It took me more than a month after quitting drinking to get into a 12-Step meeting. A former bartender, who used to give me rides home from the bar because she didn't trust me to get home in a cab, called me up and offered me a ride. I had no idea she wasn't a drinker. I thought I'd go to a meeting to humor her, and then tell her it wasn't for me. But when I got there, I liked it. I enjoyed the story the speaker told. I thought it would be easy to go and sit in the back of these things and drink coffee.
But after a few meetings, it was really getting to me. I was still less than broke, and though I wasn't drinking, I wasn't having any fun either. I looked around at everyone, and they seemed different. One guy talked about living in his car during his bottom; I thought he was pretty lucky to have a car. Another man talked about hiding his drinking from his wife and children; a man with a family who would stand with him through all this was truly fortunate. I was the outsider again, until I ran into an old friend of mine who was a few weeks sober.
“F___,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
“Hey,” he told me, “I got sober a couple of weeks ago. How are you doing?”
“I'm okay, but these people are driving me nuts.”
“You gotta come with me to BNO.”
“What's that?” I asked.
“It's a men's meeting on Valencia on Tuesdays. You'll like it.”
I looked up the meeting on my schedule. Boys' Night Out. Sounded like a scout meeting or a bunch of gay men going shopping. But I trusted F___, and gave it a shot.
Outside the meeting, it looked like bands were about to play. There were punks, skins, and rockabilly guys of all sizes, shapes, and colors. They were all chain-smoking and hitting each other.
Running the meeting was a celebrity musician guy. He was in one of the bands that had broken through to the mainstream and had been played extensively on MTV. I didn't know what to think. Didn't he have his shit together? Why was he going to meetings? I read in SPIN or some shit that the whole band had gotten sober in the '90s. I figured he must have relapsed or something. Later I found out he had eight or nine years, which seemed like forever to me. I had no idea why anyone who had more than a year sober would go to a meeting.
When the meeting started, all hell broke loose. They opened with “a moment of violence followed by the Serenity Prayer,” in which they all turned to a neighboring stooge and punched the crap out of his arm. They relentlessly heckled the guys who read the steps and traditions. They made Yo Momma jokes during peoples' shares. This is what F___ had in mind? These scumbags were going to save my life? They couldn't even shoot dope right, according to their own stories. How were they going to help me? Depression overwhelmed me.
Who are these happy arm-punching motherfuckers? What's so funny? I am trying to get sober, and they're cutting up and acting like they're in some dumbass locker room. If they had towels, they'd be snapping each others' asses by now. How the hell am I supposed to get sober? At least they're not the weird meditation and God people from the other meetings, I thought.
As an alcoholic, I didn't spend precious money paying cover charges for bands. I stayed home and drank whiskey with the money. The drinks in the clubs and bars were way overpriced. I often got way too wasted at the clubs anyway, and had to spend more money on cabs to get home.
As a freshly sober guy trying to remember what he did for fun, I started going to clubs again to watch bands. It was like going back to my old hometown: I remembered the way but couldn't remember the name of streets. I got to the club and paid my way in on instinct. It had been a long time.
Not getting a whiskey right away was unnatural. Was everyone staring at me? Could they all tell I was stone-cold sober? Would the bartenders be mad if I didn't drink? Out of place, out of sync, out of step. Once again, I didn't fit in, and the whiskey urged me to make it go away.
Off to the side of the regular crowd stood a handful of guys from BNO. I had never been so happy to see anyone from a meeting. I walked up to them. They stared blankly at me, sizing me up.
“I was at BNO on Tuesday,” I yelled into a guy's ear.
“How much time you got?” he yelled back.
“Six weeks.”
“First six months are the hardest,” he said. “Keep coming back.”
Somewhere in all that mess of fast music and BO I figured it out. These weren't Straight Edgers; these were Clean and Sober Punx. I'd jumped myself into a gang by abusing drugs and alcohol for fifteen years. I gave up my Loner colors, and let myself stand with others.
Get the Fuck Up
We've been there and come back. When you fall in the pit, people are supposed to help you up. But you have to get up on your own. We'll take your arms, but you'll have to get your legs underneath you and stand again.
My advice to you is simple: Get up. You're not going to get any better lying there like that. I know, it hurts, but you have to get up and walk it off. Get up. No one is going to help you. Get up. You have a whole life to live. Right now, you're stuck in the quicksand of self-pity, and you're asking for a rope of acknowledgment. I know it's my metaphor, but that rope isn't going to hold. That self-pity is going to destroy any chance you have at happiness, and it will eventually spiral out and destroy your relationships and your social life.
My advice to you is simple: Get up. You're not going to get any better lying there like that.
Finding a Sponsor
This may be your most difficult task if you are an atheist in a12-Step program. Many sponsors won't put up with your atheist lifestyle; they'll likely read you a part of the Big Book, which, on the surface, seems to condemn atheism. If you read it more closely, it suggests that the road to recovery for an atheist will be more difficult.
Really, though, get a sponsor. Remember that your sponsor is only there to help you work the steps. He or she is not your best friend, your coach, your employment agent, or your therapist. Your sponsor is an equal to you. But your sponsor should be someone who's seen the program work a lot of different ways and has been through all the steps a number of times. The steps are trickier than they look initially; in fact, they're pretty vague.
Your sponsor shouldn't worry about your version of the Higher Power concept. He's not there to debate the cosmic structure with you or tell you to go to church. If your sponsor decides that he's going to give you advice about anything other than working the steps, maybe you should get another one. But be nice about it. He's only trying to help. Conversely, don't expect too much from your sponsor. Your sponsor is there for you, but it's you who has to do the actual work. This is like the rest of your recovery, as you have to take responsibility for your own actions. It's up to you to get your step work done.
Creating a Community
The 12-Step community relies upon stories for the core of its communication. They may call them “shares,” but it's the same thing. The have a beginning, middle, and end, usually with a message. Sometimes it's a long meandering methadone ramble, but usually there's a point.
Feasibly, you can work steps on your own. It's good to have the initiative to do things at your own pace. But to gain the recovery that 12 Step offers, you really need to participate in a community. This is why I strongly discourage people who want to quit using without getting involved in a program. Users usually carry a lot of pain and misery that they don't need. Isolation makes the heart grow somber. Misery loves company, especially company more miserable than itself.