Liner Notes: Episode 3
Breakfast with Marie
If you haven’t listened to Episode Three of Breakfast with an Alcoholic, I think Marie’s story is amazing.
When she said she started drinking at 13 and that “things were out of control by the time I was 14,” it literally took my breath away. I remember being a ninth-grader and I remember my kids as ninth-graders; it’s hard to fathom the idea of having to struggle with this horrifying disease and all of its horrifying consequences at that age. I really don’t know what to say, except that Marie found a way out and that’s exactly the kind of miracle we alcoholics and addicts cling to in recovery.
Marie and I both “attended” the same treatment center: The Caron Foundation in south-central Pennsylvania (it’s near Reading, if that helps). Caron is one of the larger and better treatment centers in the country and has a sprawling campus. When I went, I was part of a program aimed at professionals and executives. Marie stayed on the other side of the campus, in a cluster of buildings where the kids and young adults went through treatment. I would see them on Sunday mornings at the Chapel service. For many, many years, Father Jack presided over the Caron Chapel and famously toured with Aerosmith as their spiritual adviser. Note: The band supposedly came in together and stayed in the dorms together, which I think is pretty cool.
The Chapel is a modern-ish auditorium with blonde wood, theater-style seats and a funky geometric shape that somehow seemed off-kilter no matter where you sat. The Chapel service was Sunday mornings and though it was not mandatory there was always a full house. The first few rows were reserved for the kids like Marie and they came in last. Their Sunday routine included a stop at the memorial tree planted in front of their dormitory. The tree served as a memorial to all of the kids who had come in and tried, but hadn’t been able to make it out. They gathered around the tree, were quiet for a moment and then walked together to the Chapel.
The Chapel services were so uplifting and so hard sometimes. During my time there, there was at least one family, and sometimes two, at every Chapel service, making the sad trip to scatter ashes under the tree. It’s one thing to confront the wreckage of your life at middle-age; the idea of that happening to you, and that truly does happen to you, at 13 or 14 or 15 is terrifying. The amount of loss these young people have seen is really unimaginable. When you listen to Marie’s story, I hope it helps you understand what a miracle she is.
The Chapel services were run by Reverend Jack, an incredibly engaging, upbeat person who is also a dead-ringer for Barry Manilow. Reverend Jack was a talented musician and the music at the Chapel service was uniformly great. Most of the services featured performances by the kids on songs they’d worked on during the week and they were always so fantastic and so vulnerable. At the end of the service, “Ain’t No Stopping us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead came up and the kids filed out first.
One of the hardest things to hang on to in recovery is hope. There aren’t too many soft-landings and most of us come in with a lot of battle-damage. There’s often a sense of relief at first, “whew, I made it!” Followed immediately by a sense of being overwhelmed, completely lost, in the face of the enormity of the change that has to take place. I think an important part of recovery involves being able to conceive what you’ll look and be like on the other side— until I could see a viable me on other side, I couldn’t stay sober. In between, there are a lot of days where you’re bumping along on a quarter-tank of hope. Remembering those Chapel services and thinking about Marie’s story give me a lot of hope. Here’s the soundtrack for that:
Another thing that struck me about my conversation with Marie was how even devastating consequences aren’t enough to keep us from drinking. Marie and I both saw the horrible consequences of this disease first-hand, and from different perspectives, and the horrible truth is that seeing those consequences was not enough to keep either of us sober. Bill’s Story in the Big Book is an amazing example. Bill is finally told that the end is near, there are no treatments left, there is literally nothing left to be done. His wife is told “She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum.” [p. 7] Then this:
Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again. [p. 8]
It’s hard to ignore how severely understated the second sentence is; the fear of imminent death or confinement in an asylum was only able to sober Bill W. “for a bit.” As Marie said at our breakfast, getting sober, for her, required a spiritual awakening. People sometimes get hung up on the spiritual aspects of AA. That’s a large topic for another day. (If you’d like to prep, read Chapter 4 “We Agnostics” and meet me back here in a few weeks). The important thing to say on this topic now is that sobriety doesn’t require a religious conversion, but it does require, I think, the establishment and maintenance of a connection to the spiritual, whatever that means to each person. For the record, this is no longer my conception of my relationship with my Higher Power:
Marie said that one of the songs that meant a lot to her in recovery was Better Days by Dermot Kennedy. What a beautiful song:
Music was one of the things that always helped me hang on to just enough hope to get by. I’ve got playlists and playlists of these, but since the theme that’s emerging is imagining the better days ahead, here’s my contribution to the playlist:
Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed my breakfast with Marie and I hope you’ll be back for my breakfast with Matthew, coming later this week!
Here are some links to some important things, including the Official discography of Breakfast with an Alcoholic. Most importantly, if you think you might need help or know someone who might, a great resource here in New York is New York Intergroup. There’s one of those for every state. We post the Daily Gratitude Lists every day and you can also find them on Instagram and Twitter @ThanksFLMS . You can listen to all of the breakfasts here: Breakfast with an Alcoholic. If you have comments, thoughts, suggestions or criticisms, I’d really love to hear them: BWAA Suggestion Box.
If you think this is all just perfect and you’re not sure where to go with that feeling, you might try this:
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