Aluminum Chips.    

 

Being a newbie in an AA meeting is tricky at first. This can be attributed to the different ways of doing things. The language is a bit different as well as the ideas. Nonetheless, anyone can manage to go through the meetings and come out successful. There are four different types of AA meetings including speaker meetings, big book meetings, step study meetings and discussion meetings.   

 

With discussion meetings, the chairperson reads a passage and then passes the topic to group members for discussion. Group members are allowed to give their opinions on the matter to come up with an actionable solution. See this definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/alcoholism.

 

Members who have a substantial amount of sobriety period usually conduct speaker meetings. The speaker will give his or her account as a recovered alcoholic and when he finishes telling his story, other members can add their thoughts to the topic. 

 

For Big book meetings, the chairperson or an appointed member from the group is given a chance to read a passage, which will spark a conversation where other members will give their comments. 

 

Finally, we have Step study meetings. This meeting is quite similar to Big book meetings with the only difference being the passage is read from the text Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. 

 

Bear in mind that not all AA groups give AA Chips. In addition, different groups have varying colors for the kind of chips they give to members. Nonetheless, 24 hour or 1 day sobriety chips are usually silver in color. 1-month chips are red. 2-month chips are bright yellow. 3 months chip are green. 4-month chips are purple. 5-month chips are pink. 6-month chips are blue. 7-month chips are copper. 8-month chips are red. 9 m-month chips are purple. 10-month chips are bright yellow. 11-month chips are green and lastly 1-year chips are white.