July 25
The Wrong Kind of Drunk
We may feel close to an alcoholic whose losses resemble ours and distant from one whose life seems entirely foreign. The details are different: age, money, language, neighborhood, or what happened while drinking. Without saying so aloud, we divide the room into people we understand and people who would probably do better somewhere else. Our own experience has become a fence.
Identification often begins beneath the details. The private bargaining, the dread of morning, the astonishing return to a drink after another resolution—these may be recognizable in a life unlike ours. We cannot assume complete understanding, and we may need to ask more than usual. That effort can enlarge the usefulness of what we have lived through. The gift we received was never dependent on finding an exact copy of ourselves in every chair.
Which differences do I let prevent me from listening for shared experience?
Their story may reach a place mine knows.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Traditions Three and Five.