I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting
My compatriot and I had girded our loins and strode with purposeful steps towards the main entrance, somehow managing at once a sense of assuredness while we clearly had no idea what we were doing or where we were supposed to be. A friendly woman who was walking up behind us must have sensed the confusion, because she shouted out, âwhere you girls lookinâ to go?â and then very helpfully directed us to the right entrance. For a minute I was relievedâshe seems like a nice person, perhaps this wonât be so badâand then I walked in.
I was definitely hypersensitive, but walking into that room struck a high-strung chord of social anxiety that reverberated cacophonously over my baseline key of introversion and self-imposed solitude. The one I usually manage to keep silent and under control with a generous dollop of avoidance of all situations involving a population of n>3 andâwhen absolutely necessaryâaplomb. Large groups disturb me, and I start suffocating under a stimulus overload by all of the bodies and voices and unique-yet-all-really-the-same identities asserting themselves in a space that grows smaller and smaller the longer I spend in it. And the group that gathered at â[NA meeting]â was definitely of an n>3. So as we walked into the room, I felt the eyes of everyone swivel towards us, picking apart the fact that weâwith our skin and clothes and youth and BMIsâwere strange folk who did not belong.
The fluorescent lights flickered off a wide expanse of linoleum floor in the center of the room, ringed by plastic chairs organised into four concentric rectangles. It was a stage, and we made sure to skirt far along the periphery as we searched for two seats together, in some inconspicuous place. We stiffly sat ourselves down, and I tried to surreptitiously scan the room and the faces while making sure not to linger too long or to make eye contact. I found myself starting to slouch, as if poor posture would somehow help me fade into the background, to observe without betraying myself. Excepting the two of us and save perhaps four other individuals (all white and all male), everyone was black, obese, hovered around the age of 35-55yo, knew what THC was before hitting 12yo, familiar and belonged.
Someone (the leader/director/chair/committee member?) called the meeting to order with several general announcements of conference, activities, and planned events. An almost empty basket with loose bits of cash was passed around the room, for fellowship funds of some sort. Off to the corner was a table of liquid refreshments like coffee or juice. It was the town meeting assembly of my imagination. Another person went to the center of the room, held up what looked like a chain of key tags or chips, and began to call for individuals who were newcomers, folks who had reached hallmarks in their abstinence, or people who had perhaps fallen back into old ways and were just returning to try anew. He was often met with silence, but occasionally a bark of some number wrenched from some voice in some corner of the room, and then a smattering of weak applause. I knew nothing and did not know what to expect, but everything just seemed so much more tired and sad and forced than I had imagined. The bodies looked small, worn, chronically ill and collapsed onto themselves. The visages were closed and gazes deadened. The voices sounded ancient and exhausted. I felt myself dissecting the details, these strangers for whom I felt nothing but separation and hypervigilance, and was faintly aware that I was disappointed.
Then the stories started, and each story shared seemed to breathe a bit of life into the room. There was a 17yo white boy in a loose tank top and heavy-rimmed glasses slouching on the opposite side of the room. The glasses hid his eyes, but I imagined I could feel a sort of sullen, defiant gaze. His outward appearance belied just how much he belonged. From a face that still hadnât lost all its baby fat came a lethargic, occasionally inarticulate voice speaking a story I couldnât understand: of triple C and spending nights out on the streets getting high and jail, of doing all of that and then doing all of that again, just because he was bored, because all of his âgoodâ friends were still in school. I felt a morbid fascination and complete disconnect towards this kid. As much as I can empathise with patients, [struggle to] understand motivations and those messy human parts, I just could not empathise with this boy and his choice. It was as if trying to understand what he was saying intellectually was so difficult, it made impossible any other connection. I wondered if he actually thought he could do it now, when it seemed like he had failed to quit so many times before. I wondered if any of the other members of the audience thought the same, that this was such a typical sad story, doomed to repeat itself like so many others. Oddly, this sensation of an inability to integrate, almost like a disturbed internal equilibrium or processing, was specifically to this one boy and his story.
When he ended, there was a loud round of applause, and many people stood up to both literally and figuratively welcome him [back] into the fellowship, with open arms and hearts. Strangers embraced easily and with great purpose, as if trying to imbue strength and will by touch. This repeated itself many times throughout the night, people sharing their individual lives and circumstances, yet all sort of sounding the same in the end. It was sad, but I suppose in a way it was profound. It was a microcosm of hope and human struggle.
tangentwithtanner
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
