Why 90 Meetings in 90 Days Works in Early Recovery?
The early ’80s
I went to my first meeting in London on May 15th, 1984. I was thirty years old, and after seventeen years of drinking, I was ready to get sober. In the early 80s, AA was somewhat different than it is today. There was a much stronger sense of fellowship, and I remember some unique and eccentric personalities who stayed sober. The other AA members gave some of them nicknames. Some of these colourful personalities are unforgettable. It wasn’t difficult to see their alcoholism through their quirky personalities. There was ‘Mick the Tick’ (because he sold watches), ‘Pat the Hat’, Sailor Bill’, ‘Guardsman John’, ‘Ironing board Arthur’, ‘Evil John’, ‘Dublin Helen’, and many others.
Even the approach to recovery was different then. All the meetings were smoking meetings, so there was always that familiar smell of cigarette smoke and coffee. After the meeting, most members would go to various coffee shops for the meeting after the meeting. Sponsors would sit with their sponsees, and regular members would surround the newcomers and tell them all about the benefits of getting sober in AA.
It was all like one big happy, albeit dysfunctional family. For me, the fellowship aspect kept me coming back. Although I did have a sponsor, he became more like a surrogate father than a step guide. I wasn’t well enough to do the steps for a long time. One general suggestion came up often at meetings and in the coffee shops. This was the suggestion to do 90 meetings in 90 days when you were newly sober.
90 meetings in 90 days back in the day
As I remember, the suggestion of 90 meetings in 90 days worked very well to separate newcomers from alcohol. It didn’t treat the disease of alcoholism. Only the 12 Steps could do that, but it was remarkably successful in helping new members achieve physical abstinence. No one seemed to complain about this suggestion. Newcomers just accepted that it was AA’s way of helping drunks get sober.
I later read that the whole idea of 90 meetings in 90 days was based on a psychological study. A group of psychologists had determined that it takes 90 days for a person to break a negative habit (addiction). The study also found that the most effective way to do this was to replace the bad habit with a good one. AA’s suggestion of replacing an addiction to alcohol with a meeting every day was a very effective method of achieving abstinence from alcohol dependency. It certainly worked for me in my first 90 days, and it was effective for many newcomers who came through the doors of AA back in the day.
90 meetings in 90 days in 2026
It would be dishonest to say the suggestion that newcomers do 90 meetings in 90 days has completely disappeared from AA. Gradually, this suggestion has fallen into disuse. It isn’t considered as important as it was in the 80s when I was new. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone speak about its importance when a newcomer was in the room.
My sponsor is also an old-timer, and he has seen AA go through changes too. I asked him whether he thought the 90 meetings in 90 days suggestion had fallen out of use. If so, why, and how did he think that this happened? He told me that, at a meeting, he overheard some members say that encouraging the use of this suggestion was viewed by some as “harassment and bullying.” If some members genuinely felt this way, then this kind of thinking struck me as a somewhat diluted attitude to AA.
My sponsor then went on to say that, in his opinion, some of the fundamentalist splinter groups with their new and radical views about the most effective interpretation of the AA program were also responsible for getting rid of traditional AA ideas. This was much easier for me to agree with, as in my experience some of these splinter groups bear little or no resemblance to the way Bill Wilson intended AA to be.
I am now retired and live in a small town. I’m very lucky because the AA groups that I attend are very strong and sober. I learn something new at every meeting. That said, I really miss the traditional AA meetings that I came into in the early ’80s, with the emphasis on practical suggestions like “90 meetings in 90 days.”
In fellowship,
Andy F
