I was at an AA meeting the other day, when one of the guys sharing his story said wearily, ‘I struggle with other people. The problem is they’re everywhere’. Amen to that brother, I thought as I gazed around the room at some familiar faces. I go to this particular meeting quite a bit, and it’s okay as far as meetings go but, as any remotely experienced AA person will tell you, some meetings are better than others. Of course that’s only natural. Every meeting always has different people in it after all. Some people come some days and not others, newcomers are common and some folk come and then disappear into the ether, never to be seen or heard of again. So there’s always a natural ebb and flow, a coming and going, a different dynamic at play, whatever it is. Which is healthy, or most of the time it is anyway.
Some meetings, however, do seem to be stuck in a kind of alcoholic time warp, where the 1960s haven’t quite ‘happened’ yet in the way we think of them, the walls are yellow with nicotine and some of the attendees have, quite literally, been telling exactly the same stories for 35 long years. For those of us who’ve been going for a while, it’s easy to develop what we politely call ‘resentments’ around such things. ‘Oh no’, I sometimes think, ‘Old Mick or whatever he’s called, is going to tell the same story I’ve been hearing him tell for the last three years. Please God make him stop.’
Now petty resentments such as this can cause trouble for the recovering alcoholic. Firstly, and let’s be honest, they’re unfair to ‘Old Mick’, who’s entitled to say whatever he wants when he shares, even if he has been saying for, like, a hundred years or whatever. Secondly, and as OM would probably be quick to point out, there may well be, often are, new people in the room at their very first meeting and may not have heard his interminable droning before. Thirdly, and on a slightly more serious note, Old Mick has probably been sober for 35 years or something which, if he was once as desperate as I’ve been on occasion, is an achievement worthy of the greatest respect. So we listen. Again.
A case in point is the matter of Kempsey Mick, kind of a legend of the Australian AA scene. I believe he’s passed away now and I’ve certainly never met him, but the more elderly members of the fellowship talk about him in reverential terms. He’s a role model to them, which is fine of course. My mate ‘Old Chap John’ even claims to have got drunk with Kempsey Mick before they both got sober, which is proper bragging rights if true. Anyway, there’s a certain older member of the local scene here, let’s call him Zebediah, who I’ve encountered at more meetings than I could ever possibly recall who always – and by that I do mean always – when he shares, says ‘Kempsey Mick told me once that AA is a college of knowledge and I’ve never forgotten those words’. Me being me, and having heard this about a million times, I’ve long-since nurtured a small but notable resentment towards everyone concerned, from Kempsey Mick to Zebediah to the all-knowing college of knowledge itself. I mean, it doesn’t even work as a thing. Any college is – by definition – a place of knowledge right? And AA isn’t a college anyway, it’s just a group of recovering drunks working through their problems in a structured (hopefully) manner. So every time I hear this phrase, which is a lot, my blood pressure rises, my jaw clenches, I become decidedly restless and I start to roll my eyes in despair, as the much heard story and its key phrases reel uselessly through my head.
But here’s the critical thing: that’s all on me. That resentment, that boredom, that thousand yard stare I acquire when Zebediah starts up, that restlessness, that lack of respect, that’s all my stuff and, to get well again, I need to own that shit and deal with it. Which is kind of what I’m doing right now, by writing this. Yes, everyone knows he can be a pain going on and on and on as he does, but the man has been sober for 52 years. 52 years. There have been plenty of times where I could scarcely imagine going without a drink for an hour, let alone half a century. Old Zeb started going to ‘the rooms’, when AA’s sainted founder Bill Wilson was still alive – a fact that blew my mind when I first heard it some years ago.
So, if you are new to recovery, and I count myself as still being very much in early recovery, it is worth taking a look at such matters before they become a problem. In fact, a critical part of the 12 Steps requires you to write down a list of each and every resentment that comes into your life, as harbouring such a thing can easily lead you to drink again. Believe me when I say that old Zeb is very much near the top of my list. But that’s ok, because I am – at least – aware of it. We all bear our resentments in this life and, like any hand of cards you’ve been dealt, it’s how you play them that counts.
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