Day 93 of 100

“It was a dark and stormy night”

The first AA meeting I ever went to in Seattle wasn’t the first AA meeting I have ever been to. That was in San Diego after getting a DUI and pleading down to reckless driving. As part of that plea I had to attend 5 AA meetings.

The first one I went to was on a sunny afternoon in San Diego. People were hugging and talking to each other as if they were long lost friends that hadn’t seen each other in years. There was smoking (a lot of smoking), and coffee and cookies in the back with a podium up front.

They started with a prayer. And soon a normal looking guy stood behind the podium and told the most horrifically sad story I ever heard. People laughed and clapped and at the end of the meeting got in a circle holding hands and reciting the Serenity Prayer.

I hated every minute of it. It felt fake; unreal. Too many expressed feelings and laughter in the face of all that pain. And the hugs. There were too many damn hugs.

Eighteen years later, I found myself during a particularly cold and rainy November in Seattle in a church basement surrounded by people hugging and talking to each other like long lost family. I steeled myself for another night of sad stories and readied myself to feel like an outsider.

Instead, I heard my story come out of the mouth of others. I heard my pain echoed in the words of others. And instead of standing outside the circle, I was invited in and welcomed.

I have now attended hundreds of AA meetings across the country. And every one of them gave me a much needed feeling of being home. Of being among people that understood and were following the same healing path I was on and have been on for more than five years now.

What was different between those two first meetings?

Simple. Me.