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During the pandemic, I hit a lot of Zoom meetings that were official 12-step group meetings. But I also joined a few small groups of 10-15 sober friends that would be classified as unofficial sobriety groups. We would read from recovery literature and say the serenity prayer and most of the things that you’d see at a normal meeting. But they weren’t formal 12-step meetings.
At one of those meetings, we had about 8 people show up. The chairperson for the day brought a reading from sober literature and read it. Then it was her turn to share, and she said she was having a hard day, in the middle of a hard week, in the middle of a hard month, in the middle of a hard year. She was having a hard time.
She said, “I kind of just want to scream. Does anybody mind if I scream?” Nobody said anything on camera. A few people gave a thumbs up, and she just let out a scream. It was about a 7 out of 10 on the scream scale, so she wasn’t going to get hired by any haunted houses this Halloween.
But she let out the scream, and then she started laughing. Everybody did. We could all relate. When it was my turn to share, I said I wanted to scream, too, so I let one out myself. I’d say mine was like a 4 out of 10. Pretty weak.
I was thinking about that this week because sober people can often be the only audience where I can really let it rip with whatever I am feeling. You can’t really call up your boss and say, “Hey, mind if I start today’s meeting with a scream?” I don’t really want to scream at the family dinner table, and I definitely don’t want to do it at the gym or when I am picking up my kids at school.
It’s not so much what people will think of me, though there is a part of that that is true—you don’t want to be known at your company as the person who screams at meetings. That is not something to put in your end-of-year employee review!
It’s mostly that sober people are such a safe audience, and I think that’s mostly because good sobriety usually means you are constantly looking for ways to identify with others, not feel inferior or superior. So that’s why when someone says they’re losing their s**t and want to scream, 7 sober people nod their heads—they get it, and they understand that they have wanted to scream many times themselves. I rarely feel any kind of judgment.
Now let me say, I don’t know that I would scream at a big recovery meeting in front of 50 other people. But I would definitely gather around 3 or 4 friends afterward and give them a big ol’ scream if I needed to. I always say that having sober friends is an incredible, incredible gift that we have for any number of reasons, and now I can add a new one: people to scream with.
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:
Walking his beat in a big city park one moonlit evening, a policeman noticed a stooped-over drunk teetering perilously on the edge of a small lake. The drunk seemed to be admiring his reflection. "Hey," warned the Law, "stand up from there!"
The inebriate didn't raise his head.
"You," said the Law, "get away from that lake."
Slowly turned the drunk. He pointed at a face in the water. "Offisher, who's zat feller?"
The constable moved alongside. "Him?" he asked. "That's you. Now, see the cop? That's me."
Enraptured by the beauty and poetry of it all, the drunk clapped his hands. "S'wunnerful," he exclaimed. "And who izzat feller with the pale, round face? See 'im? He's peekin' over bur shoulders."
"That," sighed the gendarme, "that is the moon."
"Moon?" marveled the drunk.
"Moon," firmly insisted the copper. "Luna."
Suddenly, a great truth dawned. "Wheee!" shouted the stew, joyously, "Ain't we high up!"
(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 1948)
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