A Twelve-Step Meeting

An open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous

I am missing my meeting tonight. There’s no great tragedy, it’s simply how the day worked out. I will try again next week. But for now, you, gentle reader, will have to be my meeting. This space we hold together will be our room. You can smell the coffee. It’s not good coffee, but it’s there for you. Someone brought chocolate. There is always chocolate. Sugar and chocolate and caffeine… these and cigarettes are the things that keep us sane so that we don’t have to succumb to Demon alcohol.

Anyway. I’m gonna write this down and send it to a bunch of people. I apologize for the interruption, but I’m trying to stay sober.

I am providing our lead tonight. There’s a little bit of something from the Big Book that I want to share.

“But life among Alcoholics Anonymous is more than attending gatherings and visiting hospitals. Cleaning up old scrapes, helping to settle family differences, explaining the disinherited son to his irate parents, lending money and securing jobs for each other, when justified-these are everyday occurrences. No one is too discredited or has sunk too low to be welcomed cordially-if they mean business. Social distinctions, petty rivalries and jealousies-these are laughed out of countenance. Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them. How could they?”

Hi. My name is Tripp and I’m an alcoholic.

I’m not going to edit this. And I’m going to use the voice to text function on my phone. So, forgive me. This might get a little confusing for you. I will do the best I can.

It’s been more than 18 years since I’ve had my last drink. I’ve heard many stories about how people came to sobriety since then. And what’s probably typical for most alcoholics, as moving as I find these stories and as hopeful as I find the sobriety of other alcoholics and addicts, I am usually more overwhelmed by the miracle of my own sobriety than anyone else’s. Of course, right? I’m a narcissistic alcoholic, so my story is always better than yours.

But we all know that that’s just a bunch of bullshit and we are all lucky to be here, to be alive, to be drinking mediocre coffee and smoking cigarettes. What seems so basic to so many it’s a fucking miracle to us. I just took a breath. Wait, there goes another one. Who the fuck would have imagined that was possible?

I had my first drink in a really wonderful context, truth be told. I had always sipped on my parents’ drinks growing up. My father loved bourbon and I would often mistake his big tumblr of bourbon and water as a watered down cola and get a big swig of bourbon to my chagrin. I don’t know how many times I’d tried a vodka and tonic or gin and tonic hoping to like them. Eventually, I came to love gin, but that’s a different story.

No, my first real drink came one afternoon after getting up hay with a bunch of other folks at a local farm. I did some work at the farm and off and on like so many of my peers. One summer I worked for a local farmer to get up hay. We worked hard. It was hot and we had to wear long pants and long sleeves. Imagine August in Virginia and you’re wearing long pants, a long sleeve shirt, and a hat. I was 15 and at the end of our day, the farmer pulled us into the big hay barn to pay us. He took out a roll of $20 bills and gave us each more than five dollars an hour. For 1985, this was a lot of money. Then he opened up this little refrigerator he had tucked away in the corner and handed each one of us a beer. It was cold and I was hot. We all killed our beers, chugging them back like they were water. Admittedly, in retrospect, Miller Genuine Draft isn’t the most demanding of beers, but at the age of 15 and in that heat I was a happy camper.

The quotation that I provided above is from a chapter that describes the benefits of the community that is the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have to talk about the fellowship because one of the things we lose as we gain sobriety is community. All those wonderful parties that people enjoy, doing tequila shots with your friends, having a beer at the baseball game, and so many other wonderful activities vanish. This moment of drinking my first beer with a bunch of friends is one of my favorite memories. And though I knew at the time that alcoholism was a possibility for me, I enjoyed this beer immensely.

I have lots of really great memories of being shitfaced with friends. I have some memories of politely drinking a nice bottle of wine with friends. Almost all of these memories proceed blackouts or other not so pleasant memories from the same evening. In college one beer would turn into a dozen. One shot of vodka would turn into ten. One bottle of wine with friends would turn into four more at home…alone. A glass of expensive scotch at the local pub would turn into a bottle of scotch on my own in my apartment.

As I aged, I rarely got shitfaced with other people. I would go out and have a nice time with my friends and then go home and drown myself. This is one of the many reasons why people were surprised when I stopped drinking. They never saw the problem. They never saw the blackouts. They weren’t my girlfriend at the time who had to come in to the kitchen and pull my ass up off the floor because I had basically passed out with my pants around my feet.

They weren’t my employers trying to figure out why I seemed so strange in the mornings.

I got sober after my 31st birthday. By the time I was 22, I was parking my car facing the direction home so that I wouldn’t have to make so many turns while I was driving drunk. My first “adult beer“ was at the age of 15. Between that beer and my last drink, I tried to get sober a half dozen times, I destroyed property, I lost jobs, and I imagine I lost a good many friends to my addiction even though at the time I was sure it was for other reasons.

I confess that I have not taken advantage of the fellowship as I should. The community that is Alcoholics Anonymous has always been there for me. The rooms have always been available. But I have shied away from the institution a great deal. Yes, I have found many alcoholics in my line of work and I have made a point to get to know them. I have a list of people I can call if my back is against the wall and I want to drink.

I have been fortunate to meet a great many people who are in the program who are simply friends of mine that I meet in other contacts. I’m a musician. I’m a scholar. I’m also ordained clergy. So, I actually know a lot of drunks.

Sobriety is strange. It’s often lonely. There are things I still miss. And, though I can go to a bar now, it’s not the same. I quickly lose my tolerance for other people who are getting drunk. I miss nice wine and I miss good scotch. But I don’t miss the blackouts and I don’t miss that shitty feeling that comes and stays for so long as I would have to go through my own memories and the memories of others to piece together the lost evenings.

I don’t miss losing my jobs. I don’t miss the shitty decisions. I don’t miss the relationship drama.

Today I am sober. I have Community. I did not drink.

It’s a goddamn miracle.

Thanks.