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My youngest daughter is in second grade, and her elementary school has an awesome open-door policy that parents can come in and have lunch with their kids any time they want. You go in and get yourself a little tray and then a plate of elementary-school pizza or popcorn chicken and then you walk out into this sea of tiny voices.
The room is always so happy. There are zero conversations about in-laws overstaying their welcome or upcoming layoffs at their workplace or inflation or overdue bills or anything else that might wreck an adult’s day. In there, the conversations are about soccer practice and magic tricks and how to make slime in your dining room. In other words, it’s almost 100 percent joy, with no living in the wreckage of your future or your past. It’s 20 minutes of 100 8-year-olds being completely present, and it is a beautiful thing.
Anyway, there’s one kid who always has some kind of pasta salad dish that his parents pack for him. And for the first 10 minutes of lunch, this kid performs surgery on his lunch. He carefully sifts through the pasta salad and he pulls out every carat, every piece of chopped broccoli, every pea, everything he doesn’t like. And at about the 11th minute, when every gross part of his lunch has been removed, he devours the whole thing. Every single bite.
I bring this up because I have been thinking a lot about some of the many awesome sober people I’ve met over the years who come into recovery, then find one or two things they don’t like, and then they bounce. Some of them I have never seen again. I have no idea if they’re muddling through life still trying to manage their drugs and alcohol, or if they found another way to get sober, or if they’re dead. As I write this, I can think of a few guys who I know died of the disease… all because they didn’t like one or two parts to 12-step recovery.
It’s so tragic. It’s so unfortunate to see somebody let one nitpick prevent them from getting into recovery, but it happens all the time. I think of that kid picking out the things he doesn’t like about his lunch, then smashing the rest of it, and I wish people could do that.
I certainly have had to do that. I’m pretty open about certain things in 12-step recovery not being for me, and that’s okay! In meetings, I constantly hear people—including me sometimes—saying take what you want and leave the rest. Seriously, recovery is a buffet. Fill your plate and leave everything else behind.
To be more specific, let me run through a list of things that have tripped me up in the past:
—God/religion/prayers: This is the No. 1 thing I have heard in my sober time, and it has bothered me before, too. I don’t normally say the Lord’s Prayer at meetings because I think it is a religious prayer, not a recovery prayer. And yes, 12-step recovery programs use the word God a lot. That used to bug me but it doesn’t any more because I think the 12-step programs do an awesome job of explaining how the definition of your higher power is whatever the f**k you want it to be. It doesn’t have to be the religion your parents shoved down your throat, or anything else. You pick! It breaks my heart when just those three letters—G-O-D—make people run from the chance to change their lives for the better.
—Specific people: Surprise, there might be a person (or three!) who make you roll your eyes at a meeting. I’ve found 12-step recovery to be the most delightful batch of people in the world, but of course there are some people who aren’t my cup of tea. I’m not going to act high and mighty on this one, because I have been sober for 14 years and for that entire time, I have come and gone from meetings if there is a personality in there that I don’t like. I try not to ever hate the person or bad mouth them or even be mad about it. I just find another meeting. I know people over the years who get hung up on one or two a******s and they throw out the baby with the bathwater. Hell, they throw out the baby, the soap, the bathtub, the loofahs, everything… all because of one person they don’t like.
—The type of meeting: I’ve seen people who bail on recovery because the way a specific meeting is set up. They say there are too many old-timers… or too much reading… or too many people… or not enough people… or it’s too cliquey… and on and on. Again, I have absolutely felt this way many, many times because I am sick of reading specific books, or I am not in the mood for the format of the meeting. I was going to a few meetings for awhile where we read from a step from the 12 and 12 every week, and I ended up reading each step maybe five or six times in one year. That was enough for me for a little while, so I have been picking different meetings since then to get a breather from the monotony. I also used to go to a popcorn style meeting where whoever shares picks the next person, and I didn’t like getting picked if I didn’t want to share, and I didn’t like not getting picked if I did want to share. Guess what? There was no reason to bail on recovery. I just found other meetings where you could raise your hand.
Okay, I’ll stop there. The reason this pains me so much is because that is not how I drank. I tried every combination humanly possible, over and over and over again, to be able to continue drinking, which I bet is pretty common among my fellow drug addicts and alcoholics. I specifically remember how during my freshman year of college, I should have worn a lab coat all year because I was doing science experiments. Beer before liquor… cheap beer and expensive liquor… expensive beer and cheap liquor… eating bread before I drank so I could drink more later… drinking on an empty stomach so I would get drunk faster and save money… shot-gunning two beers then immediately smoking a cigarette… I tried everything to get the perfect high. Why won’t I do that sometimes in sobriety?
I’m glad that as of right now, on Jan. 10, 2023, I am in a head space more like that kid in the cafeteria, taking out all the vegetables but still enjoying a delicious lunch!
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: “My drinking could be divided into three stages: impulsive, compulsive, and repulsive.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2002, Gary from St. Catherine’s, Ontario)
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