This is the fourth installment of Church Basements. Andrew W.’s tales from the world of Alcoholics Anonymous
Doris is a self-described “loving” mother of two young sons. Because she loved them so, she said, she constantly rehearsed them in ways to avoid being taken by the Chicago Youth Bureau.
“When we were driving and I was drunk, and I always was, I taught the kids to jump out of the car when a cop stopped me and run in opposite directions. We would have drills. The drills were always sort of real ’cause I was always driving drunk with no license, no insurance, no registration. It would have worked, sort of, if I had ever been stopped with them in the car, but it never happened. I was never stopped,” she shared.
Doris shook her stringy bleached blonde hair and laughed nervously, “How sick is that?”
Others in the room tittered nervously, identifying with the bizarre nature of the story, if not the details. The rooms of A.A. are packed with addicts and alcoholics who tell strange, but sadly believable, stories of their sick behavior and improbable schemes. “Stinky thinkin’,” they tell each other, often precedes relapse, and occurs even if they’ve been sober for years.
Tom shared:
“The doctor was cutting out a cyst on my brother. There I was watching someone cutting on Jake, and me not cutting that guy, Can you believe that?” he exclaimed. It was the miracle of long term sobriety, he said, that allowed him to sit still and refrain from slicing up a person cutting into his brother.
Others shared their weird stories. illustrating how far they’ve come and how their minds betrayed them drunk or sober. Their gratitude came from knowing they had remade themselves in the church basements. How they had become able to tell on themselves and give thanks that they had finally learned, with a little help from their A.A. friends, how to push their demons back.
