We, too, do recover

I got clean in a very large city in the eastern United States where the NA meeting list is literally the size of a small book. Having suffered the pain of powerlessness and unmanageability long enough, I decided it was time to make my very first NA meeting, but I had no idea which meeting to choose. I was terrified to attend a meeting near my lower Manhattan apartment building. (My neighbors couldn’t possibly know I was an addict, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them now.)  I didn’t want to go very far out of my way. (If, as I suspected, I didn’t like the meeting, I would need to score—fast.)  Above all, nobody could recognize me. (I am a terribly important person.)

I felt a rush of hope when I found several gay and lesbian meetings (listed as “special interest” meetings). Nervously, I walked into my first NA meeting and, surrounded by my gay brothers and lesbian sisters, felt safe for the first time in years. That relief didn’t last long: The speaker worked as a copy editor at the newspaper where I was an editor. I listened to her share, raised my hand when they asked for anybody willing to be a sponsor, and, before the Serenity Prayer, ran from the room as fast as my little addict legs would carry me. This was not what I intended, but that was the day the drugs stopped working.

During WCNA-32 in San Antonio, I was struck by how quickly we seemed to focus on whether or not we actually need the common needs meetings that so many members fought so long and hard to have. There have been thirty-two Narcotics Anonymous world conventions. Finally, we had gay and lesbian workshops, actually listed in the convention program instead of scribbled on some tattered scrap of paper pinned to a back wall. There was a gay and lesbian dance included in the entertainment line up. And who can forget that heart-wrenching moment when a beautiful transgender sister stepped up to the Unity Day podium and read those inclusive words from the “We Do Recover” section of our Little White Book: “It is available to us all.”

I have many gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender addict friends who got clean before the fellowship ever heard of gay and lesbian, special interest, or common needs meetings. I am so grateful they braved the hostility and homophobia they’ve so often described. Regardless of how, where, why, or when we got clean, can we give each other the very acceptance, tolerance, compassion, and unconditional love that we so desperately crave from our families and society at large without tearing apart the fabric of unity that makes us the proud recovering leather queens, college jocks, corporate stars, trannies, homemakers, children, and parents we have fought to become?

I know that I—an openly gay, HIV-positive man—would never have had the courage to set foot in NA had it not been for those “special interest” meetings. I also know there are many g/l/b/t addicts who got clean in NA long before these meetings took root. What I fail to understand, however, is why it continues to matter to so many of us which is the “right” or “better” or “correct” way to get clean! We all have bad hair days, but for heaven’s sake, can we stop splitting that particular hair?

Can we, as a community of recovering g/l/b/t addicts, stop focusing so much on the “right” way to recover, the “right” meeting to attend, or the “right” opinion to have about things that continue to divide us, when the newcomer screaming for a way out of their despair and pain demands that we put aside our differences and focus on our similarities?

In short: Let’s all just get over it! We’re here! We’re queer! We’re clean! Whether or not we attended the g/l workshops or went to that dance, can we please all stand up and say, “Thank you, NA!  We appreciate these gestures of inclusion, acceptance, and love more than mere words can ever convey.”

Mark H, South Dakota, USA

Back to top