And now for something completely different

A couple months ago a woman in an AA meeting made a crack about the tendency of women new to the program "decide they should become counselors because now they know what it's like, right?" The room responded with general laughter.



Yeah. Well.



Ahem.



I haven't made such a decision, but this week finds me happily absorbed in researching the possibility. I can't tell yet whether it's a silly idealistic phase that will pass as my ongoing return to sanity progresses or something Real. Feels pretty Real right now.



Yesterday a woman shared at a meeting that earlier in the day, she'd gotten the news that her son had overdosed. And died. She got plenty of support, often in the form of recollections of similar losses. One old-timer talked about people he'd known in the program, people who were sober for a time, who went back out and ended up dead.



I remembered my last day of drinking, after which one of you good people called me on what I was doing and where I was heading.



This is life or death, folks.



But that isn't why I'm interested in working with alcoholics and addicts. I don't have a fantasy of saving people. People get saved from this disease, or not, based on far more complex factors than the intervention of any single person. Mostly it has to do with the will and the capacity to save ourselves, I think.



My interest is more about respect for the people I've met in the program and their efforts to grow in the face of intense challenges. People like the woman in the meeting last night, who surely wanted to be getting drunk and stoned out of her mind but instead worked her program in the face of perhaps the biggest grief she'd ever felt.



Of course, I don't see much of the people who don't make it, which is apparently the vast majority. I do, however, hear people come back in and say that they went to a few meetings years ago--maybe because a court ordered them to--and didn't stick with the program, yet never forgot the things they learned. And one day they came back. Sometimes the things we offer each other are seeds that take years to take root and grow, in other words.



The role that E has played and continues to play in my recovery is indispensable to me, but most people don't have access to that kind of help. I'm damn lucky. Maybe as I get more sobriety under my belt I'll have an opportunity to spread that luck around.