New age and new experiences

I have a spectacular friend who is confident, hilarious and quite a catch, she’s the easiest person to introduce to other people but when she drinks she’s a train, she’ll run you over.  She is a force that is travelling at a constant pace to somewhere that she only knows. She has been following the 12 step program for a few months now and I have not been run over by the train since.

I have always thought that AA meetings were for people with severe problems. The kind of problems that Tim Burtin probably has to be able to come up with his horror type movie style. To me the people who attended these meetings were all like the characters in fight club, intense and parasitic like Helena Bonham carter’s character.  It was only when I went to the meeting that I learned that I am terribly ignorant and quite ashamed for expecting that the meeting would take place in a smoked filled, ill-lit basement. Instead it was uplifting and enlightening. 

I went to an AA meeting in a Church in Kloof, it was filled with ordinary people, young and old and many people from different countries. At the end of the meeting the chairperson said to us that we should remember that the people we see and the things they say should remain anonymous. I almost feel bad for reporting back on this, like I’m a rat. The rat that used to get beaten up in school for snitching to the teacher about who was copying other kids homework.  That damn rat!

At the start of the meeting the twelve steps are spoken about:

AA Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Then a speaker will share his story for the floor to respond to. This particular speaker is a good looking well built Englishman that was super trendy and spoke like he was talking to two of his best friends and not to the 40 people who were crammed inside this room. He took us all on his journey through alcoholism from the beginning of binge drinking in his early 20’s  right to the point where he locked himself up in his flat to drink bottles of shampoo or anything that had any alcoholic value. It was a journey that people drew a lot of similarities from. He was truly amazing and exceptionally strong as are many of the other members there.

I quickly learned that their addiction was not only their common link but also their strength. One of the members said that he had more in common with the people in that room than with people he had known for years because their addictions were a binding link in a shared struggle that they each battle every day.

 I say it was an uplifting experience because many of them would make jokes and allude to things that only they as alcoholics would appreciate. One of the members had commented on another for swearing so much while he shared his story and his response was “well I didn’t want to water any of it down”. Laughter exploded and echoed down the corridor.

A running theme that night was the exploration of dreams, many of the members explained that they were having dreams about using and waking up feeling so pissed off with themselves for relapsing. An older woman with deep sunkissed skin and the reddest of all red hair voiced her  thoughts that  well now that she has control over what she does in her dreams she could be capable of just about anything. I cannot even fathom being in control of all of me, never mind my dreams, my hair is a big enough of a struggle.

One young chap a at the ripe old age of 21 had only recently recognised his addiction a few months back and was quite shocked especially since he had initially gone to rehab for an eating disorder. “bummer” he said, “one addiction couldn’t be enough for me”.

It was a lovely place filled with lovely people. I almost wish that everyone was a recovering alcoholic or addict just so they could be as warm and grateful as this bunch of sharers. It was like going to Church but the people there actually respected each other and genuinely cared about each others progressions, they drew from others strengths and their struggles and use it to grow.

At the end of the meeting we held hands and recited a fun loud chant of togetherness (well they did, I just smiled foolishly like a typical ‘newbie).