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I get to travel a lot for work, and I always find myself landing at an airport in a new place and thinking, “I wonder if there are any sober people here.” The answer always is, holy s**t, yep, there are plenty of alcoholics and addicts here!
On this trip, I headed for Lincoln, Nebraska, and guess what, there were dozens of 12-step meetings to attend. I picked one and went on Sunday, and, as usual, it was a fascinating experience. I almost always find it very interesting how sobriety happens in other places because there are usually some distinct differences, and this was certainly another example of that idea.
The meeting I went to was in a church that was a recovery club, which is something I have never seen before in my 15 years of sobriety. The recovery club was about 30 years old, and they had bought an old church and set up shop. They hold multiple different 12-step meetings there, and I went to a meeting that was held in the main church area.
I’ve never had the experience of a 12-step meeting in the open church area. It was a giant room, with rows and rows and rows of pews, and a high ceiling. There was a coffee pot brewing in the back of the room, and the coffee commitment person even took the coffee pot around the room halfway through and gave refills to whoever wanted them. Speakers all had to go to the front and stand at a podium with a microphone. Because the room was cavernous and people often would raise their hand and then make the long walk to the front of the church, there was a lot of clapping and cheering… the whole thing felt more like an awards ceremony than a meeting, and I was loving it. It felt very celebratory.
It was a speaker meeting, and the woman who shared was really good. She’d been sober for decades, and there were two things she specifically said that made me think. One was that she stopped drinking and realized she had never really felt feelings, and that that took many years of work to figure out. I get that. It’s pretty hard to numb out for 10 years (or more) and then expect to know how to process anger, sadness, self-pity, etc.
The second thing she talked about was the value of friction with sober friends. She talked about having people who really challenged her throughout her recovery, to the point where she would stop speaking with them for periods of time, and her point was that that was good, that she needed some people to call her out on her b******t. She mentioned a few times that if the only person pushing her was herself, she might not have stayed sober.
At the end of the meeting, the treasurer grabbed me and showed me around. He showed me some very cool 12-step history stuff that this meeting had acquired, and it was almost like a mini museum of recovery history. He even pointed toward a flight of stairs into the basement and invited me to go check out what he described as a sobriety archive. I had enjoyed the meeting but decided that I was done with my spiritual growth for the day and I got the hell out of there before I could possibly learn anything else. I mean, there was football to watch, right?
Listen, I am still a work in progress. Maybe next time I hit Lincoln, I will spend some time in the archive… unless there are no alcoholics in Lincoln at that time.
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:
LATTE LAUGHS
I was running late to a meeting where I was the scheduled speaker. As I got out of the car I spilled my iced latte down the front of my shirt and there was no opportunity to change clothes. I solved the problem when I got to the podium and introduced myself: "Hi, my name is Jan, and I have a drinking problem!"
(Credit: Grapevine, by Jan R. of Durham, NC)
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