My (second) first meeting

If you wanted to know about the first twelve step meetings I went to... I'm not sure I could tell you anything about 'em.

The last day of my Junior year of high school, I had a mishap with a bottle of whiskey.  This prompted the school administration to require me to attend four meetings over the summer, if I wanted to come back the following year.  I chose to go to the meetings, because I'd already had to change high schools once.

So, I ended up going to four of these meetings at a place half a mile from school.  I sat with a bunch of other teens, in a circle of folding chairs in a room.  There was a lady who was probably in her thirties who was running the thing.

Looking back, it may have been a twelve step meeting, or it may not.  I remember that they passed the basket, and I put in forty bucks.  Kind of my way of showing off.  I had a job, and had plenty of cash (for a high school kid in Seattle).  I had refused to talk, but this was my way of showing everyone that I really was doing a little better than the rest of 'em.

I don't remember much else, other than the fact that I dropped another $120 in the following three meetings.  I didn't talk, didn't listen, and sure as hell didn't show up without getting high first.

But, I'd promised you the story of my (second) first meeting, which was certainly more memorable.  Although, I didn't show up sober for that one, either.  But, let's skip forward almost four years.

One Saturday, I was hanging out with my friend, The Scrapper.  We were drinking beer and smoking weed, out in the garage.  Which is what we did around there.

He'd received yet another DUI, and was a little nervous about even looking in the general direction of his car with keys in his hand.  So, about eleven in the evening, he asks me if I'd drive him to a meeting.  It was a couple miles away, at midnight.

Meeting?  What the hell kind of meeting was he talking about?  I sat there for a second wondering why a case worker, parole officer, court clerk, or lawyer would want to meet with someone at midnight on Saturday.  But, I figured I'd better actually answer his question.  So, I told him I'd run him down there.

Now, I had to ask what kind of meeting this was.  It was an AA meeting.  I was curious to see what kind of circus that was - my dad had had some employees he sent to AA to get 'em sobered up.  Which hadn't worked.  I'd always imagined AA was some place where a bunch of winos and homeless came to mooch free coffee and get out of the weather, while some do-gooder stood up at a pulpit and preached the evils of alcohol to 'em.  I imagined a cross between Fred Rogers and a Southern Baptist preacher. 

This, I was gonna' have to see.

So, we jump in the car, and go down to the Greenwood neighborhood, where the meeting was held.  I remember, we parked in a lot behind the building, and went in through the back.  The meeting was held in a storefront that had been rented by a group of meetings, who set up the place to suit themselves.  There were oak chairs lining two walls of a fairly long, narrow room, and there were more chairs at long lines of tables in the middle.  There were a number of signs on the walls with sayings, such as "live and let live" and "easy does it", and two giant lists of rules.  One was the Twelve Steps; the other the Twelve Traditions.  Since they mentioned God, I didn't pay any further attention.  Screw that - I didn't need to hear any proselytizing.  I could get as much of that from my mom as anyone would ever need.

But there was one thing that caught my attention: giant black-and-white photos of two old guys were hung up high on the wall.  These pictures had to be at least three or four feet wide.  The one was a kind of no-nonsense looking old guy with some Buddy Holly glasses; the other was some white-haired old geezer who was the spitting image of my ex-girlfriend's dad.  My heart skipped a beat when I saw that.  "Holy crap," I thought, "Larry's here watching me!"

Some of the crowd looked pretty rough; as luck would have it, my first AA meeting was to be the Saturday 'Hoot Owl' meeting at Seattle's somewhat notorious Fremont Fellowship.  And that meant bikers, street people, and a varied cast of other colorful characters. 

Everybody filed into the room, styrofoam coffee cups in hand, and took seats.  Lots of these people seemed to know each other.  There would have been a few dozen folks.  A few of 'em were my age or maybe younger; a lot of them were older.  When I was twenty-one, someone in his mid-thirties was 'older'.  (unfortunately, that's not the case now)  I saw some guys wearing colors from a local motorcycle club.  A few pieces of paper were passed around; small candles were placed down the middle of the tables.  Cigarettes are filling the room with smoke, making a mockery of the non-smoking section along one wall.  A guy at one end of the room hit the table in front of him with a gavel and started talking, calling the meeting to order over the hubbub.  A couple people are called on to read different things.  Then the lights went out, leaving only the candles on the tables for illumination.  Someone else started talking over the din; talking about his life.

Now, this surprised me; I'd expected some kind of leader to try to brainwash us all into not drinking.  I'd been waiting for someone to tell me how if I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, that I'd be saved; if I paid membership dues, that everything would be taken care of.  But, as I listened, I never did hear about the catch, the angle, the fine print, or the asterisk.

I'd been drinking and smoking all afternoon, and this happened a couple of decades ago... so even if I wanted to, I couldn't tell you all of what was said there.  But, this was Fremont, which means you could expect to hear stories of week-long blackouts, boy hookers in prison, waking up in bathroom stalls with bloody rigs hanging out of your arm, or anything else.  And yes, I did hear about all of those things (and more) there at Fremont.  But those are other peoples' stories, and not mine.

And these people, one after another, simply told about what their life had been like, what happened, and what it was like now.  No sales pitch.  No "you ought to..."; just a lot of "I found I had to..."

As I listened, there were two things which kept standing out.  All these people had started out like I had; alcohol and drugs magically made 'em feel okay.  And that things had got worse for them as they continued to use.   Sometimes 'worse' could be a very, very inadequate word.

I sat there in the dark, looking at the faces of the people illuminated only by the flickering light of some candles; sitting still while my mind raced.  Then, raised voices broke me out of my reverie, and a fist fight broke out.  This was enough to completely derail things.  The lights came on, the fight was broken up, and the meeting ended.  The Scrapper got his court slip back from the guy who'd opened the meeting.

That night, I decided that I'd have to stop drugs altogether, and only drink small amounts of beer or wine (three drink limit; no hard drinks).  I had started out just like all those sick bastards, and I sure as hell didn't want to end up like them!

-M