304. Go To the Meeting

We here an okay thing from someone in recovery. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny and It’s Going To Be Okay.

This episode is a group project, and today’s contribution comes from Kait in Brooklyn. She sent us this email:

I am an alcoholic and will be 9 months sober next week on March 6th. I’m 33 years old and drank alcohol daily for about a decade. It was HARD to get sober and it remains hard to stay sober. One thing that makes my day OK is early morning AA meetings.

There is a 7:15am meeting that I go to as often as I can during the week. It is not convenient for me to get to, when I go it usually requires that I set up a dog walker for later in the day, it conflicts with my preferred workout timing, and it also requires that I go to bed quite early in order to accommodate the early wakeup. There are lots of other meetings in Brooklyn and I could find one that works more with my schedule, but this particular meeting has some kind of magic to it that makes me want to make it work regardless of the downsides.

For the last 6 months, I’ve oriented my mornings around this meeting and it has helped me to feel OK, one day at a time. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous continues to expand and evolve in my mind and my day to day. At any moment when I think beyond surface level about the fact that the program exists at all and was available to me when I had no idea where else to go, I am profoundly moved.

When I hear other people talk about their experience with alcoholism, it helps me. When I share about mine, it also helps me. The rooms of AA provide an egalitarian structure for mutual aid and I feel honored to benefit from this.

So getting to this way-too-early and out-of-the-way AA meeting is what makes me feel Ok for today! Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience in the podcast and for inspiring me to reach out to you today!