One Day at a Time

How To Make Heads Turn

. . . At Your First AA Meeting.

It was my first day in AA and I had gone to a Saturday morning meeting. There I heard a story that blew my mind. It was the story of a down and out stockbroker who drank his way off Wall Street and lived to tell it. Lived to write a book about it too. It shocked me. I was a stockbroker too - an Investment Banker - and it was as if I was hearing my own life read back to me. It brought me to tears and now here I was attending my second meeting in Little Neck-Douglaston in Queens, New York City.  There were several meetings going on there at one time in the little Lutheran church on Glenwood Street. I wanted to go to whichever one would let me sit , listen and not be noticed - where everyone would just leave me the hell alone while I conducted my research.

There was guy at the door who everyone was passing by called Tony.  'Big Tony' I was to later learn. Big Tony pointed me toward what he called the “Beginners Meeting”.

"I’m not  a beginner.“ I said. I was more than a little indignant.

“What do you mean?“ asked Tony. Two girls with shoulder tattoos and too short denim skirts flipped cigarettes into grey sand filling a plastic potato salad bucket that propped the door opened and they passed through Tony's post going straight inside without Tony so much as blinking. They must be regulars .  .  .  .  .  .  or I guess you have to grow a set of tits to get in without a confrontation here.

"I was already to a meeting this morning.“ I was looking at him to see if he was reacting at all positively. He wasn’t. He was squinting and he grabbed the bottom of his left earlobe between his thumb and forefinger and twiddled it . A small diamond embedded in the lobe twinkled.

“It was a ninety minute meeting.“  I  was hoping that this might buy me a little more credit than a one-hour meeting - maybe it would get me into an intermediate meeting. Or maybe an advanced meeting. Shit I could go straight to the top of this Alcoholics Anonymous deal.

“No No cuz. . . . you go into that far room in the back of the gym … ok cuz?" 

I am not your fucking cuz. Instant resentment rose up in my chest - not unlike the heated glow that rises out of a too rapidly dumped and gulped shot of Jack Daniels. 

I despised the idea of being placed into any kind of caste system -especially one created by a bunch of drunks. This guy Tony doesn't know who I am.  But I conceded that this fat guy with the diamond stud earring and who looked a little rough around the edges might  know a little more than I did - but I didn’t have to like it and since he was obviously the bouncer I did not need to get into any trouble this early on. 

My primary mission at this point was to get into a meeting and not bring attention to myself. If I could just hear something that would tip me off as to how this 'A&A' stuff worked I could apply it, solve my problem and get my life back. But first I wanted to know if I really needed to go this far. Was I really an alcoholic - or was I just a little unduly alarmed by my unmanageable life - the lack of funds - lack of happiness - inability to build that little white picket fence for Nancy and myself. Or at least after having built a substantial portion of it - not tearing it all back down again with my  own uncontrollable actions. 

I would sit in the back where me and my sweaty Stolichnya oozing six foot one two hundred an twenty  pound frame and the infant son I was carrying in my arm like a football could go unnoticed. Shyeah! If anyone asked me to introduce myself I would definitely not say I am an alcoholic. That way no one would bother with me. If they didn't think I was one of them then they might leave me the hell alone.

I raised my hand and made the all important pronouncment for all to hear. I said, “My name is Danny and I am here just to find out if I am an alcoholic." Just 'if'.

WRONG THING TO SAY! Right then fifty or sixty heads spun like Linda Blair in her bloody bed and looked at me. I was mortified. As if that were not bad enough I  recognized many of the same faces that I had seen earlier in the morning meeting. They were there too! What the hell is going on here? (Insert Twighlight Zone theme music here.)

I cannot tell you one single word that anyone in that “Beginners meeting” shared. I cannot recall one slogan, not one scary drinking story, not one frothy emotional appeal or anything else said in that meeting. What I can tell you almost verbatim is what was said to me outside of that meeting - upstairs in the parking lot after it had ended and after almost everyone had already gone home. It was then that someone loved me enough to tell me the truth about alcoholism - because he knew what the truth was. His name was Barry Gross - a strapping gentle giant of a man.

Barry told me his story and explained to me the fatal malady - the mental AND the physical aspects of the two-fold illness that we call alcoholism.  This is how he qualified me into this Fellowship - by making sure that I understood what "Our description of the alcoholic" is. He did not do any pronouncing "No one gets here by accident- you ARE an alcoholic" or use any other qualifiers other than the ones that AA prescribes. He just told me what he knew about alcoholism - what he had learned from the description in AA's Big Book, "Alcoholics Anonymous" and was now passing it on - so that I could identify and say "Holy shit"  I am one of you!" -  if it were true.

That is how I took step one - by learning what alcoholism is – seeing and admitting that I fit! I belonged. I held both conditions identified by AA that made me 'one of them'. I could raise my hand at a future meeting and in good conscience say, “My name is Danny and I am an alcoholic” and I would know what that means. Not what I think it means. Not what Dr. Phil thinks it means. Not what Oprah thinks it means. Not what  Dr. Drew thinks - not even what some arrogant white haired pissant sporting a grim face, a "few twenty  fours" and wouldn't know a Twelve Step call from an Avon call planted onto a folding chair in the back of a musty church basement thinks - but what the co-founders of the wonderful Felloship of the Spirit called "Alcoholics Anonymous" says it means and for which they designed and successfully used a Program of recovery that works  - for that description.

That is all step one is about. It is about learning to distinguish between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic and seeing on which side of the fence I was.

The funny thing is that Barry was absolutely silent during the meeting - so no one knew how 'smart' he was. Yet he carried the "this' message to me that saved my life, the way we are supposed to - eyeball-to-eyeball with another alcoholic. One alcoholic talking to another. Not one alcoholic talking to sixty meeting attendees. That is not carrying the "THIS" message. That's just "speaking".

Every time I feel the need to 'share' at a meeting, to say something so pithy - so frothy and spiritually profound that someone’s life is bound to be saved -  I try to remember this experience with identification of my first day in AA and how Barry G passed it on by taking me through Step One, on day one -  in one hour - outside of a meeting on a hot August night in New York City in 1997.

No waiting. No getting "meetings under my belt" before beginning. No "Going to step meetings" No going to ninety meetings in ninety  days and no telling me anything wacky like  "Meeting Makers Make it" or "Keep Coming Back". Uh Uh. Barry was not trying to kill me. His first priority was to start me on the Twelve Step Program so that I could get qualified and start to recover from alcoholism - before the insanity of the next first drink came around again. It was so simple and so vital and exactly the same way that the co-founders of AA did it and prescribe it in the first forty three pages of the book, "Alcoholics Anonymous."

Peace,

Danny S