I think, by conservative estimates, there are about one jillion written accounts of addiction and recovery. The stories follow a common arc: a promising and somewhat happy life, a gradual descent into addiction, a flaming, searing crash that shatters lives and forces a grim, desperate reckoning, a gradual recovery that involves coming to terms with the flotsam and jetsam of the past and a path forward into the sunlight of recovery and sobriety.
I’ve considered writing about this for a while, and there are a number of somewhat over-dramatic, not very funny first drafts kicking around in my “Writing Projects” Dropbox folder. There’s a ton of really good writing about addiction and recovery and I’m too modest to suggest that anything I have to say will be tremendously illuminating. All the same, I think it’s important to tell these stories. I found guidance and solace reading in the early days of my sobriety, it made me feel less alone for sure and being able to hear someone give voice to some of the same things I was struggling with was a big help to me. I’ll admit that I have selfish motives in doing this—every time I sit down to write about the last ten years I see a facet of my alcoholism that I had not considered before. I find writing it down is far preferable to letting it swim around in my head.
Alcoholism, as a species of addiction (technically now called “Alcohol Use Disorder”), afflicts something like 17 million people in the United States—or roughly 1 out of 12 drinkers. Alcoholism is thought to be responsible for nearly 6% of all deaths worldwide—perhaps more than 3 million people a year die every year from the complications related to drinking. In the United States, alcoholism is the third-leading preventable cause of death—it’s not far behind tobacco, claiming nearly 90,000 people a year. For all that has been said about the terrible scourge of opioids, old school alcoholism still kills nearly 50% more people every year. And yet, there is still a reluctance to treat alcoholism like the terrible disease that it is. It’s a very complicated issue because there are certainly elements of volition to the disease, but most people still wonder why alcoholics don’t just stop drinking if things are so out of control. There are reams of studies showing that alcoholism is not a function of poor judgment or lack of willpower or personal resolve, but a bona fide disease that attacks and alters the physical structure of the brain; a disease that is frighteningly difficult to treat and overcome. And, I’m pretty sure it’s the only disease where, once diagnosed, the most commonly prescribed long-term treatment is to read a book that was written in the 1930’s and attend meetings with other people who have read that same book.
And that brings us to Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in the 1930’s by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob. AA meetings are commonly portrayed as groups of fairly scruffy, down-on-their-luck smokers sitting on metal folding chairs in church basements who add the suffix “and I’m an alcoholic” to their names when introducing themselves. To be fair, there is more than a little truth in that depiction. But the brainchild of Bill and Dr. Bob not only spawned a culture of 12-step programs that now address a dizzying array of human foibles, it provides one of a very few lifelines, a spot of hope and, sometimes, a way out, for people afflicted with this terrible disease.
So, yes, I’m a believer in AA and have attended more meetings over the last 10 years than I can count. There is a fair amount of professional skepticism about AA , but a metric-driven debate about the efficacy of AA as a treatment for alcoholics misses the point. AA’s success may be entirely anecdotal, but I can go to any number of meetings and the rooms are filled with people who have accumulated long term sobriety. Of course, there is self-selection at work. Generally, people who cannot maintain sobriety stop going to meetings at some point. But it is undeniable that AA does, in fact, successfully allow some people to recover from alcoholism.
The question then becomes how does it work? The 4th Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, the “Big Book” as it is lovingly called by alcoholics, takes a stab at this in a section aptly named “How it Works,” but that explanatory passage omits what I think is the true and most potent force at work—the sharing of stories by alcoholics. There are a number of meeting formats employed in AA; there are “Big Book Meetings” where pages are read aloud in turns, there are “Step Meetings” where the focus is on a particular step and its application, there are men’s meetings and women’s meetings and beginners meetings—but the common and most important part of every meeting is an alcoholic sharing their “strength, experience and hope;” meaning the story of their addiction and recovery. To quote the Big Book, “our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened and what we are like now.” And therein is the power of AA.
Storytelling has been a fundamental element of human existence since the dawn of time and has served to pass down survival tips, the history of one’s forbears and to establish the basics of cultural identity and civilization. The great religions of the world are all based on story-telling and our political institutions are entirely dependent on storytelling for propagation and reinforcement. Recovery from addiction is also dependent on storytelling and hearing the stories of others has been a powerful and moving part of my own recovery.
I’ll never forget a meeting that I went to early on a Saturday morning at the Dupont Circle Club. A woman was seated in the scruffy, overstuffed chair in the front of the room, the seat designated for the person leading the meeting and telling her story. Like so many of our stories, it was a harrowing narrative of descent from a middle class home to a crack-addicted existence on the streets of New York. Miraculously, an arrest led to a lucky treatment center assignment and the gradual reclamation of a life that was almost assuredly lost and an outrageously and improbably successful professional career. It was an amazing story, nearly impossible to really believe, but when she began talking about AA and the importance of telling our stories, and how that had helped her find her way out, I knew she was telling the truth.
And that’s what I love about AA—the way we tell each other our stories. Our stories are devastating and heartbreaking, they’re full of loss and regret and grief. There are times when the stories are nearly impossible to tell or to hear and times that we can barely say the words aloud. But we sit in rooms of near-strangers and tell them. We share the most shameful, painful and sordid episodes of our lives, we expose ourselves to our very core and sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry, but what we always do, all of us, in every room, we treat those stories with reverence. We treat those stories so gently and we try to find something in them to to grab on to and sometimes, just sometimes, that’s enough to save us.
I cried that Saturday morning. I’d been attending meetings and trying to get sober for about three years at that point. I was in the final stages of a divorce, estranged from my kids and struggling to find and maintain some sobriety. I’d go to meetings, string together a month or two of sobriety and then some tiny slight or some tiny triumph would flip the switch and I’d be back on a barstool with a glass of sauvignon blanc in front of me. I was seriously depressed and really didn’t know how I was going to get sober. To be honest, I really didn’t want to get sober.
I can’t tell you that Saturday morning was some kind of turning point, I certainly kept drinking for quite a while after that. I can tell you that hearing that story and so many others; some funny, some absurd, some breathtakingly sad, have been a very important part of my recovery. They’re woven into my story now. A cynic might say that recovery stories are like snowflakes; maybe each one is slightly different, but the story of every snowflake is pretty much like the story of every other snowflake. I think that misses the point. Our stories may follow a similar arc, but it is the power of telling and listening to those stories that is only realistic hope of recovery for most alcoholics. That’s why I’m sharing my story.
Thanks for letting me share.
Glad I was able to follow your pointer to this first story.
“The way we tell each other stories...”
Yes. And you are. Thank you.