Once I was drunk for seven years: 2007-2014. Outside of a bravado-filled 46 days in 2009 proving my ability to quit “anytime I wanted,” inebriation welcomed me on a daily basis as did its hungover companion the following morning. I have since, on the counsel of friends and family, sought treatment for what I have come to accept as alcoholism.
Among those seven years of blackout drinking, I had crafted a method to deal with my feelings: I suppressed them. The first few months of sobriety hurt because of this; as the newly sober can attest, I was suddenly forced to feel the feelings once quashed with wine, then vodka, then wine (I called it a vodka sandwich). In those months, emotions streamed through my detoxing body as tears poured out of it; years of suffocated or recklessly abandoned emotions from break-ups, missed flights, public humiliation, blackouts, fights with cabbies, and waking up with a stranger inside of me unleashed and tore through my body and were dying to get out...I was dying to get out.
So, it’s not new information--quitting drinking sucks. One of the biggest disappointments of early sobriety is getting hit with the reality that it doesn't fix all the wreckage I caused while I was out there disrespecting friends and family. There are some people who gave me more chances than I deserve, and others who will rightfully never speak to me again...but sobriety only turned me from a lonely drunk to a lonely sober drunk. At least at the beginning.
All that changed when I walked into a dimly-lit, coffee-infused room. I suddenly became surrounded by more people, receiving more phone calls, and squirming out of more hugs than ever in my life. This was Alcoholics Anonymous. When attending meetings during the first three months of sobriety, I surrounded myself with a protective force field (manifested in a triple-sized hoodie) and sat in the back of the room assuming the worst in others and comparing my insides to their outsides. I fucking hated their outsides. I kept my distance from their freak show. Strange that after years of drinking with the lowest forms of companionship in the Western and Eastern worlds, the sober people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous struck me as the vilest of degenerates.
All that changed when I walked into a dimly-lit, coffee-infused room. I suddenly became surrounded by more people, receiving more phone calls, and squirming out of more hugs than ever in my life. This was Alcoholics Anonymous. When attending meetings during the first three months of sobriety, I surrounded myself with a protective force field (manifested in a triple-sized hoodie) and sat in the back of the room assuming the worst in others and comparing my insides to their outsides. I fucking hated their outsides. I kept my distance from their freak show. Strange that after years of drinking with the lowest forms of companionship in the Western and Eastern worlds, the sober people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous struck me as the vilest of degenerates.
And while they did seem like nice enough people, they weren't really part of the plan; my goals in sobriety included (1) drying out for a while and (2) getting my friends back. Making new friends was not part of this sober life, let alone a fellowship of alcoholics. But the truth was rearing its annoyingly righteous head: my party-of-one handling of sobriety mirrored my self-inflicted isolation as a drinker. So, after months of aggressively seceding from all AA unions, I knew that I’d better start warming up to the fellowship and lean into their stupid hugs (I still can’t figure out why, but recovering alcoholics enjoy hugging on a macro-gigantic level when compared to the rest of the human race). The supportive nature from these crazy drunks benefited me greatly at the time, and as much as I hate to admit it…it worked. The loneliness, for the first time in years, was gone. They promised to love me until I could love myself and they kept that promise. And it was amazing.
That former isolated drunk with a vodka sandwich, was mingling with a group of grateful recovering addicts who understand and did not judge each other’s criminal records, toxic family histories, and self-loathing. Now I was with people who got me at a time I so badly wanted to be gotten. Five words I repeatedly heard offered the most salvation: “I know how you feel”. In our spiritually bankrupt and emotionally retarded outlooks on life, we maintained an honor among thieves; noble—though self-serving—people steadily moving forward.
Members of the fellowship boast that our program is “the great equalizer;” nowhere else in society would you find the bank manager sitting next to the bank robber on totally equal territory. And after three years, I’ve found that the sober level-playing ground results in a circus freak shit-show. Jungian archetypes should be refreshed, renewed, redefined, and reframed in the context of this program, because they offer a whole new set of specimen-- just as valid and consistent as the originals.
Members of the fellowship boast that our program is “the great equalizer;” nowhere else in society would you find the bank manager sitting next to the bank robber on totally equal territory. And after three years, I’ve found that the sober level-playing ground results in a circus freak shit-show. Jungian archetypes should be refreshed, renewed, redefined, and reframed in the context of this program, because they offer a whole new set of specimen-- just as valid and consistent as the originals.
For those unfamiliar folks, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung surmised that people fit into archetypes, or groups, akin to high school cliques such as ‘nerd’ ‘jock’ [see Breakfast Club]. Basically, and I don’t know if everyone fits into an archetype, but many people, behaviors and personalities fit neatly into these models. And not since high school, or should I say an 80s movie depicting high school, have I seen more valid clichés than in AA.
I will begin to catalog those in my fellowship, but not before emphasizing the following very important point: while I appreciate all that Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me, I’m still me. I will criticize you and I will write about it later. Easy Does It, here we go.