Infactorium

Today, my house in St. Louis was broken into. My tenant was robbed, and several doors and windows were damaged. She’s shaken up, but ok. She wasn’t home at the time of the robbery. She called me crying and apologetic, though for the life of me I can’t imagine what she’s apologizing for. But I know that often when we’re violated, we feel sorry for something, even when we’re not sure what.

I have never been robbed as an adult. When I was a kid, our house was robbed, but my mom handled it the way my mom handles everything. Somehow, things were cleaned up, repairs were made, and it was all fixed in a day or two it seems. So I don’t really know what to do. It’s my house, but it’s my tenant’s home.

But when I took the call, I figured immediately what I should do. Tell her it’ll be taken care of. Call the cops. Call my insurance company. I did those things. The neighbors are assisting in boarding up the broken doors and windows. The adjuster will call tomorrow, schedule a visit. Contractors will be called and paid. I will be reimbursed.

I know how to handle these things now. It’s a pain in the ass but it comes intuitively. That’s one of the promises of AA. That we will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. If I lived in a house that was robbed while I was a drunk, I’d have probably done a shit job boarding up the doors and windows and left them like that until the city issued me a citation.

Now, as a sober person, I have the faculty to manage these things. I know what to do and I know how to behave and I don’t need to drink at it. I’m an alcoholic, but I’m not a drinker anymore. I’m basically a useful member of society. I can figure out how to go forward. And I get the added bonus of congratulating myself as if I’ve done something exceptional. Because as a drunk, I get to feel effective for fulfilling the least of my obligations.

The promises have come true, and I am leading an enviable life. I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I know how to do things that used to baffle me. Ordinary things. I have the privilege of leading an ordinary life, in a way that feels extraordinary to me. The mere act of living sober is a source of daily gratitude. Because even in all the difficulty of the past couple of weeks, the lowest I can get is nowhere near the sloughs I’ve risen from.

A year and a half after I finished my doctorate, I was still hanging around my graduate advisor’s lab doing mop up work and overseeing a few students. I was trying to start my own business, and failing. I was drinking a bottle of whiskey a day, and derelict in every responsibility I had. I was doing a few small projects, one of which would eventually become the job that launched me to where I am now, and I was serving as teacher/advisor to a group of students doing their baccalaureate thesis.

The leader of this group (I’ll call her Mary) was the best student I’ve ever had. An African American woman, brilliant, engaged, ambitious, and eager. In the intervening 8 years, I’ve only encountered a single other student that comes close to her abilities. She carried her two colleagues on the student project and produced a spectacular simulation that was of decidedly professional and academic quality. I think I was a little jealous of her. She had the spark that I had lost to booze and indolence.

In February, in the middle of their project, which was due in early April, for a May graduation, I left. It was time for me to go to rehab, and I dropped everything and left. Just like I said to here. The day came when I realized I couldn’t go on the way I was going, and so I stepped away from everything and went to get help. I think – I no longer recall precisely – that I told them I had a consulting job in California that would take me away for six weeks.

I returned in early April, just in time to read their final report. I wrote glowing recommendations based on the work, and on my guilt about abandoning them in their project. Mary went into a master’s program, and then to industry. She kept up with me, asking for recommendations from time to time. About two years ago, she decided to apply to PhD programs. I wrote recommendations again, and she was accepted into a spectacular program on the west coast at one of those universities known and respected world wide.

Last week she reached out to me because she was going to be in ECC for a conference. Presenting work she’d done in health care engineering as part of her doctoral studies. It’s very cool work, and I wish I could write about it here. It blends epidemiology, economics, and health care delivery in very exciting ways. She’s going to make waves in her career. She asked if I want to have dinner. Of course I said yes.

I took her out and we talked about her studies and her experience living out west. After dinner I walked Mary back to her hotel. On the way, I said, “Listen, I always felt that I owed you an apology. In the middle of your senior design thesis, I bailed for like six weeks. The reason I did was that I was drinking way too much, and I needed to go get treatment. I haven’t had a drink since then. But I wish that I had been a better mentor to you, and I’m sorry.”

Mary told me she thought I’d been a great mentor and never had any idea there was anything wrong. That’s a common response when making amends. This experience was typical of my amends experience. Rapidly accepted with little or no knowledge that there had ever been a problem. And I’m fortunate that I didn’t need to make more serious amends, involving restitution of some kind.

I “finished” my ninth step a long time ago. But every once in a while people pop back up in our lives, and this time I realized that my alcoholic behavior and consequences might have had an effect on someone I hadn’t acknowledged them to. I needed to say something to set it right. It was about me, more really, than about Mary. She’s doing very well and my alcoholism hasn’t left any indelible marks on her. But I regretted not telling her the truth. And now I have.

Recovery is lifelong. Because alcoholism is lifelong. When opportunities to work the program well present themselves, we take them. We take them to solidify our sobriety. To do right by the people we may have harmed. And to live freely in clear conscience.

The meeting rooms are a haven for us alcoholics. A place free from judgement regardless of the worst things we’ve done. I know rapists and murderers and thieves. And I’ve done my share of horrible, unforgivable things. When you walk into an AA meeting, all that shit’s on the table. People might know, they might not. But what’s liberating is, it doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t. I can breathe easy without any fear of what I might reveal or how I might be seen. We’re all drunks. Drunks do terrible things. No one in the rooms has done anything I might not do if I were to drink again. We’re all the same.

Which is why it can be so disconcerting to meet someone in a room that you know from elsewhere. At first, when it happens (and it does happen), I generally feel disoriented. I think, “I know that person, I think, where from?” And it takes me a while to reintegrate lives I usually keep separate. There’s shock, panic, fear. I try not to betray any of that. I generally go say hi, and we talk about how we never thought we’d see each other here. Almost always I end up with a better friend or acquaintance than before.

There are two basic flavors of the occurrence for me now. The first is running into someone who also has longer term sobriety. In this case, there’s nothing to fear, and all is immediately well. The second is someone coming to the program newly, early in sobriety or not yet sober, who suddenly sees me and is astonished. This feels slightly more dangerous. Will they stay sober? What if they don’t? Do they understand anonymity? Will they behave appropriately outside work? etc.

Then I need to step back and relax. I need to remember what anonymity is for. I’ve been sober for nearly eight years. I keep my anonymity because I want to help the newcomer. I don’t really need to protect myself anymore. The harm that could come to me from revealing that I’ve been sober for as long as I have is minimal. My anonymity is to protect the new person. But demonstrating that I have kept my anonymity and have gone on to productive and effective participation in society, I show that newcomer that the end of their drinking doesn’t have to be the end of their life. And that they can regain their dignity without being publicly shamed for being an alcoholic.

I’ve had encounters of both types, and none has resulted in my being “outed” at work. Not even when one of the newcomers relapsed and never returned to the program (to my knowledge). He recognized that I was sober, that I wanted what was best for him, and he decided he couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t stay sober. But even though he returned to booze and crack, he never talked about me at work. And I never talked about him either. Nor would I.

But I also need to remember the other way round. When I was new, I ran into someone from work who had 20+ years of sobriety. I was shocked and terrified, because she was my boss’s personal assistant. It never occurred to me at the time that I was a far bigger risk to her than she was to me. When you’re new to sobriety and you run into work colleagues at meetings, you don’t need to worry. You just need to keep your mouth shut outside the meetings. They will too.

AA works because we all know that we are in the boat together. There’s nothing you’ve done I wouldn’t. There’s nothing that’s happened to me that might not happen to you. The pain and the shame and the fear is common to all of us, and that deflates its power. We walk together. Long is the way, and hard, that out of darkness leads up to light. But I know the way now. And when we meet in meetings, work colleagues or family or friends or foes, we are all just drunks, making our way from darkness to light.