Tann & Abbs chilling out at Salem Harbor

I hear it all the time, “You’ve been sober for a while now, why do you still go to meetings?  Don’t you think you’ve logged enough hours in AA that you don’t need to still spend time there?”

Last night my reason for doing what I do, by going to meetings without fail, was right in my face.

I have a friend who has come to mean the world to me.  When we are together I am filled with a joyful feeling and know that I am with a woman that God put on this planet for me to meet!  Do you know that feeling?  I’ve only experienced it with a few friends, but those moments have been defining moments in my life: meeting someone you’re sure you’ve known before, or for your whole life…

We go to a meeting together on Tuesday nights.  I pick her up at her house, and I’m always a little early because we love the time we can spend together.  We have a 25 minute ride to our meeting and the ride home.  When I say that I look forward to this time together all week, it would be an understatement!  This is a woman who somehow shares my soul; who I would protect from the rotten gossip mongers of her town, if I could and someone I am able to be “myself” with — which I’m finding is a very rare occurrence. 

Like the weeks prior, I arrived at her door last night to pick her up for our meeting and I was met by a scene that was surreal: her young teen sons came to the door looking like deer caught in the headlights.  I knew immediately that something was very wrong…if there is such a thing as mental telepathy, their message to me was clear it was simply…HELP!

It took about a minute and  a half to realize that she had been drinking — heavily — for hours.  The looks on her boys’ faces suddenly made sense.  She could barely talk and if I hadn’t been so angry I would have cried.  It’s amazing how the mind of an alcoholic works; she actually tried to make me think she hadn’t been drinking!  She said she thought she could fool me and we’d just go out and have a great night like we’ve done on Tuesdays past. 

Alcoholism is such a nasty disease.  Just when your head settles down and you have some time under your belt, sober, that disease speaks to you, in your own voice and tells you that it’ll be okay if you have a drink. The worst part is that most of us, who are either not being completely honest with ourselves (and another) or who have decided we no longer need meetings — well, we believe that voice.  We want, desperately, to drink and the first time that hint crosses our mind…it’s hard to get past.

I went into the living room to speak with her boys and I said this:  “You know what’s going on, right?  You know your mom has been drinking.”  They knew.  I told them that they may feel angry toward her and they said it’s not so much anger as it is disappointment (what smart boys).  I said to them, “Please know that because she drank, it doesn’t make your mother a bad person or turn her into someone you shouldn’t love, or respect; it just means that she IS an alcoholic.  And there’s nothing wrong with being an alcoholic because I can guarantee you both, she didn’t ask for this thing.”  They seemed relieved.  I asked if they’d spoken to their dad and they said they had.  I asked if he knew their mom had been drinking and they said he did.  He was scheduled to be home within the next 20 minutes so I knew the boys, incredibly responsible for their young ages, would be fine.  I offered them my ear, if they ever felt they needed to talk — to someone who also has the same disease as their mom…and we left it at that.

Just 2 days ago I asked a friend about a woman who had been coming to meetings a couple of years back and I was curious to know how she was doing, because it had been a long time since I’d seen her.  Let me tell you a little about this woman; she was not yet 40 and she was married to a man who loved her dearly.  She had two sons, ran her own very successful business and lived in a beautiful house in one of the most pristine towns North of Boston.  She was a total success story.  She had a soft, sweet voice and was a beautiful woman; inside and out.  I knew she’d struggled with trying to stay sober and never seemed to have more than a week or two of sobriety before taking a nose-dive into the depths of alcoholism again and again.  When I asked my friend how she was doing, he got a look on his face and said, “She died in March.”  I hadn’t seen her because she’d moved to a city closer to Boston once she lost her whole life; including her boys and husband and house and business.  My friend said, “Yeah, she called me about a month earlier and said she was trying to stay sober and that she felt she was doing well.”  When in actuality just a few weeks later she went on a “Weekend Bender” and wound up dead.  My heart just sank.  I know for a fact that it’s hard to stay sober, especially when life isn’t going my way.  But I also know, without a doubt, that if I pick up a drink there is no telling where I’ll end up — drunk in my kitchen, denying I’d been drinking or dead. 

I do what I do because today I want to live.  And if by my living and going to meetings helps one person have the guts and determination it takes to stay away from a drink, then I will be a screaming success.  That’s why I still go to meetings: to keep my disease from tricking me into thinking it’ll be okay for me to drink, and to hopefully, be someone that others can look to and know that if I can do it — then THEY can do it, too!

xoxo