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I used to cringe about the word “fellowship,” because I’d only ever experienced it being said at churches that I never connected with. I didn’t want any shipping with any of those fellows.
But we use that word quite a bit in recovery, and I have grown to love both the term and what it means. When I think about my recovery, I need the meetings. I need the literature. I need a sponsor. I need to sponsor people. But I need fellowship more than anything else. For me, fellowship is the glue that holds all of the other things together. I need the connection to other recovering people, then that helps me tack on all the other parts. They’re all important in their own ways. But for me, fellowship is the sun that everything else orbits around. I think if I read literature for two hours a day, went to meetings twice a day, called my sponsor twice a day and talked to my sponsees for an hour every day, I’d be doing okay. But just ok. My recovery would be wobblier, that’s for sure. I need fellowship.
So what exactly is fellowship? Is it just shooting the breeze before and after meetings with people? I think that is the most commonly associated thing with the term fellowship. But my definition is more expansive. I think good fellowship means you talk to some people after the meeting in the parking lot AND you grab their phone number and follow up. I think it means having a rotation of 10 or so very solid recovery people who you connect with every week.
For me, these people can be friends but don’t have to be. What do I mean by that? I mean that I don’t necessarily need to go to the movies with my fellowship buddies. I don’t need to go on golf outings. I don’t need to talk politics with them. I don’t need them to housesit for me when I am away.
I certainly have crossed over into the friendship zone with my recovery fellows. In fact, I encourage it. I’ve found that the Venn diagram between my friends and my sober fellows has gotten smaller and smaller, meaning more and more sober people are the people that I want to hang out with, go on outings with, have barbecues with, everything that friends do together. But for me, the center of that universe is recovery at all times. I definitely talk about politics and sports and food and a million other topics with them, but the starting point with most of my sober friends is recovery, not golf trips or sporting events. I try to never lose focus on the roots of those relationships, which are the ways in which I want to try to find a new way of living.
The cool thing about having lots of sober friends is that I don’t have to worry about too many things that I don’t want in my life any more. By that, I mean that when I get together with old high school or college buddies, there’s often boozing, weed, ridiculously late nights, dumb s**t-talking and mean gossiping. I’ve been invited to casinos and strip clubs to hang out and reminisce, and I have to pass on those invites. I have yet to have a sober friend ask me to hit the craps table or get 100 $1 bills for the ladies over at Tootsie’s.
One other important note that I have learned from fellowship—how to actually be a friend. I never really developed good friend skills before I got sober and even a few years into sobriety. My opinion these days is that a friend will tell you something you don’t want to hear but need to hear. A friend doesn’t dare you to pull the fire alarm at the hotel you’re at because it would be funny. A friend doesn’t let you rail against your ex-husband or ex-wife in a self-pity rage without telling you that that’s not helping anybody. Basically, a real friend who cares about you will call you on your b******t. I used to not want that. I wanted people who “had my back”—a phrase that I corrupted into meaning that they covered for all my b******t. Yes, I want people who have my back… but I don’t want anybody who’s going to co-sign on bad behaviors for me any more. No thank you.
And if you’re reading or listening to this newsletter, you know that I still have a lot of bad behaviors. So I will keep trying to find good friends!
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 skeptical newcomer just couldn’t see how the first drink could get her drunk. A seasoned old-timer helped out. “When you get run over by a train, which kills you—the locomotive or the caboose?”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2001, Anonymous)
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