It’s somewhat unbelievable to me now. At 16, I knew I was an alcoholic and out of control (of course I understand now that this is stating the obvious). I didn’t know much about alcoholism or Alcoholics Anonymous. I really don’t know how I thought to call them. But I did. I know I assumed AA would attempt to teach me how to drink moderately.
So I looked it up in the phone book, and I called. This was 1979. There were no computers, no internet, no caller ID. I do remember taking a book out of the school library that dealt with alcoholism. That was how we gathered information back in the day. Quaint, and slow.
My phone number at the time seemed to people like a commercial number. It was one number off from a local golf course, which was a pain on Sunday mornings when people called to make a tee time. It was something like 676-1000. Anyway when I called the AA hot line and spoke to the woman answering the phone, she said she would get someone in touch with me and would call back. When I gave her my phone number, I remember that she didn’t believe me.
I’ve lost the details of what happened between that call and my first meeting. I know it was a few days away from the call. I know I had a babysitting job, and Isabel covered that for me so I could go to the meeting. Among the things I didn’t know at that time was the fact that there are AA meetings all over the place all the time. I often wonder, when someone talks about being directed to a meeting by the answering service, why they are sent to meetings that are days away rather than as soon as possible.
My first meeting took place in the church pictured above. It was in April of 1979, about a month before my 17th birthday. I walked into that church drunk. I couldn’t handle an AA meeting sober! There was a greeter there, George. He was an old guy, and he had the greeting job for years until he died. I remember being at an anniversary celebration for that group after George died, and his wife attended in honor of him. She was tall, German, all dressed in black.
That church had several meetings going on at once. There was a beginners AA and several alanon or alateen meetings. I went to the beginners in the church library. After the meeting got going, the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the other side of the room. Washing ashtrays was a newcomer job, and it wasn’t a small job at all.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t say much at that meeting. Some of the friendliest people turned out to be some of the flakiest. But basically, everyone was very nice, and when I told them of my drinking problem, they told me they understood. And I believed them, I believed that they did understand. I never lost that belief. I hold this as one of the keys to my long time sobriety.
I was surprised to see old people there. I thought that all alcoholics were like my father, and I didn’t understand how they could live that long and be alcoholic. I was surprised that AA practiced abstinence. I was probably disappointed.
I talked to people, got phone numbers, got a sponsor. Not at that first meeting, but at one of the first. I drank a few times after getting a few days strung together. One “slip” I recall happened after I took cough medicine. It’s a trigger! It made me drink!! I began counting days on a calender.
So I got a shaky start on my lifetime of AA. By the time it was my 17th birthday, I had begun what would be 18 months of continuous sobriety.
