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I was at an in-person meeting the other day, and at the end, we stood behind our chairs, six feet apart in masks, and said a prayer together. (For the record, it was group conscience to socially distance and I support that—I think being safe for everybody in the room is critical to recovery.)

I did catch myself missing the good ol’ days of, you know, 2019, when we’d hold hands and hug and get really close and say prayers.

And then I thought about my first few months of sobriety… and how the last thing on Earth I wanted to do was hug anybody, or hold any hands, or say prayers together. I remember doing that thing where I stood at my first few meetings in disbelief, thinking, “Is this some cult s**t happening here or what?”

The truth is, I had a couple of things that I thought were parts of the recovery process that I would never want to do. Holding hands and saying group prayers were at the top of that list. I hadn’t done it much in my life and I thought that I didn’t stop using drugs and alcohol to then start hugging and holding hands.

I was there because I just didn’t want to die.

Making amends was also something you other people might have to do, but I didn’t. I mean, I only ever really hurt myself, I thought.

I also wasn’t so sure hanging out after meetings or doing service work was ever going to be for me—I mean, I was soooo busy, ya know? Gotta run, byeeeeeee!

My oh my, how things changed after I got into the rooms. I grew to love the intimacy of meetings. I grew to love the meeting after the meeting with sober people. I grew to love doing service (okay, that’s sort of a lie—let’s say that I grew to like what service did for my program of recovery).

But I really did fall in love with saying prayers and hugging and holding hands. It’s such an intimate manifestation of what we’re there to do, which is prop each other up during the tough times and experience the joys of the good times together. It’s a shared experience with a bunch of other people, all trying to sync up their words and their hearts at the same time. It’s so beautiful, and it’s also unlike anything else in my life. At work, we don’t all gather around the conference room table and hold hands and say the Seventh Step prayer to get ready for the day.

I won’t pretend and say that I use all of the formal prayers in my regular life. I love the Serenity Prayer—it’s a foundation of my program and I try to make sure it’s a foundation of my thought process every day. But I don’t actually say it that much. Maybe I should?

And I definitely don’t say the Lord’s Prayer outside of meetings. It’s not my favorite, to be honest. And that’s perfectly okay! I’ve met people who are very bothered by that prayer or others, and the origins of those prayers, and how they worry about the overlap between recovery meetings and religion.

I get it… but I try to think about recovery like Target or Walmart. I walk past 100 things in those stores to get to the one I want, and I don’t let those aisles full of items prevent me from getting to the thing I need. I don’t say, “Hey, I don’t like seeing the greeting cards as I try to get to the cat litter. I’m done with this place!”

My bottom line is, there are parts of recovery programs that aren’t always for me, and that’s perfectly okay. The old saying is, “Take what you need, leave the rest.”

And, as I learned, sometimes I take what I need and leave the rest… and then later want the rest.

ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke: 

One veteran alcoholic says the trouble with "Two-Stepping" is that you usually combine the wrong parts of the First and Twelfth Steps, i.e., "My life is unmanageable, and I'd like to share it with you."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2004, by Anonymous)

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