ma non troppo

the blank you hate to love

deadscreen:

So, I am a bit hesitant to write the following in a public forum as it’s really none of your business nor do you all have any real influence on the situation one way or another, but I guess I’m writing it anyway, not quite sure why.

I’ve been attending a nightly meeting of alcoholic anonymous in west hollywood for a few months now.  We meet at midnight, seven days a week, and there is a core group of about 20-30 regulars, a number that seems to be growing weekly.

It has really helped transition out of the “treatment/outpatient” bubble I was in and back into the real world of real people with real issues. Not to say treatment didn’t have those “real things,” it’s just that public AA meetings seem to have a much wider spectrum of day-to-day issues and solutions discussed, more like “real life” and less like a retreat of some sort.

Anyway, I’m so not here to preach the AA gospel, as there is a lot of mumbo jumbo thrown around for sure, and they say it’s a program of attraction rather then promotion, which I respect (and feel could go a long way in the adver-marketing industry, but that’s another story).  I will just say that I have about a million times more respect for the program then I did 8 months ago when it was first introduced to me, and that practicing it’s principles have given me a sort of psychic freedom that I had not possessed previously.  Simply, I am feeling a lot saner then I ever have before.

As David Foster Wallace put it, “I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values. Probably the AA model isn’t the only way to do it, but it seems to me to be one of the more vigorous.”

I’m 28 years old. Real talk.

Well the reason I’m writing this today is that I’ve recently dubbed the aforementioned meeting as “the meeting I hate to love.” Which I think is a powerful concept and is indicative of the sickness and the solution.

Here are two reasons why I bequeathed this title unto said meeting.

1) There are a lot of AA concepts that, while they don’t make any sense to me, logically, feel right, physically.

ex. Admitting you are powerless will bring you power.  Wha??

ex. Helping somebody else is the only way to help yourself. Huh?? Wha? I mean, hey, I actually have a more direct route - how about I just help myself by, um, helping myself. Yeah. Shit.

ex. why would I hate to love anything??!?

And number 2, which is really the crux of the matter. The rooms of alcoholics anonymous, by their very definition, have a higher concentration of mentally sick people then most any other room not under lock and key.

There is another late-night meeting in Hollywood that has been known to get pretty raucous and frequently has quite a few non-sober attendees in the audience.  It is not an easy meeting to sit through as there is constant heckling and simple disrespect all around.  Some people attend it regularly as it is a take-no-prisoners no-holds-barred-type environment and people really “feel free to feel free” there.  I went a couple of times a few months ago, and dubbed it the “New York City of AA meetings,” cause if you can make it there you can make it anywhere. I got heckled at the time for saying that out loud,  and never went back (boo hoo).  I do believe this to be the truth and can now apply the same sentiment to the meeting I do keep coming back to.  And what I mean is, if I can sit in a room full of crazy people, crazy people who are crazy just like me (i.e. relatively unassuming outside appearances- nobody foaming at the mouth,) and enjoy their general comradeship, then the real real world, outside of AA, where there is at least a lower concentration of sickness, and a higher concentration of “wellness” and “interestingness” and “wonderfulness” will be not only a breeze, but will prove to be an immensely enjoyable experience once again.  Imagine that, me, palling around with the healthy bunch.  What a difference a year makes.

Even though I know this all to be true, for myself at least, sitting through the meetings day-in-day-out can be absolutely excruciating.  Many times I want to walk out, many more times I want to throw up my hands and scream, “GET YOURSELF TOGETHER MAN!” I’ve acted out on those impulses a few times with little consequence, always to come back the next day like it ain’t no thang.

In the rearview mirror of life, it now seems as though the easy part of this process was getting to a loving place of acceptance with myself. (Hey, I love to love myself.) Now, the tougher albeit more interesting and more rewarding part of this journey is underway, living with and loving all of you, whom I really truly hate to love.

 That’s great, Grubles…. Now, I think I need to go to an AA meeting.