As unrealistic as it may sound, I had no idea I was an alcoholic. Not until a stranger told me after pulling me off the Westside Highway, where I was attempting to cross through oncoming traffic in a blackout.
She explained what was happening to me in a way I’d never heard before. “I say this with absolutely no judgment,” she continued, “but if you ever have questions about alcohol, my mother has been in AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] for over 30 years.”
The grace of being saved that night was too precious to squander — a gift I was determined to live up to although I was terrified of what my life would be like without alcohol. My therapist recommended AA, where I could begin my program with 90 days of abstention. I agreed without pause — it was local, free, and what the doctor ordered. I had no idea what to expect. I’d missed the cultural memo regarding AA entirely. I didn’t know about the praying, the coffee, or the basements. I just loved it — from the moment I sat on the floor of my first meeting, it felt like home.
When the coronavirus outbreak was officially classified as a pandemic, addiction treatment facilities and programs were immediately forced to operate without the key component of recovery: group meetings. In her award-winning book, The Recovering, Leslie Jamison interviewed Gary Kaplan, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at Boston University, whose aspiration is to recondition the mechanism of dependence itself through medicine. While he believes strongly in the necessity of medication to combat addiction, Kaplan told Jamison, “You can give someone as much methadone as you want. But they will still need a social network.”
It’s a very different experience to have something taken away from you than to give it up. I had worked so hard to replace toxic coping mechanisms with tools for physical, emotional, and spiritual sobriety, and I deeply resented having them ripped away — even if this time, the rest of the world had curled into the fetal position along with me.
Reagan Reed, executive director of the New York Intergroup Association of Alcoholics Anonymous and a member of AA, expressed her fears surrounding the closure of the organization’s central office and over 5,000 meetings in the New York City area. “It’s a tremendous difference. The way that our fellowship works is that we sit in a room together and we talk to one another face to face. The meetings are the cornerstone and foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, so removing them is going to have a really big impact on people’s ability to remain sober,” she told the New Yorker Radio Hour last month.
Unfortunately, for me, I could never think my own way out of the panic room of my outsized feelings. By the time social distancing became the official declaration, I’d already received dozens of invitations to online AA meetings, but it wasn’t the same. Even so, sobriety in isolation wasn’t serving me. My partner and I decided to shelter in place across the Hudson River at my sister’s house in New Jersey. Adjusting to this ongoing proximity to my family added a new challenge to coping. I missed my friends, and I wanted to return to my fellowship but felt reluctant and skeptical — projecting my compulsive behavior onto exercise as every cog in the wheel of my family remained operational, each calibrating their corporate jobs to the new digital landscape.
I was rudderless, obsessively refreshing my email and pacing the half-mile straightaway along the riverbank. I ran repeatedly, rapidly, and relentlessly until breathless — desperate to break the despair I felt by shocking my body into motion. Activating the engines of my physical endurance transmitted energy to my mental reserves. That night, I decided to join a meeting where I knew I’d find familiar faces and after one of my dearest friends called me. “Jessica, we missed you girl! Where have you been? You know you can’t stay away too long.” I got to laugh as we joked about being the mental-health MacGyvers of the moment — just like the self-described “preppers” and survivalists. We weren’t nursing hangovers or desperate to score, and we were grateful for that. “I can’t imagine it, but then again I can,” we sighed.
The universal upheaval of this current crisis forces those unfamiliar with the practice of collective therapy to assimilate. Everyone I know is on Zoom working, worshipping, connecting, and TikTok-ing. Virtual meetups are fulfilling the instinctual human need to bond with others when we feel unsafe and uncertain.
After that night, I fell easily back into my recovery routine. My focus returned, and an opportunity for work emerged. AA once again became a reliable safe haven despite the veil of anonymity being broken by hackers who’ve infiltrated the now-virtual rooms — yelling insults, racial slurs, and expletives randomly, stealing precious time and sacred space from those who earnestly desire to stay sober. The violation of our protective community hurts, especially as everyone is starved for security and stability. “Zoombombing” escalated so furiously across the internet that the FBI issued an official warning to users. Though bored trolls cannot hijack our progress, the disruption feels personal. The measures necessary to guard the rooms cause debate among groups because they will inadvertently block some and sour others from joining in. I’m glad to not carry the burden of collecting consensus and enacting new procedures. I make sure to thank those who do.
New York is now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, accounting for half the total cases in the U.S. I was prone to the dark morbidity of many addicts and alcoholics — I’d beat death once. That’s usually what lands us in the rooms. A while back, after I stopped drinking, I heard that one of my cousins survived an overdose. I felt an immediate solidarity with him and wanted to reach out, but I was afraid to admit to my extended family that I was an alcoholic.