Ed Conlin and The Meetings

This is right after one of our AA meetings at Capuchin Soup Kitchen: Ed Conlin, Emily Hoffman, Ryan Corr, Matt Hagen, Albert E. Kresta

Tuesday mornings are one of the many highlights of my week.  I get to tag along with Ed Conlin and sit in on one of his AA/NA meetings where addicts who have been through some of the ugliest ordeals share about how they are staying clean and, more importantly why they stay clean.

You might think that one of these meetings would be just one big downer. I thought it would just be a lot of really sad stories about how ugly life can get with drugs and alcohol and how if I ever do drugs I will be depressed and alone. But when I went I found so much more than that. Yes, there are some very sad stories but there is also an amazing optimism and sense of community at these meetings. Everyone there shares a common experience of desperation, humility and struggle. I think I have learned more about those three things at the meetings than I have anywhere else in my life, I’ve especially learned about humility.

For an addict Humility is admitting that you have lost control of your entire life and you need something  someone to save you. I think we could all learn something from these folks, the most plain and obvious (to me) is the total reliance on God. The first thing we do at the start of each meeting is to “give our steering wheel over to God” and accept that we are not in control. “We are not in control”: what a terrible, scary, beautiful, awesome, liberating fact of life. That fact may be a little more plain to some people than others and that’s why I love hearing from these amazing people. They have a very different perspective on life than I do and that really challenges me to see things in a new way. Sometimes I feel spoiled because I get to come to these meetings and hear all of this great wisdom and I don’t even have to get addicted to anything, what a sweet deal! 🙂