I can’t fully express my happiness over the many stories I’ve heard from people who explained how they came to their first AA meeting. I have attended AA meetings in many towns, States, and countries. No two are alike, but to me each one is nothing short of a miracle. You see, I happen to believe in miracles. [Note: we only know each other in AA meetings by our first name and sometimes by the first initial of the last name.]
When I finally stopped drinking and joined Alcoholics Anonymous, I never expected to hear so many amazing stories from the other members, true-life stories of what brought them to their first AA meeting.
“One Shoe,” as I will name him, lived in a small town in upstate New York. He described himself as an alcoholic who had lost everything near and dear to him because of his binge drinking: family, friends, coworkers, jobs, everything. Sometimes he would get so drunk that he would sleep anywhere when he was tired. Or, when the alcohol robbed him of consciousness.
(I can identify with One Shoe: sometimes I was so drunk and tired that I fell asleep anywhere without the slightest concern of where I was or if danger lurked nearby. In this state, I could be robbed, beaten up, maybe even killed, and I wouldn’t care. I have wondered if there is some kind of subliminal message in my subconscious that if I did die that night, I wouldn’t be suffering any more. I don’t really know.)
Anyway, on one cold night, he fell asleep on a park bench in the town’s square. At daylight, One Shoe woke up to the shock of having only one shoe. He didn’t know if someone had stolen the missing shoe as a prank or if he had lost it during his drunken stupor, bouncing off buildings or cars or tripping over curbs. He sat up on the bench, placed his head in his hands, and for a long time mulled over his predicament. He had no money, so he couldn’t just by a new pair of shoes. There was no Salvation Army in town (or equivalent) to beg a pair of used shoes. He felt glued to the bench. After all, he didn’t want to walk around town wearing only one shoe—or no shoes at all. Even though he was known as the “Town Drunk,” he still had some pride left. He didn’t relish giving the townspeople one more thing to laugh at him about.
Finally, however, out of not knowing what else to do or out of frustration, he started looking around.
Across the park a church stood. Churches are known for their hospitality and generosity. He was sure that if he went over to the church that someone would help him. Boy, was he wrong. He knocked on the front door, waited nervously a bit—I mean, maybe no one was “home”—for someone to answer the door, which was subsequently opened by a clergyman.
“Good morning, Father,” One Shoe greeted as politely he could with his head still ringing like a bell from his hangover.
“Reverend will do,” the Protestant clergyman corrected. “And, how can I help you?” The clergyman recognized One Shoe as the town drunk, knowing the man had a serious drinking problem. [But as I mentioned in the Introduction, it would have been pointless to mention that to One Shoe who already knew he had a serious drinking problem. One Shoe had not reached the end of his rope, that final fall to rock bottom, yet.]
“I got one shoe,” One Shoe tried to explain. “Can you spare me some money so I can buy another pair of shoes?”
“You’re a drunk!” the clergyman declared in One Shoe’s face. “You shouldn’t have lost your shoe. You shouldn’t be drinking yourself to death in the first place! If I give you money, you’ll just spend it on more booze! You’ll be getting no money from me!” And the clergyman slammed the door in the man’s face.
“No, I won’t!” One Shoe promised to the closed door.
From my own personal experience, alcoholics will tell all kinds of sad stories to people in hopes of raising money for more buzz. As cruel as it might sound (or read), this clergyman was actually saving this man’s life. For, as you will see, the clergyman was homing in a point on One Shoe.
It is like the old joke: a farmer’s donkey, which was pulling a load at the time, decided to sit down in the middle of the road. No amount of coaxing would make that donkey move. Well, along came a city feller who offered to help. The first thing the city feller did was pick up a two-by-four from the wagon and smack the donkey in the middle of the forehead.
“Wha’d you do that fer?” asked the chagrined and excited farmer.
“I had to get its attention, first,” the city feller explained.
The clergyman bided his time and then opened the door again. “I’m having a meeting downstairs. I’d like you to join.”
“What kind of meeting?” One Shoe asked.
“Never you mind. There are some people who want to meet you.” The clergyman looked at One Shoe cagily. “You want to have a chance at getting some shoes or not?”
One Shoe looked down at his feet and shrugged. If there was a chance. . . , he thought.
What the clergyman didn’t tell One Shoe was that the meeting downstairs in the basement was an AA meeting. He figured that if he told One Shoe right off what kind of meeting it was, One Shoe would have “run for the hills” before attending an AA meeting. Even I had a similar reaction the first time attending a meeting was proposed to me: I’m not an alcoholic, I would protest. I just drink a little too much occasionally.
So, One Shoe entered the church and started down to the basement, hoping that someone there would take pity on him and help him buy a new pair of shoes. But when he arrived, he quickly realized it was an AA meeting. Now, he felt a bit embarrassed of being duped—and by a clergyman, no less—and very conspicuous. The missing shoe was the least insulting of his appearance, as he had not only slept in his clothes but missed a good washing in a while to boot. He couldn’t just poke his head in, beg forgiveness, and leave. So, he smoothed back the locks of his hair that fell over his eyes, tried to straighten himself up a bit, and took the furthest seat in the back. (Besides, he noticed that he would be closer to the free coffee and donuts, and he might even be able to partake some of the refreshments if no one paid much attention to him.) He told himself that he would stay until the meeting was over, and then approach someone and ask for financial assistance. He thought these recovering alcoholics would be an “easy touch.” Boy, was he wrong.
As he observed the meeting, he noticed that there was a kind of protocol being observed.
There were six basic AA Support Group Guidelines:
1. Keep confidentiality. “What you hear here stays here.”
2. Make “I Statements.” Avoid using “you” or “we.”
3. Stay in the “here and now.” Share what you are dealing with today or this week.
4. Share Feelings about your experience, strengths, and hopes.
5. No Fixing – No Advice Giving
6. No Crosstalk. No asking of questions or discussion
New people would be asked to introduce themselves. The general and accepted greeting was in the form of “I am Bob, and I’m an alcoholic.” To which the group would respond: “Hi, Bob.” Bob would then share a moment of his life that he wished to share. At the end of the mini speech, the group would respond: “Thanks, Bob,” which was considered to be a building of respect.
One Shoe was finally noticed and asked to introduce himself. He was quite conscious of how terribly dressed and out of place he was in comparison with the other attendees. They were well-groomed, well-mannered, and well-situated; he had trouble believing they were all alcoholics. He came forward, greeted the group with his first name, and stated the obligatory statement that he was an alcoholic, although deep down he didn’t believe he had an addiction. He started to narrate his tale of woe, telling the assembly that someone had stolen his missing shoe while he was sleeping on a park bench and that he needed some money for a new pair, if only someone would be so kind to help. Initially, the men at the meeting were not swayed. They talked to him for a while, explaining that it was obvious his life was in shambles because of his compulsive and addictive drinking.
One of the men in attendance told him: “If you stop drinking, maybe you would always have money for shoes and not buzz.”
Well, the conversation lasted for a good while until another gentleman asked One Shoe: “Do you want to stop drinking?”
“Oh, God, yes!” One Shoe nearly shouted.
“Will you come back tomorrow for another meeting?”
“Yes!” One Shoe promised.
This gentleman escorted One Shoe out of the meeting and into a shoe store and bought him a new pair of shoes.
One Shoe had an epiphany. He realized that he had only attended one meeting, and things in life were already better. He came back the next night, wearing a pair of new shoes. This single act of kindness impressed him so much that he did stop drinking. And, lo and behold, other parts of his life also improved.
I eventually lost track of One Shoe, but I still pray that he stayed sober and always had a pair of shoes to wear in his sobriety.
A gentleman lived in the penthouse of an exclusive hotel where he had a beautiful, panoramic view of the New York skyline and of the Hudson River. I first met him at an AA meeting after he had been sober only for a few months.
In this particular New York area, the AA chapter was predominately a private club for Irish-American membership. Other nationalities were welcome but probably not encouraged, as the Irish American membership held a near ninety-nine percent majority. It was common to state that Irish alcoholics had contracted the “Irish Virus.” So, when I stopped drinking in 1970 and joined this particular AA, I felt right at home. (My parents had been born in Ireland and came to America in 1923; I was born in New York, so I can claim to be one hundred percent Irish-American.)
You know, I went to high school on the lower east side of New York. It was located right in the midst of the Bowery. In the 1940s, we called it “skid row, or a place where low bottom drunks hung out.
The Bowery is both a street and a neighborhood in the southern portion of the borough of Manhattan. Before the American Civil War, the Bowery had been highly respectable, with rich families investing in property and buildings, like the Bowery Amphitheatre. But by the time of the Civil War, the mansions and shops had disappeared, replaced by low-brow concert halls, brothels, German beer gardens, pawn shops, and flophouses. (Flophouses were places that offered very cheap lodging and minimal services, like a shared bathroom and military barrack-style bunk beds. They had primarily been designed for transients, such as seasonal railroad and agriculture workers and even migrant lumberjacks.) The Bowery became a breeding ground for one of America’s earliest street gangs; on the other hand, the very first YMCA opened in the Bowery in 1873 and the Bowery Mission in 1880. From 1878 to 1955, the Bowery was occupied chiefly by employment agencies, cheap clothing and knickknack stores, cheap movie theaters, lodging-houses, “hole-in-the-wall” eateries, saloons, and houses of prostitution. It wasn’t until the 1970s when a revival of the Bowery was successful, turning the place into a respectable tourist and historic area.
But while I was in high school, it was not unusual for me to have to weave my way in and out of the drunks passed out and asleep on the sidewalks and streets as I made my way home to the subway station. And this was at four in the afternoon! Even though my parents were alcoholics, I never thought I would end up on skid row, which, I am sad to report, was my fate before I became sober.
So, to make a story short, I was shocked to meet a very wealthy person, who lived in a penthouse and seemingly would have no problems at all, coming to an AA meeting and admitting he was an alcoholic. If you had money, I thought, how could you be a drunk?
But what makes this story even more interesting was that our Penthouse alcoholic was not Irish and, to make matters even more interesting, he was Jewish! When he first came to the meetings, we were in a state of shock. How could he be an alcoholic if he were not Irish? Much more, we had a wealthy non-Irishman joining us and admitting that he had a drinking problem!
Dr. Abraham J. Twerski{1} (a psychiatrist and founder of Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh) wrote an informative article regarding Torah-observant Jews and involvement in AA. We Irish-American Catholics were probably as guilty as anyone else in considering that AA was predominantly a Christian program. The sad fact, however, was that very few synagogues have opened their doors to program meetings, even though Jews are affected by alcohol along with the rest of the world.
Dr. Twerski successfully argued that the twelve-step program was compatible with the Torah and might even have been adopted from Torah sources.
Step 1: we admit we are powerless over alcohol, and our lives have become unmanageable.
Step 2: We believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. Talmudic Jews recognize that God intervenes to save us from sin.
Step 3: We make the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him. While this phrasing avoids reference to any deity of any religion, the Jew would say that he turns his life and will over to the care of Hashem.
Step 4: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. In Hebrew, the chesbon hanefesh is a personal accounting with very much the same meaning. A person who is unaware of his character strengths is in a sorry state because he is unaware of the tools to live a proper life.
Step 5: Admitting to God, ourselves, and to others the exact nature of our wrongs. Verbalizing these breaks the hold of the yetzer hara, the evil inclination.
Step 6: We are ready to have God remove all defects of character.
Step 7: We humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8: We make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9: We make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Rabbi Yisrael of Salant cautioned that it would be better not to ask for forgiveness if such would aggravate a person, while the Chafetz Chaim states the one must ask forgiveness nevertheless.
Step 10: While taking a personal inventory, we admit when we are wrong. The natural tendency is to defend a mistake and rationalize it. Cover-ups do not work. Better results come from admitting mistakes promptly.
Step 11: Through prayer and meditation to improve our consciousness with God, praying for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out.
Step 12: Having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, carrying this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. The Torah teaches us that we have a duty of mutual responsibility for one another.
So, how did he come to AA, and, more importantly, our AA chapter?
One particular day, he had been drinking pretty heavily in his beautiful penthouse. Some might say that he was attracted to recreational drinking, but his stage had progressed far beyond that. To complicate the situation, his wife was also a problem drinker; plus, she was a drug addict to boot. Well, our Penthouse Drunk suddenly collapsed and passed out on his plush white wall-to-wall carpeting. His wife was beside herself, not sure of what to do, when she remembered a friend telling her that she and her husband should call the AA.
She hesitated for a few moments. High society folks, like themselves, don’t appreciate having their dirty laundry aired out for all to see. It’s bad enough that fame, fortune, notoriety, or what-have-you cause them to live in a fish bowl as it is. Besides, they were well respected in both their community and in their synagogue. It would not just be scandalous if the truth about their aberrant behavior ever became public, and they might not be able to live down the shame and humiliation. But looking down at the pitiful state her husband was in, it was fortunate that she cared more about him than their reputation. She looked up Alcoholics Anonymous in the phone book and dialed the number. She was coherent enough to pass on their address and phone number.
A few hours later, a gentleman knocked on their penthouse door. At first, she was vaguely aware of someone knocking. Where was the doorman? Why didn’t the doorman buzz them and announce that they had a visitor. Had she blacked out herself after she had made the phone call?
When she opened the door, she was taken aback by the man’s appearance: he was quite elderly.
“Who are you?” she asked nervously, clutching the top of her robe closed, fearing the worse: being attacked. “What do you want?”
“You called me,” the elderly man bristled. “You going to invite me in, or do I go downstairs again?”
The wife seemed to regain the purpose of her telephoning and with a red face invited the old man in. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s bad enough that you kept me waiting downstairs for twenty minutes.” The elder stepped across the threshold and into the living room where he noted the husband still unconscious on the floor. “The doorman sensed that there might be something wrong and let me use the elevator. Seems he was right, huh?” He sniffed in her direction. “You gonna pass out, too?”
Flushed, the wife answered, embarrassed. “No. No. Is there anything you can do for him?”
“There’s nothing I can do for him,” the elder stated matter-of-factly. “From here on in, it’s up to him. Let’s get him up off the floor and onto that sofa.”
“It’s a divan,” the wife corrected him, but the look on his face told her she was better off not saying anything more. Together they managed to carry the husband to the divan where he began to wake up.
“Who the hell are you?” the husband wanted to know when he was more cognizant.
“I’m from the AA. Your wife seemed to think you needed my help.”
“You called the AA?” the husband turned on the wife. “I’m not a drunk,” he nearly shouted at the elder, except it exacerbated the hangover headache that afflicted him. “I certainly don’t you or your help.”
The wife was somewhat chagrined at her husband’s impropriety.
“You just keep telling yourself that,” the elder rejoined. “The cemeteries are full of people who weren’t drunks.”
“Look. I am a respected member of this community, and I can pretty much buy anyone I want. You want money, I suppose, for sticking your nose in my business? Blackmail, perhaps? I am not a drunk! You won’t find me passed out on the street like some—some—some—”
“The only difference between you and me,” the elder stated, bending down so that his face was almost literally in the husband’s, “is that when I fall down, my head hits concrete. When you fall down, your head gets to hit plush carpeting. Other than that, we both fall because we are both drunks.” The elder stood up and started to leave. But first, he pulled out a business card from his wallet and pressed it into the wife’s hand. “I’ll see you at the next meeting. Or, I’ll see your obituaries in the newspaper.” He let himself out before a speechless rich couple could respond.
Apparently, the husband was impressed by the elder’s logic if not straight-forward boldness. The next day, both he and his wife attended their first AA meeting.
I left the AA chapter shortly after meeting him, but I do know for a fact that he and his wife helped other non-Irish people to come to the meetings. Shortly after entering the program, he and his wife bought a big van, which they used to transport other Jewish friends to the meetings.
As we say in AA: everybody is well if you have a drinking problem.
I have heard many stories over the years about alcoholics who have taken their own lives. I have also heard stories about people who tried to kill themselves but at the last moment something miraculous happened that changed their minds.
This story is about one of the latter.
Our desperate friend stood solitary on a local bridge—which I decline to name because of its ill-famed reputation—that had seen more than its share of suicides. As he looked down at the turbulent gray waters of the Hudson River, he contemplated on the recent events that had brought him here. He had come to a dead end in life. He had reached that turning point most alcoholics experience, where the situation has finally become “that bad.” More than once he had thought about going to an AA meeting, but he always rationalized that he could still manage his drinking while still keeping his marriage intact, his job steady, his finances solvent, and the rest of his life on an even keel.
Unbidden images came to the forefront as he began building his resolve to leap into the river several stories below and embrace the death that would take all of his problems away.
His wife stood over him after he had regained consciousness again from another bout of binge drinking. She didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to say on her part, words long left echoing without effect from a continuous stream of arguments. She objected to his drinking, which left them nearly destitute. She was the one supporting the family, and his physical presence—his mental and emotional presence had become MIA a long time ago with his wife and children—had become a millstone around her neck. She was better off without him, and in her opinion so were the kids. She dropped the divorce papers into his lap and then the court order that evicted him from the house.
His divorce lawyer dropped two bombs on him. His wife won full custody of the children; he would never see them again without her strict permission and supervision. The alimony and child support she was awarded virtually took every scent he had. Thinking of his insurance, which would soon elapse because he would not be able to keep up the payments there either, he was worth more dead than alive.
Again, he peered into the swirling waters. They repelled him, as if to say not to do it. But if by his death, not only would he end his troubles, maybe he would be able to give something to his children that he had neglected to do for so long in their short lives.
I can share some affinity with our desperate drunk. At the end of my first marriage, I was facing financial ruin, too. I had six children to take care of. But I had a Guardian Angel looking after me that temporarily relieved my financial straits. I emphasize the “temporary,” because it was still the demon drink that drove me to take my own life, only to be rescued at the eleventh hour by my wife’s unexpected return to our house.
Prior to his decision to make the long walk onto the bridge, his immediate solution to his problems was to get drunk. Still in a drunken stupor, he felt a kind of rare clarity. Jumping, he figured he would probably be dead before plunging into the frigid waters, his neck snapping from the twisting and turning of his body in mid-flight. He grabbed hold of a netting that had been erected as an obstacle to many suicide attempts.
He did not see a guard watching him and eventually following him across the bridge.
“I know what you are thinking,” the guard surprised the jumper, even as he was about to ascend the railing. A guard had watched him enter the bridge walkway and slowly, surreptitiously followed behind him. “But don’t do it.”
“What choice do I have?”
“Lots. Why don’t you tell me why you want to jump, and we’ll consider it.”
The jumper explained his situation.
“Mister, you say you have nothing to live for. At least, you are not Black.”
The jumper took a double-take and realized that the guard was Black. The night was dark, the lighting was poor, and the guard wore a hat and was buttoned up from the cold.
“You think you have problems? You’re White, man. You have more opportunities handed to you than you realize. Try wearing my skin for a while. And, if I’m not contemplating taking my life because I have to struggle a little harder in life, you might want to take a second thought and think this through. You jump now, and you won’t have that second chance.”
The jumper climbed back down off the railing and collapsed. He began to cry.
“Let’s go back to my guard shack,” the guard offered. “I’ve got coffee, and we can talk some more.” Together, the guard walked him off the bridge.
The next day, our desperate alcoholic attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and found a way to handle his problems. AA became a different bridge. Our jumper dedicated his life to helping others who were in great despair.
He also wanted to show some appreciation for the guard who just didn’t help him but virtually saved his life.
“A lot of people complain these days about God,” he used to tell me. “I believe that all of us are looking in the wrong directions or places. It is possible that everyone could be God in disguise. I used to pray for some kind of Angel or divine intervention to help me out of my situation. But even if God weren’t the Black guard that night—or one of His Angels—I will be forever grateful the man was there.”
I was susceptible to severe stress problems I had acquired dating back to the Korean War when I lost most of my left hand. I didn’t know what was causing these problems, and neither did the military doctors. At the age of 19, I was having nightmares, flashbacks of being crushed to death.
My mother would wake me up. “Eddie, you’re screaming in your sleep.”
I would say: “Mom, I want to die.”
She would say: “Eddie, you’re only 19 years old!”
Was I suffering from post traumatic stress? I’m not too sure. From 2008 to 2011, I saw many psychiatrists and took all kinds of batteries tests. The bottom line came back, indicating than not only was I—and still am, because it never really goes away—suffer from post traumatic stress, left untreated, I would probably wind up committing suicide or die as a result of a violent act. That’s what happened to me from 1968 to 1970: violent acts and attempted suicide. I would get so riled up against the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations that I physically attacked the demonstrators. My police friends told me, with only a hint of joking, that they would have to shoot me if I didn’t stop my violent tirades.
Most psychiatrists say that there is a trigger somewhere that brings on the effects of post traumatic stress that starts sufferers to be drawn into destructive behavior. Although during that time frame, I was unaware that I had post traumatic stress, but it manifested itself in a destructive way: I started to drink. Alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, attempted suicide, loss of my family and my children, and loss of some lucrative, high-paying jobs: all these things happened to me.