Why I left AA and chose to not drink in 2020
December 11th has been an important date to me since 2006.
Every year leading up to it always feels emotionally heightened, and I cannot help but remember the way I felt trying to undo that last hangover. I had come home drunk again, my Dad confronted me about the weed canisters and the watered down alcohol in the pantry. I was only 17 years old, but I felt like I had lived lifetimes saturated with drink and its repercussions. My will to live was minimal, as the traumas I experienced were blunted with the help of a lot of sedatives. Full-on sober as fuck awareness felt like an ice pick between my eyebrows. Being awake and fully registering my surroundings felt like punishment for my sins. Self-destruction had been more familiar than anything else, so I threw myself into 12-step programs and at anyone that would agree to hold some of my broken pieces. I was just a little girl not even 18 years old and I would do anything and everything to make sense of the senselessness.
The last pictures remaining of me when I was seventeen and a daily drinker
For the past nine months I’ve been questioning everything. Covid-19 was a catalyst for change that extended to areas of my existence I thought were resolved, packed-up and sealed with a bow. Since March my work has changed, my home dynamics changed, and I needed to follow suit. I went from coming home exhausted and delirious from working too much to restructuring and completely working from home. I traded studios in affluent neighborhoods and treatment facilities for young adults for Zoom screens and YouTube LIVE. I frequently attend online AA meetings to stay grounded as our new normal revealed itself. Each meeting sounded the similar, the pandemic and loss of jobs were common topic. People spoke about strength, and God and prayer pulling them through. Speakers in Italy talked about the morgues piling up, and what a real lockdown was like. I attended a meeting one day and a man digitally raised his hand in the Zoom room to share. He shared about being Black and Gay during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s. He spoke about being marginalized, forgotten, discriminated against and how the initial response to Covid in the U.S. only fully solidified this feeling.
Then on May 25th, Police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until he died.
How does this tie into my reasons for exiting AA? “Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police,” according to a research article by the National Academy of Sciences. Following the murder of George Floyd, protests broke out around the country and the world. Black Lives Matter came back to forefront in our news and social media timelines. I witnessed people that had been my acquaintances in AA post photos and stories that rationalized and justified the killing of Floyd because of the presence of narcotics in his system and criminal record. The divide became wider and wider, and people dug their heels into the ground. I couldn’t bypass this and I couldn’t call people my friends that didn’t understand the collective anguish of people other than themselves. When I called my sponsor about it, I recanted passages of the Big Book, “I can’t judge the forest by the ugliness of some of its trees.” But I could not persuade myself to step into a meeting again. These “outside issues” felt like booming roaring indoor parties in the middle of a pandemic. If you protested, you were a looter and rioter. If you stood for the civil rights of others, you were the radical left. All of these events were happening on the heels of an election featuring the most divisive president in office during my lifetime. A man that “grabs women by the pussy,” draws attention to speech impediments of his opponent, makes fun of people’s handicaps and is openly xenophobic, sexist and racist while millions of Americans see him as the second coming of Christ.
Suddenly the realization that everything is based on some system of the patriarchy, my own internalized misogyny, shattered my house of glass. Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in 1935 by Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson was born out of the illness of two privileged white men. Nowhere in the book is there language that accounts for sexual trauma or the epigenetic trauma of marginalized people. There would be no reason for it. The Big Book of AA was written and is maintained from a time in our history that would make my engagement illegal because my partner is Black. There is an entire chapter called, “To the Wives” that is an outline on how to treat your husband while he heals from his faults. One hundred years, and we do not update the material because we fear to dilute the message? This all came into my view after listening to Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like a Woman, a book that hit me harder than AA’s Big Book ever did. It spoke about intersectional feminism, our culture’s obsession with alcohol, eating disorders, shame-based language, oppression, abuse, and all the things that are new to our lexicon or failed to be mentioned. I found myself ugly crying while I folded laundry and cleaned the house, I felt seen and heard. A male-centric, disease-model recovery program wasn’t for me anymore.
TW: (this next part discusses sexual assault and rape)
December 11th 2006 isn’t my first sobriety date. This is after a year of relapse after being introduced as a 15 year old to the program. A relapse that came after being raped multiple times by the partner of my AA sponsor. Try processing that through the lens of a program that tells you resentment is soul poison. That holding on to things will guarantee your relapse. That forgiveness is the key to freedom. I stood at podiums telling people to not let anything bully them out of the program, not understanding that I hadn’t processed the trauma I experienced at the hands of the members of this program. I even spoke about this event at women’s meetings, feeling proud that I could say that I was still a member. While at mixed meetings, this program cannot screen, track, or can guarantee that young, vulnerable members are safe.
Now this isn’t a dig, this is an examination. AA has done amazing things for me. It created structure when I had none, and offered friendships when I had noone. Ultimately the purpose of the program is to introduce the seeker to God, or beings, and energy that is bigger than them. That is what I have received and I am eternally grateful. This is why Bill Wilson, the program’s cofounder, started undergoing LSD experiments during 1960’s. His intention was to find ways to help those afflicted and assist them in developing a spiritual connection, the gateway to healing. Bill himself was depressed, and he attempted to weave LSD treatments into the fabric of Alcoholics Anonymous, which of course was met with resistance. The War of Drugs had began unfolding during the 1970’s, leading to mass incarceration, more stigma around drug use, that disproportionately effected persons of color. Psychological studies on the effects of psychedelics and their therapeutic applications halted until recently.
Distilled Spirits blends a religion reporter's memoir with the compelling stories of three men—Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, and Bill Wilson—who transformed the landscape of Western religion and spirituality in the twentieth century.
Today is still a special day for me. A day that isolates the moment I had it up to here with my own bullshit. Not drinking created space for me to see, process and discern. I speak for myself as there are still people out there that are working through their shit. Even now, I am preparing for the scariest thing I have ever done. Going to trial to finally hold a man accountable for sexually assaulting and battering me. The unfortunate part is that the man I am holding accountable is not my first sponsor’s partner. I believed that being of sober would protect me, I really thought it would. When I had just over 10 years without alcohol, my worst nightmare happened again when I was by myself in a restaurant. This time, painfully sober and aware as it was happening. Remember fight or flight? Add freeze and fold to that list. Proof that the system is still flawed: the detective continued to ask me if I had anything to drink that night. He asked me five different times. FIVE. The trial is still pending.
There is much work to do around all of this and I will leave this story at this. I no longer identify as an “alcoholic or a drug addict in recovery.” I am a person that chooses to not drink today. Could that change tomorrow? Sure. What the hell do I know. I have spent the past 14 years socializing, facing fears and doing rad shit without it. I am also not “clean” while others are “dirty.” I am not “better” while others are “worse.” I am me. A flawed individual asking myself to unapologetically be myself the second I wake-up. I have molded my work to confirm this request and help others to do the same. I wouldn’t not call it hard work, but it’s definitely heart work.
Be safe friends. ILY.
XOXO,
TL