Do You Want to Get Help?
Given how much my life changed overnight, I recognized pretty quickly that I was drinking too much. Again.
But I didn’t know what to do about it. My life slid right back into the despairingly lonely place it had been before, and this time I couldn’t blame it on Pitcairn or Larry. Briefly I considered blaming Gregg, but he hadn’t yet proven himself to be a problem.
Many people whose lives are crumbling like a stale cookie beneath them are able to see it right away. They look at the cookie and – aack! it’s crumbling! – and then they do something about it. But alcoholism makes it really hard to see that the cookie is crumbling; in fact, it makes it hard to see that anything we do is the cause of our angst. So it took a shooting star for me to recognize that drinking was my problem.
If I’d learned nothing from the shooting star, I had learned that. So why was I drinking again?
I had no idea.
So I did what I always do when I don’t have any idea what to do next: I called my mom. “We can’t help you,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked, completely baffled. They had always helped before!
“We can’t help you if you’re drinking,” she said. “We can’t give you any money.”
Suddenly I realized that I did need money, and I hadn’t needed it before I drank. But I said, “I don’t need money. I need to know what to do.”
“Do you think you’re an alcoholic?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Do you want to get help?”
“Maybe.” I didn’t think I needed help; I just wanted to go back to not being so messed up. “I don’t know,” I said.
Mom told me about a woman with whom she worked. She had mentioned Annie before, because Annie chain-smoked cigarettes in the office and it drove my mom crazy.
But she was also my mom’s friend. “Annie goes to AA meetings,” Mom said. “Alcoholics Anonymous.”
That sounded dreadful. “How is a meeting supposed to help me? I don’t want to go to a meeting.”
My weary mother sighed. “Well I don’t know what else to tell you to do.”
I sat quietly for a minute, wondering if I had any other options. I looked around at my apartment, ashtrays overflowing, cat hiding in a corner, crumpled beer cans strewn about. Finally I muttered, “When is the meeting?”
“Let me call you back,” Mom said.
I imagined walking into a board room with a bunch of old men staring at me in my cutoffs and bare feet. I didn’t like the idea, but I believed that if I went to one meeting of AA, I’d be cured. So I seriously considered going and getting my life back on track.
Then I considered begging my mom for five dollars instead.
Minutes later, the phone rang. “There’s a meeting on Monday in Shadyside,” Mom said. She gave me the day, time, and an address, and I wrote them all down.
“Is Annie going to be there?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” my mom said. “But if you want help, you can go anyway. It’s every Monday.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and I hung up the phone with no intention of ever going to any meeting, ever.
Then I found out about Gregg and reconsidered.