All About Meetings At Chronic Pain Anonymous
Welcome to CPA! We are a Twelve Step program of recovery for people who live with chronic pain and chronic illness. You can attend meetings in your own community or virtually. This page will introduce you to the different types of meetings and how to access them.
CPA has many different kinds of meetings. In person or from the comfort of your home, you will meet others who share the common bond of living with chronic pain and chronic illness. The members of CPA understand all too well feelings of isolation, despair and fear and the courage it takes to attend a meeting for the first time. Sharing our experience, strength, and hope, we recover from the debilitating effects of our chronic pain and illness. Recovery is described as the ability to live peacefully, joyfully, and comfortably with ourselves and others.
Find a Meeting
CPA is organized according to how you attend a meeting. So rather than being geographic Areas, they are divided by the way the group meets. There are three Areas, each supported by an Intergroup service body.
Face-to-Face Area Meetings: Groups that meet physically in a community. (At this time most of these groups are not meeting physically, however we hope they can resume in the future.)
Telephone Area Meetings: The telephone meetings are held on a teleconference service.
Cross Platform (XP) Area Meetings: Groups meet virtually through various digital formats such as videoconference, digital meeting sites and others. On the calendar they are listed as Video meetings. Online meetings that are on forum platforms have a separate page under the Find a Meeting menu.
The information describing each Area, who to contact with questions, and how to attend, is provided in detail on this page under the Introduction to CPA Meeting Platforms.
The next 5 meetings scheduled are always found on the bottom of the CPA website homepage.
Calendar
You can view the calendar here.
The meetings are all found on the calendar, except for online meetings that do not have a set meeting time. Each type of meeting is a different color. You can find a meeting by looking at the day on the calendar, or by clicking on the top of the calendar for the Area you are interested in. The view for the calendar is set for the entire month, so events that have passed are a faded color, and the events coming up will be brighter. Be sure to scroll down to the date you are seeking.
You will find:
Face-To-Face Meetings
Phone Meetings
Video Meetings
Service Body Meetings
Special Events
Time Zones
Face-to-Face Meeting times are listed in the local time zone. All other meeting times are listed in U.S. Eastern time zone. Meetings outside the U.S. are listed in the local time zone. If you want to convert to your time zone, please find a website that makes the conversion.
Newcomer Welcome and Orientation
The Newcomer Welcome and Orientation is a monthly introduction to CPA and Twelve Step recovery. We invite everyone who is new to the fellowship. The orientation provides answers to common questions. However, there is no requirement to attend the Welcome and Orientation before going to your first CPA meeting.
The Welcome and Orientation is held on the 4th Monday of the month at 1:00 PM PT/2:00 PM MT/3:00 PM CT/4:00PM ET/8:00 PM GMT. If you are new to CPA or curious about our program of recovery, please join us. If you have questions about the meeting, contact the Coordinator.
As someone just starting out in CPA, it is helpful to read the Newcomer Brochure. It gives an introduction to the program and offers answers to commonly asked questions.
Introduction to CPA Meeting Areas
CPA is organized by the Area platform you use to attend a meeting, rather than geographically. There are 3 Intergroups that oversee these platforms. An Intergroup is a service arm, fostering community among meetings by combining an Area of resources specific to its platform type. The Phone and Cross Platform Intergroup (XPI) provide a website with all the information about their meetings. You can click the title of the link for the Intergroup to leave this page and visit their website, where you will find more information.
Face-To-Face Area
These are physical meetings in local communities. All of these meetings can be found on the calendar. This Intergroup is currently suspended due to the pandemic safety needs for physical meetings until further notice.
Phone Area
The CPA Phone Area Meetings are supported by the Phone Intergroup. They are a group of phone meetings that form a voluntary partnership. The Intergroup is composed of Intergroup Representatives (IR) elected by each phone meeting. The Phone Intergroup manages the telephone service used by the meetings, organizes monthly speaker meetings and holiday marathons, and offers guidelines for resolving group issues. The website provides meeting formats and materials, details and schedules of the phone meetings, announcements of upcoming events, and speaker meeting recordings.
Listen to the experience, strength and hope of CPA members. Click on the link for the recordings – http://cpaphoneig.wixsite.com/mysite/events
(Disclaimer: Linking to another website does not constitute endorsement by Chronic Pain Anonymous Service Board, Inc. We can’t attest to the accuracy or completeness of information provided by any linked site.)
Cross Platform Area
The Cross Platform Area supports meetings that are virtual, such as video conference, online, and others. The Cross Platform Intergroup (XPI) provides continuity, assistance, cohesiveness, and community for Chronic Pain Anonymous’ rapidly developing, growing, and changing cross platform meetings.
The XPI is composed of Intergroup Representatives (IR) elected by each cross platform meeting. The XPI assists cross platform meetings with meeting formats and schedules, guidelines for existing and new meetings, technical support and access to members within our community. The Cross Platform Area supports meetings that are virtual, such as video conference, online, and others. There are some online meetings with specific information which can be found on the website.
On the XPI website you will get information about how to join a videoconference meeting and a contact for technical questions.
(Disclaimer: Linking to another website does not constitute endorsement by Chronic Pain Anonymous Service Board, Inc. We can’t attest to the accuracy or completeness of information provided by any linked site.)
Starting a CPA Meeting
If you are interested in starting a meeting, please visit our Start a New Meeting page.