I spent the afternoon with my stomach tied up in anxious knots, turning over reasons not to go to the meeting in my mind- everything from I don’t really want to go to I’ve been sober for a long time and haven’t done AA so I’m not allowed to be there. You know.
The meeting is close to my house. I set a timer to go off when I wanted to leave so I wouldn’t get there way too early and be sitting in the parking lot stoking up my anxiety while I waited for it to be time to go in. I pulled into an almost empty parking lot, realized I had no idea how many people would be there, and panicked a little- what if there were only three of us? That had never occured to me. Oh shit. To make it easy I pulled into a space straight in front of me, turned off the car, and looked in the rearview mirror. A few cars were pulling in, two people were walking up, someone walked into the door of the building.
I was in the right place, which I knew, but somehow the other people being there confirmed it for me and I began to feel a little better. I got out, started walking towards the door while people cheerfully greeted each other. Oh shit my stomach lurched- they know each other and I am a stranger.
I reached the door at the same time as someone else, she chuckled something about the door being unlocked today and then said hello to me. I felt like I was twelve and it was my first day at a new school. I mustered my courage and asked her if this was the meeting I was looking for. She smiled warmly at me. “Yes! Let me show you where to go.”
Recovery is a world. For me it is a place, it is a home. I have made myself a lovely place to live. I am comfortable here. There are so many ways I am thriving mentally, physically, and emotionally. And yet, I have wanderlust. I think sometimes I feel like the recovery I have a handle on is the kind of recovery I need to stay with because it works, I am sober. I need to stay home.
It can be scary to make changes to a thing that is working, especially when it feels like the life I’m living depends on it. An if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it sort of thing. I remember back when I first quit drinking I was nervous about going to AA because I was afraid to be around other alcoholics. I worried that listening to other people talk about their experiences with alcohol would make me want to drink.
I also wanted to get as far away from the alcoholic part of myself as possible. I wanted sober me to get all the attention. I wanted to hear the voice of self preservation that had finally spoken in a way I could understand, not talk out loud in the voice of alcoholism. I didn’t want to bond with people over the way we drank, I wanted alcohol completely out of my life. Forever.
Plus, I had the bad experience in the recovery group I joined when I was six months in. I wasn’t part of the conflict, I was collateral damage, but it was hard enough that it totally turned me off of any kind of group recovery. I thought that the risk of dysfunction would always be lurking, and that any risk wasn’t worth my sobriety.
My alcoholic self got exiled.
Before we got started the leader of the meeting asked me if I wanted to read one of the things you read at the end of the meeting, I will learn what it’s called. I made myself say yes, because I knew it was the best thing for me to do. We went around the room introducing ourselves and I said Hi I’m Amy and forgot to say I’m an alcoholic after. I started to give myself a hard time, losing focus: Great, now everyone knows you don’t belong here, you didn’t say it right. I pulled it back: Everyone knows you’re new. There is no right. Listen.
Then the leader of the meeting read from a little book, the reading was about the past, and help. I’ll learn what that book is called too. I listened as people shared. I knew I wanted to speak. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Someone finished, time was running out. The silence had my name on it. I started to speak.
I’m Amy. I’m an alcoholic. My voice shook, I tried to speak up so people could hear me, to look around the room, just like my twelfth grade english teacher taught me. I cried as I talked about how, for me, the past is a thing I have been pushing ahead of me. How coming to AA is pulling my past towards me.
I don’t know how to be in recovery in AA. I don’t know the culture or the customs, the landscape or the language. Because my way of doing recovery is a home to me, it feels like I’m thinking about moving away. Going to meetings is like I’m already packing up boxes and I start to feel homesick for a place I actually don’t have to leave. I’m curious how I’m going to combine them, how they will blur together.
I’m going to the meeting again today. Today I’ll be a familiar face to some people. I know they’ll be glad I’m back, and I will too.
Hey Amy! As a recovering addict, alcoholic & trauma survivor... I was CRIPPLED with anxiety as well. It hindered EVERYTHING. CAUSED me to cry while speaking in public while everything inside of me was screaming to speak and help others with my truth. I finally went to a psychiatrist & figured out I have a bipolar brain and found a medicine (the ANTIPSYCHOTIC Seroquel) and I cannot express how much of my anxiety is COMPLETELY GONE. I now speak in meetings with clarity and strength... Shocked by my own strength. I share with you this because sometimes in this recovery our nervous systems need the help of modern medicine. Your brain mAy be different from mine but give it some research. And thought. Anxiety was such a killer. I pray you find the right resolution so that you too.. can be free of it. Only love, Joshua. ⭐
Yay! So glad you made it. Something to keep in mind... you have a completely unique experience in sobriety (actually, everyone does), and sharing it with others -- even just sharing space in a room with them -- is uniquely valuable to our collective project of recovery, and contributes something to that project. You're being of service just by showing up. So thanks!