I want to start with a note of gratitude for all of you! I moved here to New York in September 2020 clinging to nine months of sobriety.1 My sponsor told me to start doing a gratitude list that November and I did. In February 2021, I started putting the gratitude list on Twitter and began writing here on Substack last Fall. We launched Breakfast with an Alcoholic on March 10th2 and just put out Episode 13 and guess what? It’s the first episode to have more than 1k downloads and it pushed us past 5k cumulative downloads since launch!
Like I say in the Welcome e-mail, when I started this, I never thought anyone would actually read this, much less subscribe—so I’m pretty astounded and flattered and very grateful for all of you. It does seem like an odd time to ask you a favor, but here goes:
If you aren’t already a subscriber, would you be willing to push the “Subscribe” button?
And for you subscribers, I already love you so much, I hope it’s not too wrong to ask if you could maybe hit the “Share” button?
I’m very grateful for a fantastic breakfast with Aviva. Right off the bat, I could sense her enthusiasm for sobriety and the Program. It made me think about my long-ago, early days in AA and how I regarded going to meetings as a punishment, the consequence of my drinking. I did a bit of time in Quiet Study Hall in junior high and during the early days trying to get sober, AA meetings seemed like a pretty similar concept; they were sadistically-refined ordeals: I had to go and sit with the other broken toys and reflect on all of the shitty things I did. Forever. I’d try to brush those feelings aside and would dutifully go to meetings at the DuPont Circle Club and listen and reflect and try to absorb the hope and promise from what people were saying, but it all felt like sitting in a Greyhound bus station on a Saturday night.3
One of the things I love about doing the breakfast interviews is hearing about turning points and realizations in other people’s stories. I think Bill’s Story in the Big Book is a masterwork of story-telling and illuminating those moments, like when Bill’s friend Ebby shows up:
But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself…Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat…Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead…Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute and that was none at all.
That floored me.
Big Book, p. 11
I’ve had many of those moments, like when I first realized I was an alcoholic.4 For a decade, I went to AA meetings hoping for a moment of clarity and strength, hoping to find a path to sobriety, but I couldn’t manage to go anywhere but the back corners of bars. I would sit in meetings and think, “see, what you’ve done?” Of course, for all of those years I never managed more than a few months of sobriety.
Fast forward to a night last year. I’d been living here for about a year and was coming up on my second anniversary. It was a Friday evening and I decided to head over to the 6:15 meeting at the 79th Street Workshop. It had been a busy day and a long, stressful week. I was fatigued and maybe even a little cranky. On the walk over, I started to feel myself relax. I went down those dingy stairs, took a seat on my customary side of the room and felt a wave of calm and peace wash over me. I was with my people. I waved and nodded at friends. I was smiling and joking. And then I realized the thing I had feared most had just happened! I was at an AA meeting on a Friday night and I was happy. “Shit, you crafty m-f’ers,” I thought, “you finally got me.” 5
Ok, maybe the thing I feared second-most:
Aviva’s story is so compelling. After years of heavy drinking and using, she was still pretty confident she wasn’t an alcoholic until she had a dream one night, ended up at a meeting the next day and ka-boom she got sober. These stories are crazy and kind of unbelievable but they’re always true. Once you realize that, it’s easy to understand why people get so enthusiastic about sobriety and the Program; it feels like you drew to the inside straight, rolled 5 of a kind when only the Yahtzee line was left. You saved your life, the thing that was slowly circling the drain. When you finally get your mind right and see things for what they are, well, I think its hard to not be pretty f-ing enthusiastic about the Program and the Book and the people that did that.
Anyway, those turning points, the weird dreams, the chance encounters, the moment when the voice in your head finally tells you the truth. Those are the miracles that bring us into the Program and save our lives—and I for one can definitely get behind that! To be really honest, the cool kids were always in Quiet Study Hall.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
I’ve compared my arrival in New York to Felix Unger’s arrival at Oscar Madison’s apartment:
I’m thinking specifically about an evening at the Greyhound Bus station in Winnipeg in 1981. I listened to this:
If you’d like to hear that story:
Olis tells a similar story: “Then I realized that one day at a time was a trick; they meant forever!”
Liner Notes: Episode 13
Congratulations on 5K downloads!