Prompt: Write about a time you were lost. How did you find your way?
Land of the Lost
Thirty years ago, Central Ohio AA was home to a lot of lost people, myself included. I was 29, unemployed, recently returned to my hometown from Washington D.C. where I abandoned a career I loved in favor of a doomed relationship that blew up in my face.
Yes, I came home and proceeded to drink myself silly every night, wallowing in self-pity. When the depression took ahold of me, I somehow made my way to a nearby talk therapist who, after a few sessions, quickly sized me up as a drunk and told me to go to rehab. I resisted a little, but knew the writing was on the wall. I was near bottom and had to turn things around.
The rehab place I went to enrolled me in their six week intensive outpatient program, which met three nights a week. Additional attendance at local AA meetings was required, and I can’t remember if I did the well-known “90 meetings in 90 days.” I did though go to plenty of meetings all over town.
I remember learning a lot about the disease of alcoholism in those outpatient sessions I attended. The information sunk in and made sense to me. It carried me through five years of sobriety from alcohol after leaving outpatient. But I was someone who kept going to AA meetings without getting a sponsor or doing the 12 Steps. I also kept smoking marijuana so I wasn’t practicing total sobriety.
But I was faithful to five years of alcohol abstinence, which for someone in their late twenties/early thirties living in a big drinking town was no small feat. Times then weren’t like they are today, with younger people not drinking as much anymore. It seemed like everyone was drinking. But not me. I counted my days, got my coins at meetings, and got stronger.
I would go on to enroll in a Journalism Masters program at the Ohio State University, and at a local coffee shop meet the man who would become my husband. Good things happened to me. The seed of recovery was planted, and I felt lost no more.
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