If my recovery is a continuum of daily lessons then tonight is my favorite class.
We convene Tuesday evening at 7: 6 to 10 recovering men. You won’t find the meeting listed in any 12-Step directory, but with neither pomp nor circumstance, each week we trudge down the carpeted steps of the luxury development to a secreted conference room. There, along the perimeter of a long, thick oak table embraced by the mahogany walls reminiscent not of an A.A. meeting, but rather the last scene of “The Apprentice” we lay it all on that table.
There we bear our souls. We share. We take off our masks.
Sometimes it is me; often it is another.
The players are there by invitation only. Most are educated; many are prosperous; still, these doctors, lawyers, high-profile politicians and businessmen, meeting together in anonymity, are woven together by one common thread: each has been humbled by substance, and each, after hitting his particular bottom has committed to a sustained program of recovery.
So we open up, and in so doing we demonstrate every seven days that a problem shared is indeed a problem cut in half.
I have conveyed both the agony and ecstasy of relationships as well as the unanswerable questions of family politics. I have listened as others express their bitterness over family or business demise. I have shed tears, shared anger and watched other grown men cry. And through the angst, we each, week in, week out, grow.
How fortunate I am to have learned that no matter where I am on my journey or what I’m going through, someone else has been there. It is settling to be reassured that sometimes time just needs time, and that all I can do is what I can do. It’s healthy to be reminded with love that there indeed is a God, and it is not me.
In recovery I have learned to be spiritually intimate with other men. It’s not about the sympathy, but about the understanding.
I have learned to be more honest with myself. I have learned peace.
One day at a time….but especially Tuesdays.