Christmas was always a time to party, but then, every day was a good time to party! The difference was that at Christmas there were more opportunities to eat and drink for free! There were multiple company parties and plenty of free booze given by our clients. There were also get-togethers with friends and family, as well as trips to the bar, and plenty of shared joints, lines, and other accoutrements.
It was a great time of year to have a drinking problem, because it was so easy to blend in, as many people seemed to be over-doing it during the Holidays! No one seemed to care that I was a sloppy drunk at a time when there were so many drunks around. The problem was that I was a sloppy drunk the rest of the year, when most of those ‘others’ went back to being upright citizens…or so seemed to me.
Then, I finally had enough, and I stopped drinking.
Now, I had a question about what I was going to do with myself now that I didn’t drink any longer? What was I going to do with my time? Would I ever have any fun again? And…what about the Holidays?
I was fortunate to have understanding family members. They may not have fully understood Alcoholism and seldom saw me at my worst, but they were glad that I was taking action. Work was different though. While it seemed like half of my office went to AA meetings, the other half did not get it – I was looked down because I did not go to the office Christmas party and had stopped going to the bars with everyone after work, and at lunch…and I was even teased for being sober, a little. When the boss gave out gifts that year, he gave us all bottles of cheap champagne…I declined.
In many ways I felt left out of the Holiday fun, and I was resentful. I was also worried about how I would handle it all…if I could stay sober. However, I went to a lot of meetings, stayed close to my sponsor, and avoided all those people, places and things (like Holiday parties) that I was warned about! It helped that my wife (at the time) was also working on her sobriety. Yet, it still wasn’t easy, and I needed a lot of meetings!
This included Christmas Eve, when my sponsor told me I was going to the Staten Island Alcathon…approximately 24 hours of AA meetings, broken up by lots of food, and some fun, like a visit from Santa for the kids, and music for the adults! While we had family commitments, we also had some down-time and were able to attend about eight hours of the meetings! When we first got there, I felt awkward, but then I was never socially well adjusted. It did help that I was among many other people that already knew, and who had similar issues, but still…I was at loose ends for a little while.
Within an hour, we had eaten, met up with friends and we were thinking of leaving, when the call came out for help in the kitchen. Most of the food was supplied ala potluck, and there was a high demand, the problem was that the mashed potatoes, veggies, ham, turkey and gravy were all getting cold before they could be served up. My sponsor knew that I had experience working in restaurants, and so he volunteered me to help!
I remember being led to the serving area, and finding the food on the steam-line, but the line was not turned on. No one seemed to know how to use it, but I did, having worked on one just like it at college. I directed my co-volunteers to fill it with water, then turned it on and began to heat up the food! Then I got to stand there and serve everyone who came through the line…for hours!
People would come through the line, we’d fill up their plates, trade Holiday wishes, jokes and even the occasional story. Of course, we also had those who were frequent flyers, coming back over and over, and the kids, who were the most fun! They were excited for Christmas, loved the cookies, and gushed over the extra gravy!
Looking back now, I realize that for some of these people, including the kids, this was their only Christmas dinner, and maybe the best one that they had in years…some of them might have spent the last Christmas dealing with active addiction, domestic turmoil, and even homelessness. It is even possible that the next Christmas was not any better, it was nice to know that we might have made someone’s holiday brighter, they certainly made ours better!
My wife also helped out, serving food, and then helping to pick up the trash from the tables, and swapping out the trays when they were empty. We did get to a break during the meetings, to listen to the speakers and participate in the discussions, but after every meeting, we had a new rush of hungry people to deal with…and then we had to clean up after every rush. There were dishes to wash and we had to wipe off the steam-line, change the water in the pans and make sure that the food stayed hot during the breaks.
While I did not intend to help out at the Alcathon that day, doing so helped me a lot!
It was also a lot of fun!
It was hard work, but it gave me something to do, other than being socially awkward and having to go home early. Volunteering also let me meet a lot of people, and my wife and I made a lot of new friends and new connections that proved beneficial. Staten Island was not a big place, and for while I still lived there, I kept running into people I first got to know at the Alcathon, or met through folks I had met there!
Even today, when I go back, I’ll occasionally run into someone who I knew back then…and once, I ran into someone here in the wilds of Pennsylvania that I met at that same Alcathon!
This is how it works…we recover by helping each other, and in the process, we build strong connections, true friendships and can even have fun!
This is one of the main gifts of sobriety, that we learn what ‘the joy of living’ truly means…even when life does not always go the way we expect it to. We learn that it does not come at the bottom of a bottle, at the end of joint, or at the tip of a needle…it comes from making real connections with others!
Even today, 30 years later, I think of that Christmas Eve, and how it was hot, tiring and very busy…but it was also an amazing day, one that helped to set my sobriety on a good path!
Since that day, I have volunteered many times, for a variety of groups and causes, and I have met some really great people. Some were fellow volunteers, and some were people who needed my help, but who also helped me…like the man I worked with at the AIDS hospice, or the patients I visited as a volunteer chaplain. These opportunities gave me the chance to pay back some of the good that was shown to me when I was struggling, to show others the same help and support…the same hope that was offered to me.
Recovery is not easy, but not as hard as we sometimes make it out to be…doing good for others and making connections that last are very important to our success in sobriety, for we need each other to recover, to remind ourselves that we are not alone!
This is the true gift for us this to remember this holiday season: that we do not trudge the road of happy destiny alone, and when we travel together, we will discover that life is not all toil and trial, but can also be a lot of fun at times!
Ordinary Adventures 