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When I first got sober, I lived in New Jersey and worked in New York City. So I started out going to New York meetings in the afternoon every day of the work week. But I also traveled a lot, so I’d end up in Pennsylvania or Florida or some other state for five days, and I was so used to only going to NYC meetings that I would struggle without my meetings.
That’s when somebody told me that I should find a meeting wherever I am because it was worth it. I’ll never forget him also saying, “And hey, it’s pretty fun to hear new people in a new place at a new meeting talk about how they got sober. It can be pretty amusing.”
That has been one of the most helpful things anybody said to me. The truth is, road trips of any kind are pretty jarring. I’m talking about family trips and vacations, but also any work-related trips, too. Think about all the ways you’re out of whack. You’re not sleeping where you are comfortable. You’re eating different stuff—probably crappier food, if you’re anything like me. You’re probably at extreme levels of isolation or togetherness—by that, I mean you’re probably either crammed into Grandma’s guest bedroom with your spouse and kids, or by yourself in a hotel room. It’s intense, either way.
So all of that adds up to really throwing off even the most sober people. It certainly does that to me. So I recognized that that guy was right all those years ago, and I started trying to hit a meeting every time I am out of town. And sure enough, I got a lot of spiritual nourishment out of it and they kept me sober… but I also got to experience different and unusual ways for meetings and sobriety to happen, and that was so cool.
All right, that is a long setup for my most recent road trip, out to the great state of Wyoming. On the flight in, I couldn’t believe the mountains and the snow and the hundreds of miles of openness on the ground. Then I couldn’t believe the wind, because our plane started blowing around like a tumbleweed in the sky and it scared the living s**t out of me.
But we landed, and I immediately looked up local 12-step meetings. I found a group that met twice a day that was about one mile from my hotel. What a gift, right? I always end up in places where my first thought is, “Hmm, I wonder if they even have alcoholics out here?” The answer is yes. It’s always yes. We’re everywhere.
I checked into my hotel and hit the evening meeting up the street, which I am pretty proud of. Like I said, I always try to make a meeting in the place I am staying. But if I can, I go to more than one. Why not be as sober as possible, versus doing the bare minimum? On this trip, I stayed for four days and hit three meetings.
The first night, they were celebrating anniversaries, and this meeting had a bunch of them. One woman was celebrating 35 years sober, and she was asked, “How’d you do it?” She shared for about 10 minutes and it was great, and one of her points was that as she looked out around the room at the birthday celebrants, she noticed yet again that there were long periods of sobriety and short periods of sobriety… but not a lot of mediums. And as the other celebrants announced their sober time the rest of the meeting, I noticed that she was right. There were people celebrating 35 years, 28 years and 15 years, and then lots of three months and six months. But there weren’t any three years or six years.
She ultimately made a broader point that it is pretty easy for sobriety to get stale. She said she uses that word carefully, because she doesn’t think it has anything to do with sobriety getting stale. She said it’s when we get promoted and married and have our first kid and pay off our bills and life is pretty good… we start to think we know what we’re doing. We’re not as teachable. We’re too busy to work with others. The steps become tools we used to use, not tools that we use on a daily basis.
I found myself nodding along, because that’s been one of the biggest landmines in my recovery. I got sober because I was absolutely broken and desperate. So it makes sense that the minute that my ass isn’t on fire I would start to think I figured it all out.
That lady’s share really helped me, but I couldn’t help looking at my phone clock as she got to five minutes, then eight minutes, then 10 minutes. I was looking around the room at the other 30 people and thinking, “Geez, lady, wrap it up and leave some time for the rest of us to speak.” But then I remembered that nobody elected me the new president of sobriety in Wyoming, and that if this meeting allows anniversary celebrants to share as long as they want, I should shut the f— up and listen.
And it also made me chuckle a little bit because while she was sharing about how it’s usually not good to think you have it all figured out… I was 15 minutes into my recovery time in Wyoming and thinking I had it all figured out for this meeting. Oh well, live and learn. Thanks to my sober friends in the wild, wild sober west for getting me through a visit!
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:
A TRUE STORY:
A woman at my meeting told us about leaving another meeting the other night and discovering that her car had a flat tire. She called her auto club to come and fix it. Knowing that it might take a while for the service to arrive, some of her friends from the meeting stayed and waited with her.
She called her husband to let him know what was going on, and he asked, "How many alcoholics does it take to change a flat tire?"
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2008, by Jean M. of Export, Pa.)
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