The Shocking Similarities Between Bars and 12 Step Meetings (original) (raw)
I walked out after I’d heard enough of what I considered whining about the irrelevant, at least as it pertained to what many Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous groups and members consider their collective purpose, which is to help the next person get or stay clean and sober. I did so without giving anyone I knew, which was everyone present, so much as a head nod or even an eye roll.
I marched away – huffing, puffing, and possibly mumbling – from the same meeting I’d attended essentially every Sunday night no matter what for almost two years. The one that taught me how not to be a slave to the next drug or drink. I left the same way the drunk at the bar stumbles off into the night after being made the butt of a joke they had no comeback for. I didn’t return for years.
Fast-forward to me walking into my favorite bar and making myself comfortable. At least until my presence made everyone, including the new owner, uncomfortable. I was told via text message that I was no longer welcome at the place I’d spent far more hours than I could possibly count, enough full days to fill the month of February on a calendar if I had to bet. I spent more time there than the owner who was now blacklisting me for life.
I felt so betrayed that I wanted to go back to those Sunday meetings just to feel better than the people I, at one time or another, considered a friend. But then I recalled the hugging, whining, and how many of them frown upon burying your feelings in drugs. I was in no mood to hear someone who wasn’t me talk.
Today, I hold no ill will toward anyone in either of those settings. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I’ll never forget the majority of them (for better or worse). I even owe a few of them my life in a way. I got so tired of attending funerals of regulars of both the rooms, watching friends I grew up with stop showing up to both, then helping to carry their casket on the morning they were buried far earlier than anyone expected.
This is the reality of many active alcoholics and addicts, whether walking into a bar like it was never an issue or walking out of a meeting they knew better than to stop attending or openly resenting.
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