Sobriety: Epilogue

Last night I found myself with a consecutive evening and morning off. Ever since I realized that my 6-month sobriety Birthday had gone by without my ever even noticing, I've been looking around at my life and realizing how little it resembles the disaster that I was living through the first few months that I was here. It's been making me realize how happy my life is these days, and spawning daily Mary Tyler Moore "You're gonna make it after all!" moments. And while Boston (and the rest of the country) is buried under about 6 feet of snow, we've been having clear, sunny days here in San Francisco. I've actually had some free time in the middle of the day to go out and enjoy the views (views are something you don't always get in Fog City, so I enjoy them when I can).

The other morning I went to the beach to do a barefooted sand run in the waves (in January! Life is so good!). I was in the extreme southwest corner of the city when I got in my car and realized that I'd done the math wrong. I needed to be in Chinatown in the extreme northeastern corner of the city (about 13 miles away), parked, changed, and ready to teach a Spin class in 34 minutes. Oh. Fuck.

Once I realized how fucked I was, things started going wrong. I started hitting every light wrong. I kept winding up in the wrong lane. I blew out my flip flop. People (old, slow people) always wanted to cross the crosswalk when I wanted to make a right turn. I was working myself up into a frenzy when suddenly I remembered, Oh yeah. God. It's not that I started to believe in God when I was in AA, but I saw the value of turning over things that were beyond my control to some force greater than myself. It didn't really matter if it was true, at least I'd stop making stupid mistakes because I was frustrated. I did make it to my Spin class with a couple of minutes to spare, by the way.

I hadn't given any thought to God since I spent all that time in churches when I first got here. I'd forgotten all about Him, or that I had ever even considered a spiritual corner of my life. I had also completely forgotten about all the other AA skills that I'd learned, and hadn't even thought of most of the people I'd met through AA since I stormed out of my last Meeting. I wondered if they thought I'd relapsed. I wondered if anyone even gave it a second thought. And didn't I have a chip coming to me?

So last night I went back to the Meeting that used to be my "Home Group" (not because I'd chosen it to be so, but because it seemed to be the one I could make it to most consistently). This was the Meeting where all the same girls said all the same things every week and I could never get called on. Before I even went to the church, I went into a market to find myself some dinner. I remembered with some satisfaction that the last time I had gone to this Meeting, I had mostly gone for the free cookies because I couldn't afford food. Thank god that I wasn't trying to go to Meetings anymore, because all the Meetings are at times when now I'm with clients and earning money.

While I was skulking around the organic foods, I saw one of the Super Sponsors that always gets to talk waist deep in the refrigerator case. I ran around the corner into the cracker aisle before she got a chance to see me. As soon as I saw her, I had that yucky feeling under my skin that I get when I revisit a really unpleasant time in my life. I wanted nothing to do with this Fellowship! However, hiding was ridiculous and finally I let her see me, waited for her at the door to finish paying, and then walked to the church with her.

She asked how I was doing. I felt positively buoyant compared to how I'd felt the last time I made that walk. Once I let go of all that AA rigidity, life had taken on a momentum of its own. I asked her how she was doing. "Wonderful. It'll be four years next week, God willing," she said. God willing?! I thought. After 4 years can't you take just a little bit of credit and trust just a little bit in momentum? Maybe if she hadn't been so preoccupied with thinking about how close she was to her next drink all the time, then she could have actually enjoyed her accomplishment, but whatever. It made me pity her.

In the church I found the Girl Who Used to Stare at Me and caught up with her. "Are you still going to a Meeting every day?" I asked.

"Yep, pretty much. I find it keeps me much more sane," she said. For real?! I thought. My skin was crawling more than ever breathing the same air that I used to when I was going so crazy. Looking back, I feel like the sun came out and everything started working out for me when I dropped AA. When you're on the right path, doors open automatically...

There were some new faces, but most of the same chicks who always talked in the Meeting were still there. I wondered how many of the missing faces had relapsed and how many were just going to other Meetings. We read a short chapter from the Big Book, and in my head I thought, "Just my luck, I came for a boring one." There was just nothing in this whole story that I could relate to at all. I thought that everyone else must feel the same. The guy didn't even talk that much about drinking, it was mostly just about the logistics of getting AA off the ground in the early days in Canada. Who cares about Canada 80 years ago? I figured it would be a quiet day, since you had to at least make it seem like you were relating your Share to the Big Book reading.

The first girl spoke. "I am just so, so, so, so blown away by this story. I actually started getting teared up at the part about..." Huh? Even more so than ever before I felt like I'd wandered into a cult meeting.

All the same girls made all the same Shares about all the same vague shit, dropping in their AA jargon and saying, "Welcome to the newcomers..." and "thanking everyone for their shares." Some things never change (God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...).

By the end of the Meeting, I couldn't have been more certain that I'd made the right decision about walking away from AA four months ago, and wondered why it had even taken me that long. I needed an alcohol-free life to get sane again and move on. These girls weren't living an alcohol-free life. They were coming back to alcohol at every single Meeting. Even after four years, the girl in the market's entire life still revolved around booze. I wondered if you compared all the time she spent going to Meetings and talking to her sponsor and sponsees, if she had actually spent that much time drinking four years ago. I doubted it.

Still, when they passed around the collection plate for the Seventh Tradition, I put money in. And in the final Serenity Prayer, I held everyone's hand and chanted, "Keep coming back, it works!" with everyone else. Because it does work for some people. I was just so, so grateful that I wasn't one of them.

After the Meeting was over, I tracked down the girl that I had spoken to before my last Meeting; the one who had warily given me her blessing to leave AA. "I'm glad to see you," she said. "I was worried about you."

"I am so, so, so good!" I told her. "It was the right decision, for me. Life is falling back into place like I hoped it would. I just thought I'd swing by now that I finally feel like I've got my head on straight to see if it changed anything. I don't think it would be wise to close the door on AA altogether," I said, although I was pretty sure AA would never be a part of my daily life again.

"Well I worry about all alcoholics who are out there on their own, but I'm glad you're doing well. Come back and visit again sometime."

"Sure," I said. "I'll have another milestone in six months."