Episode Eight Liner Notes
Breakfast with Chris H @ Green Kitchen on 2nd Avenue
I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to my breakfast with Chris H. and hear his amazing stories. Of course, the most amazing thing is that he survived shootings, stabbings, 17 years in prison and homelessness and managed to get sober. Hearing Chris speak at an AA meeting is a real privilege; He’s authentic and honest and in nearly-textbook perfect AA-style, when’s he’s done telling his story, you can’t help but think, “If he did it, maybe I could, too.”
Don’t believe me?
The elegant crux of Alcoholics Anonymous is that by sharing our stories, we show someone else that there is a way out, a solution that worked for us. There’s a “wait, maybe that could work for me” moment at the beginning of every sober journey. That’s why the program that Bill W and Dr. Bob designed is so brilliant, harnessing the desire of alcoholics and addicts to share their stories and the power of attraction and example to bring the still-suffering into the fold.
If you haven’t been to an AA meeting, they kind of work like this. First, all AA meetings aren’t in church basements, just the good ones. Meetings usually last an hour and are run by the volunteer “chair,” who is also responsible for finding speakers. In New York, the invited speaker “qualifies” for roughly 20 minutes or so, sharing their story or as the Big Book puts it ‘“their experience, strength and hope.” After that, there is often a “Treasurer’s” or “Seventh-Tradition” Break, when the basket is passed, announcements are made and day-counters (people in their first 90 days of sobriety) share their day counts and anniversaries are recognized. After that, at most meetings, people talk by a show of hands and are recognized to speak, usually just for 2-3 minutes. Most meetings conclude pretty promptly at the hour mark with people saying the Serenity Prayer together.
There are, of course, lots of variations and different customs at different meetings. I enjoy meeting tourism and have been to a lot of meetings in a lot of different places. I love seeing the differences, but there is something so comforting and so powerful to hear the same stories told in all of those different places and with all of those different accents. I can walk into a AA meeting in London, Las Vegas, Iowa City or New York and I’ll meet people like me and hear my story. That’s powerful stuff and it definitely helps keep me sober.
The way that AA brings our stories together can be truly spectacular. One of the stories that Chris tells goes back to when his son was only an infant and Chris was living in the projects selling drugs. He was out one day with his son, saw an opportunity to rob someone and did, holding a razor to his victim’s face and then making off the with the money, all with his infant son in tow. Many years later, Chris told that story at a meeting, with his son, now a young man also in the program in attendance and talking about how he went about making amends to his son for endangering him that way.
For sure, it was already a very emotional and moving moment, and then, even more amazingly, the next guy to raise his hand announced that he was the guy who got robbed that day. My dad taught statistics, but I’ll let someone else calculate the probability of all of that happening. Yes, that’s a true story and look at what happened: The power of AA brought the trauma and injury and shame of three people together into a room (not surprisingly, a church basement, really, it’s where it all goes down) and transformed it into healing power, not just for those three, but for everyone in that room that night. We alcoholics can be a cynical, sarcastic, sometimes kind of dark-humored bunch, but we’ve all seen enough outlandish miracles to know enough not to question them when we see them.
Making sense of the past is an important part of recovery and one of the so-called “AA Promises,” says just that:
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way though. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. . . We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Big Book, pp. 83-84
Marie and Natalie talked about this same concept in their breakfasts. Sharing the story of the darkest chapter of your life somehow lights the way for someone else to exit theirs. And so on, and so on:
The Golden Ticket of the venture capital world is the so-called flywheel business model, where each action of the flywheel powers the next. AA is the spiritual version of that, perfected by a master salesman and fund-raiser like Bill. The actions we take to get sober, the leveling of our pride, the confession of our transgressions, the earnest effort to make amends, all of this, when shared with others, nourishes our spiritual awakening, and the more we share that it helps others… Well, you get the idea.
Which brings us back to Chris and his amazing stories. AA meetings can actually be pretty entertaining and there are some remarkably funny stories, but the point of sharing our stories is to show others that what we did, how we got sober, well, it just might work for them. And so on and so on. The song that immediately comes to mind is:
Well, maybe that song didn’t immediately spring to mind. It could have something to do with me just listening to a lot of Billy Preston and actively scheming to eventually share my love for him. This is my favorite Billy Preston song and if you were to ever see me shooting baskets at the park, there is a good chance this is what would be playing on my airpods:
If you’ve watched the fantastic Beatles documentary you’ve seen the Rooftop Concert where they famously play Get Back—one of my favorite Beatles’ songs. You might not know that’s Billy Preston on the keyboards—and that, to me is the best part of the song.1 I believe that Mozart would definitely be a Billy Preston fan.
There’s a new episode of Breakfast with an Alcoholic on the horizon, the very immediate horizon actually and you’re definitely going to want to join me and Jane for breakfast at the 3 Decker Diner on 2nd Avenue. Jane has four months of sobriety and some amazing insights. You’re going to love it! Until then—Be well, stay groovy and call your sponsor!
Thanks for Letting Me Share
I know this because I’ve read the Liner Notes for Let it Be.