Tuesday, December 29th, 2009: The First Meeting; Part 1
“A man was attending the funeral of an old acquaintance he had not seen for some time and spoke to the deceased’s widow, who sadly informed him that death had resulted from a drinking problem. The man said “I’m sorry to hear that. Did he ever try AA?” The widow recoiled in horror and exclaimed “Oh no! He never got that bad!”
- Father Joseph Martin
* Names will be changed to uphold the anonymity in “Alcoholic’s Anonymous.” Except, of course, for my own name because, well, THE SECRET’S OUT.
I am greeted by a slender woman in a large knit cap that I haven’t seen on any head without dreadlocks, and yet it suits her perfectly. She is in her sixties or seventies, and spent the prime of her life in those same decades, though she looks perhaps forty. She reminds me of a mother and a bird, compassionate and delicate, so we will call her “Birdie,” an appropriate name also because, as I later found, she also spent a number of nights in jail. She is accompanied by a man perhaps five years her senior; a man whose melting jawline and speckled bare scalp did, in fact, reveal his age. He wears a navy button up with a knubby, cloth tie cinched around his neck. I am reminded of a sage or preacher, the sort you see in movies exploiting human despair; a close up catches him as he turns his head slowly to look out a window at the hatred and suffering surrounding him, and the camera pans slowly out as the old man cradles his head in his hands. He leads the meeting; he is The Minister.
Oz, for her Latvian name reminds me only of Australia, and I are the newcomers to the group. Her short, graying hair is covered by a knit beanie, and she has the face of a beautiful woman who has succumbed to exhaustion. She is so tired. And her hands shake as she speaks. New to this particular meeting, she has been to several others. After eight years of sobriety, she has found herself in a heavy relapse.
Finally, there is Yellow, a last minute arrival, a man nicknamed for his coated teeth. He is also older, though not as aged as The Minister, and slicks his full head of steely hair back. As with the others, he looks nothing more than pleasant. They seem content and stable as they fill the room with chatter.
I sit slightly removed, the green twenty one year old in a room of veterans. I can feel the sweat squirm down my sides like an insect. I join the conversation, I smile, but I dread the time easy conversation becomes a confessional discussion.
“God, grant me
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can, and
The wisdom to know the difference.”
We stand in a circle, our hands on one another’s backs, heads bowed, and recite the Serenity Prayer. This is how the meeting begins.
We return to our seats, and The Minister speaks. He introduces the format of a discussion based meeting and, with the help of other members, reads the Twelve Steps that have become the accepted format for recovery. What strikes me most is his emphasis on the importance of honesty, brutal, uncensored honesty. It is the only path to success, he says, and those he has witnessed to fail have been those who are incapable of being honest with themselves. He says, some people are simply incapable of finding and speaking the truth; some people can’t help but wrap themselves in lies; they are doomed to failure. I tear up, thinking with the utmost conviction that I am one of those people. I am here and I want to be, but I have been in this circumstance before.
-End Part 1-
