“No,” I said.
“Have you thought any more about going back to the meetings?” she asked.
“No,” I said. See, Mom didn’t get it. This moment didn’t get a silver lining.
I was sick of stupid AA meetings. For the past two years, I had been in and out of the rooms, crashing one for a few months, then disappearing to drink for a while, then finding another place where I could be a newcomer again. (Getting sober might be hell, but it did give me the world’s best underground tour of New York churches.)
I would arrive five minutes late and leave five minutes early, so I could avoid the part where everyone held hands. I thought death lasers were going to shoot out of my fingers if I heard one more person tell me how great sobriety was. Sobriety sucked the biggest donkey dong in the world. One day, a guy just lost it during his share: I hate this group, and I hate this trap you’ve put me in, and you’re all in a cult, and I hate every minute I spend in here.
I liked that guy’s style.
WHAT WAS ODD about my aversion to AA was that it had worked for me once before. When I was 25, I ran into a drinking buddy who had gotten sober. I couldn’t believe he’d quit. He and I used to shut down the bars. “One more,” we used to say at the end of each pitcher, and we’d “one more” ourselves straight to last call.
But his once-sallow cheeks were rosy. “Come to a meeting with me,” he said, and I did.
What I remember best about that first meeting is a jittery reluctance to brand myself with the trademark words. I’d seen the movies, and I knew this was the great, no-backsies moment: I’m Sarah, and I’m an alcoholic. For weeks, I’d been kicking the sheets, trying to get square on that issue. What did it mean to be an alcoholic? If I said I was one, and I turned out to be wrong—could I change my answer?
Alcoholism is a self-diagnosis. Science offers no biopsy, no home kit to purchase at CVS. Doctors and friends can offer opinions, and you can take a hundred online quizzes. But alcoholism is something you must know in your gut.
I did, even if I was reluctant to let the words pass my lips. I’d read The Big Book, AA’s essential book of wisdom, and experienced a shock of recognition that felt like being thrown into an electric fence. Other people cut out brown liquor, too? Other people swear off everything but beer? Even the way I came into AA was textbook. It was, indeed, the origin story of the group. Bill Wilson spent an evening with a drinking buddy who was clean, and their meeting became the first click of an epiphany. If that guy can get sober, so can I. AA had been shrouded in mystery to me, but it can be boiled down to this: two or more drunks in a room, talking to each other.
After that first meeting with my friend, I decided to give it a try. I did not have the most winning attitude. I would sit in the back with my arms crossed and sneer at the stupid slogans. “One day at a time,” “Let go and let God,” which was clearly missing a verb at the end. I had mental arguments with nearly everyone who spoke. (I usually won.)
It worked anyway. I stayed sober for a year and a half, which is like dog years to a 25-year-old. I heard unforgettable tales in those rooms. I was moved in ways that startled me. Still, I never settled in. A few members took me to brunch one afternoon, all eager hands and church smiles. I sat in that diner—the same diner I used to frequent with my college friends on hangover mornings, when we showed up with cigarette smoke in our clothes and casual sex in our hair—and I hoped to God no one saw me with these middle-age professionals. I shoveled gingerbread pancakes into my mouth and forced myself to laugh at their jokes, and I worried this would be sobriety: a long series of awkward pancake lunches with people who made me feel old and ordinary. I preferred feeling young and superior.
When I decided to start drinking again at 27, nothing could have convinced me to stay. No persuasive case could have been launched to keep me out of the churning ocean once I decided to swim in it again. For a woman who has hope, logic is the flimsiest foe. Yes, I had admitted I was an alcoholic, and I knew in my heart I didn’t drink like other people. I also thought: If I play my cards right, I could get ten more years. Ten more years of drinking is a long time!
As more time passed, I began to wonder if I’d overreacted with that whole AA business. This is one of the most common strains of alcoholic doublethink, and it is especially pernicious, because there is no objective way to sort out which person actually did overreact and which person is crotch deep in denial. I was the latter, but I was also 27. I spied a window of opportunity and zip-bam-boom. I was headed into the waves once more.