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I had a very interesting conversation a few years ago with someone in sobriety who was extremely aggravated about the behavior of some other people at meetings. He said a guy had started coming to a specific meeting with a guitar, and he would sometimes raise his hand to share. Then he would say a few words before telling everybody he wanted to sing a song for them.
I had to laugh, because I’ve never seen that or heard about something like that. And I will admit, if the moment presented itself, I’d probably tell the guy there’s a time and place for playing music, and meetings aren’t it.
It got me thinking about a bad tendency of mine, which has gotten better over the years but still exists: I kinda want to be the sheriff of Sobrietyville. I should be keeping an eye on how people park, how they share, whether they’re on their phone too much, whether their share is enough about the topic, etc.
I’ve run into trouble in the past with this concept of policing recovery meetings. My worst one was when I knew a guy was celebrating his anniversary before his actual anniversary, which is a no-no in my head. Recovery is a one-day-at-a-time thing, and celebrating a year sober when you have 11 months and 12 days is different than having one year. I think most sober people would agree with that.
The guy was pissed, and he yelled at me for not minding my own business. When I shared that anecdote with other sober people, they agreed—with him. They told me to butt out, that I was playing the director role that is discussed various places in sober literature. I need to be an actor who plays his part to the best of his ability, and that’s it. No stage-managing.
See, nobody voted me deputy lieutenant of the sobriety monitoring division. Nobody ever even thought about putting me in that position, or creating that position in any way for anybody.
The one caveat to that is that I do think there are egregious behaviors that the principles of my recovery program require me to speak up about. The biggest one is inappropriate romantic behavior at meetings. I’ve seen it a few times and it hasn’t only been men… but it’s usually dudes hitting on people that they shouldn’t. We even have a term for that—13th stepping. In that case, I have always pulled the guy aside and said, “Hey man, you really think you should be getting that young woman’s phone number? She has 15 days sober and you have 3 years.” Luckily, that has seemed to be enough.
The other big one—which I have not seen first-hand—is any kind of safety violation, physical confrontation, or threatening behavior. That’s unacceptable, too, in my opinion. I feel like every person who wants to get sober deserves to have a place to come where they won’t get harassed or threatened.
After that, it’s a really tough call. I have had issues with cross talk at meetings, where I thought people were inappropriately directly addressing others at a meeting. In those cases, I usually bite my tongue and then cave in and say something to the person. I once pushed hard at business meetings for a specific meeting that we needed to add a strong anti-crosstalk statement, and we did add it.
Did people actually follow that request that we added? Not really. That meeting was a little later at night, and nobody seemed to mind. At the end of the day, I had to learn that every meeting is autonomous. If a meeting’s members wants to be rowdier than I personally like, who I am to be reprimanding people? I’ll never forget going to a meeting in Virginia once at 9 pm on a Saturday night and the chairperson introduced the topic as page 69 from the Big Book, which happens to talk openly about sex.
He proceeded to make multiple wisecracks that were pretty sexually suggestive and gross, and my eyes bulged out of my head. It’s one thing if some newcomer wilds out and goes rogue about sex at a meeting. But the chairperson, who happened to be celebrating 10 years sober? Not cool, in my book.
I didn’t say anything but I must have had a pretty nasty look on my face because an older woman pulled me aside afterward. She said, “It was great to have you at this meeting. I wanted to just let you know that this is a meeting that we have voted to keep in this spot on Saturday nights, with this vibe, because that’s what we wanted to provide to sober people. Not all meetings are like this. But as you could see, we have a lot of younger people come in, and we wanted an environment that is a little more PG-13.”
I smiled and nodded my head, and I left with a warm feeling in my stomach. At the end of the day, I don’t have to go to meetings more than once if I don’t want to. And if people want to act like drunken rugby players talking about sex, or play a sweet guitar melody for their share, if that’s what a group wants, who am I to jump in with my sheriff’s hat on?
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:
HEARD AT MEETINGS: “I didn’t know I was sick until I started getting better.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2001, Kari B. from Brooklyn, New York)
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