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I went to a meeting the other day where a guy talked about remembering going to his first meeting, and it really made me laugh. He said he’d never met a sober person until then, that he was about 30 years old and as far as he knew, he didn’t have any friends or family members who were recovering alcoholics or drug addicts. The whole thing was new to him.
So his first experience at a meeting was his first experience around sober people of any kind, and he said it blew his mind. I laughed because I really identified. I don’t recall ever having a conversation with another actual sober human being about sobriety before I went to rehab.
I found this guy’s share hilarious because the way he spoke about this new, mysterious collection of people was as if he had stumbled onto an island where all the Bigfoots lived. He marveled at the way they all seemed happy and organized, and they all seemed to care about the genuine good of everybody involved, especially newcomers.
I had the same experience. I liked my first few meetings but my head was spinning. I always thought that sober meant sober—quiet, dull, boring, broken down. That’s not what I saw. I saw people who were more loving and more happy than I ever could have imagined. And if I’m being honest, I gravitated more toward the hellraiser part of the sober crowd, the people who were model citizens now but you could smell the trouble on them from years past. Those people lived with an exuberance and brashness that I really identified with. They were living today, and only today, and that was so cool to see.
That’s why one of the best suggestions I ever heard was to just hang out with sober people for a bit. Sure, going to 90 meetings in 90 days can be very important. But going out to breakfast with five sober dudes might just be the kick in the ass that a new guy needs, too. I’ve been out on quite a few very raucous breakfasts with sober guys, and every time it reminded me that I had found my people—the sober Sasquatch people!
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:
A DRUNK CAME ACROSS a magazine article about the horrors of liver disease and other damage that drinking can do to one's body. He found what he read frightening, so he told his drinking buddies that he'd had enough.
"That's it!" he said. "After today, no more reading."
(Credit: Grapevine, by John K. of Sanford, NC, February 2008)
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Finding Bigfoot in sobriety