Two Weeks After My 19th Birthday (continued)
I had just moved from the East Coast to San Francisco. It was 1984, right smack in the middle of where everyone seemed to be doing mass amounts of cocaine with alcohol as a chaser to take the edge off. I was a part of the trend and thought nothing of it. Getting high and drunk was a part of my life, almost as routine as brushing my teeth, which didn’t happen on those nights I blacked out or passed out, to say the least.
I reached a bottom, awareness that this was not working enough to numb the pain and other difficult emotions I was being tormented with inside of my head and heart. One May 29th, 1985, I awoke with the same massive hangover, remorse about not being able to remember what happened the night before, and for the first time a feeling I needed to make a change in my life around this pattern.
I opened the phone book under Alcoholism and thumbed through the pages with blurry eyes and a headache. The Salvation Army sounded too frightening and Napa Valley Recovery center too expensive and far away. I was ready to give up until I found a small advertisement for a place called Women’s Alcohol Center, much later referred to a WAC.
I took the bus there the next day and it did not take much effort after I was asked to answer a list of 20 questions about my drinking, to qualify me for treatment. I was 19 and in the second stages of the disease of alcoholism. I attended a women’s support group there on a weekly basis, which soon introduced me to my first experience with twelve step meetings.
My first experience was fear. Everyone was at least 10 years older than me. There was an acrimonious language which seemed to be understood by the meeting’s members who further isolated me from relating to this new program which was supposed to help me to stop drinking and stay sober. There were these slogans and steps hanging on the wall in a Old Roman style font which reminded me of a scroll that would be read by a messenger for a King in a royal court. They looked old, very old, and I had no idea what they meant.
There was a lot of talk about God and God could relieve a lot of this if only I put my faith in “him.” Now I felt like I was in some time warp from the 15th century. I left confused and felt totally isolated. I could not relate to what was said nor grasp the meaning of these wall hangings, slogans, and people so much older than me. I felt further out of place and extremely confused about what this 12 step program was about upon leaving the meeting. I was two weeks sober, a mere chicken still living inside an egg that had rotted a long time ago. How could this experience that I just had with a 12 step meeting possible relieve the stench I had been living with inside my own personal cacoon since I was 12?
They offered books and sometime raffled them off after the meeting. There was one that was somewhat helpful which I won when my ticket matched the winning number, but I still did not grasp these steps they kept referring to with “God” seeded throughout them.
I finally meet a few people my age and connected with them in a way in which I would have never connected with 12 step meetings. There was no accessible internet access yet in 1985. I feel that if I had a place to go to online, an interactive forum, it would have created a much easier path for me to recovery and people my age I could relate to.
Instead, I did it the old school way – I meet a young person who then introduced me to another person in my age group and I saw that this was working for them and I wanted to be a part of that recovery process. This is the point at which I reached a support network to help me to embrace a 12 step recovery program, which with the support of a close group of friends, managed to keep me sober for 13 years.
Nancy, 35
San Francisco, CA