Through the Red Door Blog

I have just spent thirty minutes holding my mom as she cried, tearful over her declining health due to late-stage COP and Emphysema, a direct result of her addiction to nicotine since the age of fifteen. Watching my mother at the end of her life is heartbreaking, and my recovery has allowed me to be present for her as she reaches the end of her life. Without it, I would be either in prison or dead.

Mom and I have a complicated relationship. Both of us addicts, we often bring out the worst in each other as much as the best. For much of my life, I held resentments against her for what I felt were wrongs. Working the steps in SLAA enabled me to forgive her, and I offered amends by caring for her as she aged. Step work helped me realize that mom loved me as best as possible. Perfectly imperfect.

As a member of Al-Anon, I now see that no matter what, I cannot talk, pray, or manipulate mom into health. I sure tried. I threw away cigarettes. I asked her to quit for her great-grandkids. I showed her videos about what it is like to die from COPD. For a season, I just avoided her. As I review the past seven years I lived with her and my stepfather, I felt so damn sad.

The kind of sadness that resides deep in my bones.

My relationship with the Bible is just as complicated as that with my mother. But in the silence of my room, I asked my Higher Power to give me some sense of presence. I was so tired of holding everything in - of having everything together. Then I came across this passage, and the love and presence of the Holy Spirit wrapped me in a warm embrace.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you ’ll recover your life. I ’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won ’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you ’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

The Message Matthew 11: 28-30

In the depth of my sorrow, I felt love seep into cracks and crevices. I accepted that my best defense to this challenge before me - the challenge of being a good son to a dying mother - was to accept that I was not alone. In addition to my family and friends, my Creator was in the middle of this transition from life to death to life for my mother. All I had to do was quit trying to do God ’s job.

Acceptance is the first of twelve spiritual principles of recovery. It is another way of describing the positional change Jesus calls us to make in Matthew 11. We must ‘come” with Him. We have to stop working for our spirituality. We must watch the one who bore our pains and sorrows as He goes about His God ’s business. We must be so openhearted that we allow lightning bolts of love, mercy, and grace to penetrate our rebel souls. In short, we give up control. I am not the greatest at doing that.

But I am learning.

Shane M
Conway, AR
January 2023

There are times when I wish I could remember “Christmas past.” Most of my drinking was blackout drinking. My daughter once said that my brain was made of Swiss cheese; it was full of holes. It’s true that there is much of my drinking life I do not remember and, what I do remember, is embarrassing, and shame filled.

I began drinking in seminary and my memory of this time of year is one of visiting friends in Dublin where there was a table set aside and loaded up with all sorts of alcohol. Oh, at that time, it was heaven to me.

I remember one Christmas when I took a bus to the center of town and walked the streets now empty of people except the few who were begging for money “for some food” but I knew they would use it for alcohol, and I gave it to them anyhow. Then I returned to my friend’s home and drank myself into oblivion while talking about “those poor alcoholics” on the street.

My heart goes out to those who do not remember the trail of sadness and sorrow they left behind them as they wrecked the family gathering and ‘came to’ in jail. It was not until they got into recovery that they were able to hear about their abusive and destructive past and are grateful for the ‘nudge from the judge’ who offered recovery as an option to jail.

The Christmas season is, without doubt, a difficult time for many of us in recovery. It is a time of togetherness and extra meetings, Christmas-eve midnight meetings, and all-night meetings filled with joy and the sharing of really good food and a wide array of mixed non-alcoholic drinks.

There are those who are recently separated, divorced, widowed and it’s their first Christmas alone, or alone with kids, and they are more than grateful for the support of the Fellowship to carry them through to the New Year. Then there’s the joy of welcoming the newcomer on Christmas-eve or Christmas day, who is in deep emotional pain and cannot fathom why the rest of us are laughing and having a good time.

Like the newborn child, we experience a new birth in recovery. Gratitude is new. Emotions are new. Honesty is new. Open-mindedness is new. Listening—really listening—to others is new. Like the newborn child, we are carried by the home-group until we find our feet and begin to think clearly for ourselves

Christmas can be “the most wonderful time of the year” despite the snow (or lack of it), the lack of sunlight, the ghosts of Christmas past, etc. The Christmas season is one of renewal, of coming together to celebrate our new life individually and together. We celebrate because we have been given a new lease on life which is the biggest present we ever received or will receive.

Like Scrooge, we can be brought back to our Christmas past and take an honest look at how we once behaved and the attitudes we carried, the contempt for others which was in fact a projection of our contempt for ourselves. The Ghost of Christmas present shows us that those who are less fortunate than ourselves can be happy because they accept their situation in life. The ghost of Christmas present shows us that presents and financial success is no guarantee of happiness

The ghost of ‘Christmas yet-to-come’ can be the most frightening as families struggle with being in debt; struggle to keep old traditions alive even as change in family situations change. Change is not always easy for the newly sober member.

Celebrating Christmas sober and serene is a gift. We may not recognize this gift at first but by our second and third Christmases, we will have seen how our past can help others, that we don’t have to worry about finances, that God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This is our Christmas every day.

However we choose to celebrate this Christmas season—alone, with family, or at a fellowship meeting or two—let’s celebrate the occasion of new life as Moses told the people of Israel that God said: “Choose life that you and your descendants may live.” Choose life and live with every fiber of your being and love your neighbor as yourself. Live it one day at a time and know that you are a special gift to all from God.

We celebrate because we have been given a new lease on life which is the biggest present we ever received or will receive.

Folks like to remember the family Christmas with its religious and social events, the feelings of love and affection. The family together as one. The familiar music. Falling snowflakes, sledding down nearby slopes, neighborhood caroling.

But for the active alcoholic, there is usually a dark side.

Sometimes I think our Christmas traditions exist to remind those in recovery and their families of what it was like back in our so-called “fun days of rage” when the active alcoholic took advantage of all the seasonal gaiety.

When I finally made the choice of Unconditional Surrender and sought the help of my Higher Power and the Steps, my recollections of my past days of rage seemed to gradually fade away, and in their place, the Holidays came to be a loving family experience.

Fueled by our ego and its call for a return to the boozy days of old, they don’t just disappear. The memories sometimes return, perhaps weaker with the passage of time, but they never disappear completely.

Somehow various specific inebriated actions in the Christmas Season seem to hover around. For example -- slipping into the beautifully decorated tree; assembling a wagon at two-thirty on the morning of Christmas Eve and finishing up with an extra clamp, a bolt but no nut, and a handle; or your late, maybe noisy, arrival at the church pageant. An inappropriate toast to a friend, or inappropriate sleepwear is given to one’s spouse. But perhaps worst of all was our failure to get to Walgreen’s before it closed on Christmas Eve to buy a bag of batteries for the kids’ new games and electronic gadgets --late because you bumped into one of your old pals, Murph, a buddy from the Antlers Bar, and spent 45 minutes toasting Best Greetings to Murph and Sallie the bartender. Are all these incidents fictitious? Well, let’s put it this way: “What do you remember?”

Come Christmas morning, the active alcoholic exhibits nothing but shame, sour looks and words are hurled. Maybe he himself recognizes he’d messed up again and failed to even get that promised couple weeks in the Program. Excuses flow capped by that old self-pity favorite, “You’d drink too if you had my job.”

But thanks to our Higher Power, the recovered alcoholic now arrives at the family festivities with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude: to his whole family for sticking by him during his troubles, to his home group at the Church, his sponsor, and probably Bill W and Dr. Bob for seeing the light of their Higher Power and learning how to seek and follow His ways.

But listen to this reality: Attend an AA meeting close to Christmas. The speaker with thirteen years of sobriety is well into her regular extravagant Christmas drunk-a-log. Are folks nervously looking around, embarrassed by the stories being told, maybe worrying about their impression on the two newcomers?

No sir! You’ll hear laughter, cries of “I did that!” and “Just like me” and “I couldn’t get that &%lksc# bike together to save my life!”

The joys of recovery, of new starts, of love and hope all come forth. We now live on all the good stuff we get from the Program and have gratitude for those who came before us who responded to our shame and showed us the way they had taken. But alcoholics need reminders of the past to remember our vicious alcoholic conduct.

But dwell on the muck of the past? No! We don’t look at it in shame. We were sick and had lost our Higher Power. Making amends, we moved on. We know this as a bright new life, so we go to our next Twelve Step call to carry the Message we ourselves had embraced.

And with that, on this day, we pass along the Glorious Greetings of the Season to all.

Jim A/Traditions of Lebanon

It came to pass in the 2^nd week of Advent there went out a decree to post a blog about recovery. And it came time to deliver the blog and it was taxing to talk about the words of the prophet Isaiah from this week’s lectionary Old Testament readings. The rod of his mouth shall he smite and the wicked shall be slayed by his breath. This does not sound like the countdown to Christmas the Hallmark channel promotes.  

But there are great promises here too that we can view in the time of Advent—and through the lens of recovery. Righteousness, faithfulness, children and animals playing together. We shall not be hurt or destroyed and the dwellings shall be glorious. These are kinder promises and look a lot more like the images on the Christmas cards we may be preparing to send. 

The reality is the story of the birth of Christ, the day we are long-expecting during this season, is one of great hope and promise especially for those of us in recovery. The prophet tells us a shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse and in the least expected place a king will be crowned. Generations later, a babe in a manger of the lineage of David will be given for all people. Humble beginnings, unexpected places, the rough ways made smooth. This is often what we see in the lives of individuals in recovery. It is in our own humility and transparency we are restored. When we admit our powerlessness we are made strong. And one day becomes 30 becomes six months and the next thing we know we are in long-term recovery because we took one day at a time.    

Of course, along the way we may have met with the Baptizer’s winnowing fork and been swept into the granary. We may have had our own experiences of being denied room at the inn, forgotten, alone and scared. We may have been burned as chaff emotionally and spiritually. But over time, with a sponsor, doing step work, finding sober supports, talking to a therapist, getting our house in order…we begin to be restored. Our own internal lion and lamb lie down together. We make peace with ourselves and learn to forgive. Because of this, we escape the unquenchable fire of our own making. Our true selves, our little child, leads us.  

This is the Christmas card and the Hallmark movie that can be ours this Advent season. And this is also what recovery can begin to look like after 3 days or 40 weeks or 16 years. This can be our hope, our consolation, for which we can say, Glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth, good will to ourselves.  

Deborah M., MA, LPC
Lancaster, PA

“Were not ten made whole. Is there no one to return to give thanks but this outsider?” Luke 17:11-19.

I was in the Fellowship almost five years before I accepted, I am an alcoholic. Then it was a while longer before I could verbalize thanksgiving for this simple suggested program of recovery.

Recently I read the gospel of Luke about Jesus healing ten men with leprosy. Only one returned to give thanks. I identified with “the other nine.” I did not return – at least initially – to give thanks.  Many of those who talked about gratitude were people who did not attend church or at least not attend it regularly. This is not a judgement on them. This is a judgment on myself. I was the one going to church on a regular basis. I was the one who taught “Sunday school.” It never dawned on me to be thankful for my recovery.

In fact, I was anything but thankful. I did not believe I was an addict and when one doesn’t believe the reality of their addiction there is no way they can be grateful for the program of recovery. I was at meetings to warm a chair; to make coffee ahead of time, stay afterwards and clean up, do anything to look good and learn to say “the right things.”

To become thankful is to be aware of what is missing in one’s life. Those who buy clothes at a second-hand store aren’t grateful because they can’t afford the same clothes at the higher price. They are grateful that they can buy clothes for their children to send them to school. They are well aware of their financial limits and grateful for the kindness of others.

There were a few times in my life when I had no income and depended on the generosity of others for food and shelter. I was, and remain, grateful for everything they did for me.

One would think that one who went to church regularly would have an attitude of gratitude, an attitude of thankfulness. Yes, I was grateful for what others did for me, but I did not have an “attitude of gratitude.” I was angry that I had to depend on others. I was angry at God, myself, and others. I had resentments about what “they did to me.”

To have an attitude of gratitude is to have a habit of being grateful. We can see it in a person who has the attitude of gratitude. Those with an attitude of gratitude are at peace with themselves, they are genuinely happy, and much less stressed than the rest of us.

“The other nine” were busy running to see the priest who would tell them they were cured and could return to their family and friends. They were looking forward to a good meal, a bed, and shelter for the night. No doubt they were grateful for these things, but they did not return to give thanks to the man who cured them.

As I began to work the steps and live the program I came to grips with the negative aspect of my life as an addict. I had to admit to myself that I was absolutely not perfect. I had to admit that my drinking had been out of control, that my life had become unmanageable. I had to admit that I am a human being with all the good and negative qualities available to me, but my addiction led me down a very dark, negative, and destructive path. How did I get out of it?

First of all, I did not get out of it by myself. Were I to follow my instincts I would more than likely to be dead and not writing this blog. Some folks get a nudge from the judge and others get a nod from God. God did not give me a nod. She kicked me in the derriere and, when that did not work, She set me up to feel Embarrassment and Shame in such a manner that I sought the help She was steering me toward. And for that I am grateful. 

Five weeks in a four-week program were not sufficient to make me acquire an attitude of gratitude. It took over four years and a declaration of bankruptcy that got my attention. That day I came home, and I laughed a good belly laugh. I could lose everything except my sobriety. It finally hit me, I am sober, I am at peace. I am grateful for sobriety and the Fellowship. That day was the beginning of recovery, the beginning of being thankful, the sowing of the seed of an attitude of gratitude for my Higher Power and the reality of the program and the promises.

Séamus D., is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

Most of life seems so and it is really complicated when alcohol is introduced into the mix. Complexity appears in a fog which seems to hide the essence of the issue. Fog uses words we don’t understand, words perhaps made up by the speaker to appear to be the only person qualified to help. The discussion then turns to arguments about definitions—always a sure-fire way to delay dealing with the real problem. She complains, “How did all this happen to me?”

Then some old-timer breaks through the “poor me fog”, and says, “Wait! How long had you been drinking that day?” Silence follows for a few seconds. Then, someone in the group suggests, “We get the picture, just sit still, and listen.” The comments switch to the real issue: mixing addiction to alcohol with a busy life. The listeners’ stories emerge with their own experiences of the results of continued alcoholic behavior producing the dreary lives of a drunk.

As she listens to others, look what happens: suddenly there is a ray of hope suggested—for the group explains that their own alcoholic addiction caused their confusion, anxiety, depression and so forth. The Program worked for them and maybe it will do so for her.  

Yes, there really are complications that cause recovering alcoholics, strong believers in the ways of the Program, to encounter depression. At our best, we understand that we must seek help when this fog envelopes us. We go to a meeting and raise the issue and many others step in with the same theme, “Here is what I did, it might work for you, maybe not, but please never give up.” Some might suggest the making of a gratitude list to put problems into prospective. Another suggestion could be to “reach out to others, try a little Twelve Step work.” And maybe, “Give a lead at that Tuesday night group.” But it’s always an “into action” response.

Dr. Bob’s last words to Bill may say it best, “Bill, keep it simple.” It is remarkable when the recovering alcoholic who sees his confusion then seeks help from her group—and we are reminded of the consequences of our alcoholic dependency, plus we learn ways to deal with our complicated lives without that dependency.

“It works if you work it.”

Jim A, Traditions of Lebanon

There are a number of people, in and out of the 12-Step life,  who have ‘issues’ with “the G word”: God. And not without reason!

Many of us, when we were told about God when we were children, were led to believe that God was an entity who tended towards hot anger, stern judgment, and fierce wrath. Many of us were also taught that God is tender and merciful and loving and wanted nothing but the very best for us.

And some of us were taught that God was angry and rejecting AND loving and merciful, which was certainly confusing. How can one entity be both, at the same time? But we were children and didn’t know any better, and tried to find a way to hold both sets of ideas in our minds - usually, without much success.

And many of us, perhaps most of us, have not been taught hardly anything at all about God since we were children. So it stands to reason that we have childish notions about God. And because we haven’t had occasion to reexamine and reevaluate our ideas, we were not in a position, as St Paul wrote, to “put away childish things.”

As a result, many have rejected “God” and will not have anything to do with such an awful thing.

Before I came into the Program, I had many jumbled ideas about God, but none that I really had thought about for a long time, and certainly none that I had thought through in any rigorous or careful way. I believed in God, I suppose, but I had no idea what that God was, or was like! And as my addiction progressed, my thinking about God regressed, to where I had not much more than sullen fears and vague longings.

But since I’ve been rescued from the hell of addiction into which I was sinking for such a long time, I have come to have clearer and, well, much more relaxed ideas about the Ultimate. And most of the other people I know who are in recovery seem also to have less fraught and more familiar concepts of whatever Power it is that has freed us from that bondage of self.

For some of us, “God” means something like “the spirit of the Universe.”

For some, “God” means something a lot like what is described in the Nicene Creed.

For some, “God” means Love … “and where love is, God himself is there” as the hymn tells us.

For some, “God” means the 12-Step program itself: “Group of Drunks,” “Good Orderly Direction,” infused with strength and wisdom of countless partners in recovery from the decades since Bill and Bob first met in Akron, almost ninety years ago.

And so, whenever a member of AA or any other 12-Step program says the word “God,” they do not mean that confusing and harsh supernatural entity which frightened and confused us so badly as children. They also don’t mean a vaguely benevolent, merciful Being which comforted us as children. They mean “a Power greater than myself, as I understand that Power.” Whatever that might be.

And what that word means to the speaker need not have anything at all to do with what that word means to the hearer. What the Power means to the speaker need not have anything at all to do with what that speaker or that hearer or anyone else was taught or mistaught as a child.

Because what matters for sobriety, for recovery, is not what anyone thinks or believes about “God,” but the fact that one thinks it and believes it. What matters for recovery is not the content of one’s faith, but the having of faith. What matters isn’t what you think but that you think it, not what you believe but that you believe it, not what you rely on but that you rely on it, whatever it is.

I daresay that most of us have developed an understanding that is more benevolent and merciful than it is confusing and harsh, but it is the understanding, and not what is understood, that is important.

And thank God for that! If the gift of sobriety were available only to those whose ideas about God were correct and accurate - whatever that might mean - then nobody would be sober, nobody at all. But if the gift were available to those whose desire was sincere for a relationship with God - whatever that might be - then, well, lots and lots of us would be sober. And that is exactly how things are!

Because what matters for sobriety, for recovery, is not what anyone thinks or believes about “God,” but the fact that one thinks it and believes it.

- Scott E

Kelly Corbet wrote: “Left unstewarded, anger, resentment, fear, frustration—any form non-Love takes—can grow into all sorts of warfare, internal and external.” 

When I came into the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was, externally, happy as a clam. Internally, however, I was at war with God and self. In A.A. I thought I had found a place where all I had to do was to read the Big Book, work the steps, go to meetings, talk to a sponsor. Oh, I had to stop drinking, but that I thought, was no big deal. It was some time before I understood that “alcohol is but a symptom” of this disease.

Some of the A.A. folks gently encouraged me to come early, help set-up; stay after and clean up. I felt welcomed by them. I wanted whatever it was they had and I had no idea what it was nor did I know how to ask the question. My grandiosity had me thinking these folks were grooming me for a leadership position. Before long I’d be chairing meetings and being a speaker.

I glanced through steps four and five and a small—very small—light lit up and I sensed something was happening to me. There were men and women at the meetings around whom I felt uncomfortable. As they shared their behavior and attitudes while they were in active addiction, I could see my own image in their stories, but there was no way I was going to admit this in pubic. I told myself: “I can’t tell “these people” what I did when I was a priest in a parish. They would be embarrassed and shocked.” I was the one who was beginning to become embarrassed. I was admitting to myself: “I did that.” “I said that.”  In time I was to learn of things I did and said that not only embarrassed but also shocked me. Thank God for honest friends. This information was creating a conflict between my image of myself and what I was now admitting to myself.  Mental and emotional conflict was now in operation.

I have always considered myself to be honest, truthful, compassionate, spiritual, generous, etc. Unfortunately, I misused these gifts for all the wrong reasons—to get what I wanted. Yes, I had to admit I used people, places, and things, for my own gratification, my  delusional  “self-importance.”

And so, I began to work the steps – beginning at the beginning, step one. I remember the night I went over to the dark side.  I took to whiskey like a duck to water. Johnny Walker, James Jemison, Jim Beam, and friends were to be there for me in good times and in bad. They smoothed the negative emotions; they left me emotionally frozen even as they forced me to smile and be happy. They gave me courage to do what I could have done without them but did not think I could do so.  As time passed, they assisted in the numbing of my spiritual fight with God. In Sunday school and preaching I presented god as a loving, kind, forgiving Parent. Within me, however, I lived in fear of sudden death and being condemned to hell.

My internal war came to a head as I continued working the steps, living—as best I could—the program. It came to a head as I grudgingly accepted responsibility for all my words and actions while under the influence. Then one day I had what I later knew to be a Spiritual awakening. I accepted I had a disease and I was no longer at war. Rather, I was at peace with self, others, and God. It was a strange and wonderful feeling that helped me understand that this was the gift of what we call “the Promises.”

 I knew a new freedom and happiness; I did not regret the past nor wished to shut the door on it. I finally understood serenity and experienced peace. In being honest with myself and others, I learned that my past was helpful to them. The feeling of uselessness and self-pity disappeared (although it raises its ugly head now and again); I lost interest in selfish things and gained genuine interest in others; Self-seeking disappeared. I began to enjoy this healthy outlook and attitude about life as a sober alcoholic. Fear of others and of economic insecurity left me and I realized I intuitively knew how to handle things which used to baffle me. God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. War, no more. Peace began with me being sober one day at a time as I worked to maintain my spiritual condition, living the program, working the steps and being the hand of AA where needed.

Séamus D. is a semi-retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

While I was undertaking skilled graduate work to become an alcoholic, I felt I’d earned the right to continue my drinking alcoholically. I felt “you’d drink too if you were as lonely as I was.” Just a bit of anger, fear, sadness was all it took to find that next bottle of scotch to hide behind.

In sobriety, I look differently at this kind of reaction -- one usually sparked by conversation of a sharp nature, boarding on insult. I know there are people who love to get into sharp crisscross back and forth exchanges. But that’s different. I’m talking about the normal conversational exchanges, the slights perceived as out-of-line, not nice, and sometimes hurtful.

In sobriety, we must watch for these incidents. Do we preserve them and foster and cultivate them so that they become something far greater? Sometimes these inappropriate quick jabs can end up in an accumulated pile large enough to support anger and self-pity on their own.

That leads me to understand the wisdom of regular attendance at discussion meetings. When they ask for a topic for discussion, mention you are troubled by crude statements which hurt and embarrass. Sure, “words don’t hurt us,” but accumulated, they can be a trigger to run and hide to that “same-old, same-old” alcoholic haze. We attend meetings for many reasons. One is to learn how to deal with these slight hurts. As recovering alcoholics, we just can’t take things too seriously. Don’t sit back and carefully and quietly nurse the “hurt” you feel. What to do? Get it out on the table at a meeting, especially if you fear your negative feelings might deepen.

We need to hear someone say to us in response, “Come on, poor you. Look, that guy across the circle lost his job because of his drinking.and you’re complaining about some caustic words which “hurt your feelings?”

The lessen is don’t let ill-will be blown out of proportion and nursed and carried for a time. Get to a meeting. Bring it up, see what others say to you about your perhaps too sensitive skin.

The Program is serious business and so teaches us what is important in life. We have a place to ask the silly question like this to avoid making something out of nothing. “Get to a meeting.”

JRA/Traditions of Lebanon

Several years ago, one weekday morning I was standing in line at an outdoor ATM on a main street in my residential neighborhood in Chicago. One person was ahead of me at the machine, and another man about my age behind me. As we were standing there, a homeless person shuffled by, pushing his shopping cart laden with crushed aluminum cans, rattling along the sidewalk.

The man behind me and I both watched as he made his way slowly by and turned up the alley, no doubt in search of more cans to recycle in exchange for his daily sustenance. The other man glanced at me and I at him, and he said, “Hm. Must be one of those alcoholics.”

I paused and thought for a moment. The other man in line and I had both clearly stopped off on our way to work, were both dressed in clean clothes with pressed pants and shirts and ties and jackets, shaved chins, bathed and deodorized, recent haircuts -- the whole productive-member-of-society thing.

I thought about it for a moment and replied, “Well, I’m one of those alcoholics.”

The other man’s glance became a stare. “Really? You don’t look like an alcoholic!”

“What does an alcoholic look like?” I asked, to which he had no answer. I stepped up to the machine, got my money, said goodbye, and left.

I wish now that I had said something a little less accusatory. I wish now that I had said something a little more friendly, like “We’re all over the place” or maybe quoted Talking Heads’ song, “Life During Wartime:”

We dress like students, we dress like housewives

Or in a suit and a tie

But I didn’t. At least I did put the tiniest of cracks in that one guy’s false notion that alcohol dependence and being on the extreme low end of the socioeconomic spectrum are one and the same. In my awkward, irritating way, I was an evangelist for accuracy in thinking about addiction, and that might have helped that man, years later, when dealing with alcohol or other drug dependency in himself, a loved one, or an employee or employer.

But also:

Upon saying that, I felt a surge of affinity, even of affection, for that homeless man, far more strongly than I had ever felt for anyone like him before. He and I were radically different, of course, in so very many ways. But we were also the same, and the same in ways which, oddly, are deeper than the sameness we all share as members of and participants in humanity. I felt a kinship: we were family, and we still are.

That feeling has faded, of course, but has never quite left me. Ever since, when I see a homeless person - as I do with some frequency, living in a major city and all - I get at least a memory of that feeling, for which I remain grateful.

–Scott E.