“One Helping Another”

Even in Recovery, life still has its ups and downs. It’s that whole ‘living life on life’s terms’ thing we always talk about. The program gives us tools to use, things we can do, so that we can deal with life in different ways instead of our old ways—like getting loaded, getting loaded, and getting loaded.

When I’m going through a rough time, one of the things I find really useful is to go to a meeting I haven’t been to before. I love my homegroup, of course I do, but there’s something about taking myself out of my comfort zone and being around folks who I don’t know, have never met, and yet are like me. It helps me to know that there are so many others out there who struggle with the same issues I struggle with, in the same way I struggle with them.

One time I tried this, I was having a hard time with some toxic people in my life. Hard time? Okay, that’s an understatement. I was going absolutely bonkers trying to deal with them. I was talking to my friends in the program, my sponsor, and I was still stuck. I could even think through the situation, recognize my powerlessness over these other assholes folk and how my life was becoming totally unmanageable. Still, things weren’t getting better. I could tell myself all day long that ‘this too shall pass’ but it wasn’t enough. I could practice patience, but I needed help to get through the pain of going through it all. So I called a friend and asked if they knew a good meeting.

Once there, I listened as I did when I was new—I listened for the similarities, and I heard them loud and clear. At one point the speaker started talking about toxic people and how to deal with them. My ears perked up and once again I was amazed by the power of the rooms, and of the rewards I receive from allowing the big G to work in my life. The speaker kind of grimaced at first. He scrinched his face up and paused for a moment at the subject. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, that’s hard.” And I knew in that moment that I really was going to be okay.

He did have some useful advice for how to deal with people like that, but the thing that was the most helpful was knowing that I wasn’t crazy. What I was going through was as hard as I thought it was; the feelings I was having weren't unreasonable, they were what anyone might feel, going through what I was going through. Dealing with toxic people is hard, and it’s particularly hard for those of us in Recovery because we used to BE the toxic people. (Some of us still are, but that’s the subject for another entry.) Being around folks who are the way we used to be can pull us like a magnet back into our former selves. It’s no different than how being around people who are currently using or drinking can lead us right back to getting loaded.

So much of the power of the rooms, the healing I get from going to meetings, is from that feeling of not being alone. When I hear someone I’ve never met share how I’ve felt, it helps me to not feel alone. I still get chills when it happens. I still fall back into that old way of thinking that I’m unique and that what I think and feel, what I deal with in life, is a problem only I have that no one else could ever understand. It isn’t true. It’s such an amazingly powerful part of the program, one addict/alcoholic helping another. We’re able to let ourselves be helped because we know the person on the other end has gone through what we’ve gone through.

After that meeting was over, I walked up to the speaker and thanked him and we shot the shit for a few minutes. I let him know how much he’d helped me and how glad I was that I’d gone that night. The miracles that happen in Recovery are still amazing. I hope they never stop being so.