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I went to Miami last weekend and it was awesome. I left chilly Connecticut on a week when my kids were going to be home from school for spring break and I landed in Miami to 81 degree weather with just enough breeze to make it feel perfect. Let’s just say that juxtaposition did not break my heart as I pulled out of my driveway and headed for the airport.
I now know that part of traveling is planning to hit at least one meeting. I have had enough experience of going to a new place and camping out in a hotel room by myself to know that I need to stay connected to 12-step recovery. I used to try to make lots of calls to sober friends during any trip. But I found that a meeting in a new place was a) a pretty fun adventure during a road trip and b) a great way to keep me centered. Without the meeting, I would find that on trips I would begin drifting from the solitude of being alone and serene, to just isolation and loneliness.
So the Miami trip was awesome. I got some sun, did my work obligations and felt grateful every minute of what ended up being a pretty difficult trip. I had a slew of logistical and travel dumpster fires, but honestly, I never stopped feeling grateful the entire time, so it was fantastic.
But the main reason I think I ended up feeling grateful was because during what was a 96-hour trip, I hit a meeting right around the 48-hour mark and it was a perfect and necessary halftime. Because I gotta say… I don’t know how I would have done if I had tried to get sober while living in Miami. It is an awesome city, but there is a wildness to it that rocked my serenity a bit.
Let’s start with drugs, alcohol and the overall partying vibe… Miami has to be one of the top two or three cities for partying, right? Maybe it’s Las Vegas at No. 1 and Miami at No. 2? I think there is a case to be made that Miami is actually No. 1. But either way, it’s up there. I ran on a treadmill overlooking Biscayne Bay and good lord, I couldn’t even count the number of million-dollar yachts where people were lugging cases of beer onto all day. It was out of control.
I also was blown away by the sheer amount of money flowing through that city. I lived in New York City for a few years and I certainly felt the overall sense that wealth was around me. But I never felt it oozing out of every pore of so many people the way Miami felt. And I think in that environment, I would have been a disaster trying to get sober. It would have felt like I was always one good scam on a neighbor away from having enough money to keep drinking and drugging. Or I would have ended up borrowing money from that rich guy up the street who says his job is “a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” not repaid the money and ended up floating in Biscayne Bay. It would not have been good.
And the last thing is that I could not believe how good looking people in Miami are. The men are beautiful. The women are beautiful. The freaking dogs are 10s. I really think a stable family life helped me stay grounded as I tried to get sober, so I couldn’t imagine going to rehab in Miami with a bunch of millionaire male and female models who are social media influencers and party animals. It would have been tough to stay on the road to recovery in that setting for me.
But here’s the thing: When I looked up meetings in Miami, there were lots of them. I found one near my hotel and went, and it was awesome. Did it look like an Abercrombie and Fitch photo shoot that I didn’t belong in? A little bit! But once the meeting started, I realized—as I always do—that these were my people… just very buff and good-looking versions of my people.
The meeting was big and in the middle of a cavernous church, so they had microphones they passed around when it was time to share. I don’t usually love that setup because it can feel like people are public address announcers at a rodeo or something. But this meeting worked pretty well, and I enjoyed the honesty. Several of the people who shared mentioned that they grew up in areas other than Miami and then moved there, then they hit their bottom in Miami. This is not a scientific finding, obviously, but those people who were outsiders did all hint at the idea that Miami helped them get to their bottoms faster. It does seem easier to become both broke and broken in a hurry in that city.
I ended up having a great trip despite some significant travel snafus, and I credit that meeting for quite a bit of why it was successful. I re-centered myself on that Friday night, then mostly stayed that way for the duration of the trip. I came back to Connecticut feeling good, with a slight tan and a good outlook heading into the next week. I did end up feeling a kick in the ass about dropping some weight and getting into better shape, so that was a good thing… but I also had an urge to buy a tiny little poodle and walk around all day with him in a man purse on my side. Hopefully that wears off!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
They say that alcoholics have three kinds of memory loss: short-term, long-term, and convenient.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2000, Peter M. from Putnam, Connecticut)
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