Charlie, the Grateful Alcoholic

“Don’t be afraid of the Steps,” he would say, a ready smile lighting up his blue eyes, an improbably boyish thatch of silver hair falling onto his 70-year-old forehead. He was Charlie, “the grateful alcoholic,” and he was what my rehab counselor called “an interim sponsor.”

My time was almost up, the fabled 28 days in a residential rehab, and I was due to return to the outside world without the intense daily therapy, the constant group reinforcement, the constant AA meetings both on and off the hospital grounds where I had been since I finally, 28 days before, had cried out in my bathtub, drunken and drugged out, “God, please help me, I can’t do this any more.” 28 days before I called up my best friend who held my hand as I called a list of rehabs to see which one could take me on a Friday of the July 4th weekend, nearly 14 years ago. 28 days of rigorous honesty and a lifetime of confusion and shame served up daily with too much food and too many cigarettes.

I was scared. After all, I had heard at every meeting that it was common for newcomers to relapse. I had heard that the key was to go to 90 meetings in 90 days, and to get a sponsor so that I could enter into the mysterious brotherhood that involved something called “working the steps.” I had heard that most people wouldn’t make it. I was determined, now that I almost had 30 days, that I would make it, so of course I needed a sponsor…only I didn’t have one, and I was scared.

Scared of going back to the craziness of drinking, and especially in recent years, almost daily use of various other drugs that had reduced me to a scrawny, hollow-eyed zombie with audio hallucinations and advanced paranoid delusions. The kind of insanity that is referenced in Step 2.

That I was in this sponsor-less state wasn’t for a lack of trying : For weeks at every meeting I listened to each share, thinking, how about him, maybe him? This was especially true at the few meetings for gay and lesbian members of AA, which I attended at the encouragement of my counselor.

I thought that if I didn’t have a gay sponsor, I would be lost. How could I ever share my deepest darkest secrets like people said you had to to anyone but another gay man? How could I stop feeling ashamed and judged if I didn’t have somebody whose story was the same as mine? Wouldn’t these people be like Jerry Falwell and the other fundamentalists, some of whom were in my own family? Weren’t they out to “get” me? So I needed a gay sponsor, that was all there was to it.

Indeed, the counselor had suggested it: “Go to gay meetings,” he said, “and pick somebody whose story is easy for you to identify with. Look for similarities.” So each week a friendly AA member would pick me up and drive me into the city, where I would attend a meeting populated mostly by gay men, with a scattering of women. But somehow, I never managed to find the “right” sponsor, or to have the nerve to ask anyone.

“What am I going to do?” I whined to the counselor on that last day.

“Do you really want a sponsor?” he asked me.

“Absolutely,” I replied, looking down at the floor. “I’m really afraid of relapsing. I don’t think I can make it.”

“Great!” he said, beaming. I couldn’t figure out why my terror gave his such delight, but he went on. “We’ll get you a sponsor.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as he went on. “Start by forgetting everything you’ve been thinking about: age, sex, sexual orientation, race, drug of choice, location…can you do that?”

I said I would try, and he continued: “Think of the one person you have met in a meeting or who spoke at a meeting who seems to be the happiest.”

I concentrated, running dozens of faces through my mind. All of a sudden, the shuffle of faces stopped, and there was one left, the face of Charlie, an older guy who attended almost every meeting in the area. He was always driving newcomers around. He seemed kind and encouraging. He always had a big smile on his face when he identified at meetings by saying, “Hi, I’m Charlie, the Grateful Alcoholic.” He was seventy to my forty-five, he was married with grown kids, a straight-out drunk with no history of any of the drugs that I had used. Not gay…definitely not gay.

“Are you thinking of somebody?” the counselor asked.

“Yes, I think so,” and I told him about Charlie, whom he of course knew. He wrote down a number. “Go to the pay phone now and call his number and ask for Charlie to help you.”

And so I did, right then and there.

Charlie agreed immediately, and suggested that if I wanted to spend time with him, the best way to do so was to attend some of the same meetings. As it happened, Charlie attended a 6:30 am morning meeting in an office building in downtown Pasadena, which was a short drive from the sober living house I was at. Plus, I would hook up with him at a couple of the evening meetings I attended as part of my rehab’s “after-care” program.

Sometimes, Charlie and I would go to breakfast after the early morning meeting, or meet for coffee, but most weeks, our interaction was through phone calls and for a few minutes after these various meetings.

I stayed sober during those early months, and began to look at some of the problems I was having in my life. Charlie would always say, “one day at a time, one step at a time —- it took you all these years to get sick, you will have plenty of time to get better.” And so it was, one by one, I picked up my life. My employers were supportive and I didn’t lose my job. I found a roommate to help me with my rent, and I began to tackle my screwed up finances, neglected for so long.

Charlie had suggested that maybe what I needed to do was to consult a professional, and he asked around until he found a credit counsellor. But first, I had to tackle the four boxes of unopened bills in my closet — during my drinking and drugging, I would collect the bills, and then, instead of paying them, put them into the box, out of sight out of mind, that was my motto.

So Charlie came over to my apartment one Sunday afternoon to help me work up the courage to tackle this seemingly insurmountable challenge. He sat across from me at the kitchen table encouraging me to open and sort every bill. Every so often I would come across a photo I had tossed in, including pictures of a past partner who had died of AIDS. I was so guilty, and so lonely, and in such pain. I looked up with tears about to burst.
Charlie turned to me and said, simply and straight from the heart, “Well, I don’t know too much about these issues, but I know it must hurt, so why don’t you just have a good cry.” And that’s what I did, held in the arms of this gentle older straight guy, who perhaps had no idea how much healing he dispensed that afternoon. Or perhaps he did, he had a lot of wisdom.

Over the next months, I would hear Charlie share at meetings, “Don’t be afraid of the steps. The steps will set you free.” Somehow I had come to understand that these Steps were the portal of the AA sobriety program, and that I hadn’t passed through it, yet.
But every time I started to write down my lists of resentments and issues, I would get hung up on some shameful episode that I felt was completely private and special, and which was unique only to gay people. I had begun sharing some of those feelings at meetings, especially those frequented by gay and lesbian members of AA. Even at Charlie’s morning meeting I found AA members who didn’t reject me because I was different from them. In fact, some of them attended other meetings with me, or invited me out to breakfast to support me when I seemed to need it. I was beginning to understand why they called it a Fellowship.

One morning I was at a gay meeting and I heard the share of a guy who seemed to be reading my mind. He had issues that were similar, or so it seemed. I thought I had heard the voice of a sponsor who could really help me work the steps. I stopped him after the meeting and asked him if he might be willing to help me with the steps. He was willing, but suggested that I needed to have a conversation with Charlie.

I was really afraid of telling Charlie that I wanted to work the steps with somebody else. After all, I was not only special, but a real prize of a sponsee, everyone could see that. I had stayed sober all of 5 or 6 months, surely that was special! One morning after our early meeting I worked up the nerve to raise the issue.

“That’s great!” boomed Charlie, when he heard my faltering explanation of this new idea: to work the steps with another sponsor. “When I was new, I had four or five sponsors. I guess I was sicker than most. Get all the help you can, son. I’ll still be here.”
And he was, even as I drifted more and more to other meetings, the special meetings that made me feel more comfortable. Over time, I took on meeting commitments closer to home, got involved with service work at our gay and lesbian meeting center, continued working the steps during that first year, and even began helping sponsees of my own (imagine that!)

As it happened, the AA International Convention was in nearby San Diego, and my gay sponsor Rob A. and a pack of our friends attended the opening meeting in the giant Stadium, which happened to coincide with my first AA anniversary. I was overwhelmed in the moment when 100,000 alcoholics recited the Serenity Prayer together in that stadium. My face was covered with tears as I sat and listened to one speaker after another and witnessed the flag ceremony and this remarkable coming together of all of us whose lives had been saved by the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I walked back into my hotel lobby alone, filled with spirit, love and gratitude. I pushed the elevator button, lost in my own thoughts. The doors opened, and there before me was that shining, improbably cheerful and loving face of Charlie the Grateful Alcoholic, who I had not seen for months. He gave me a hug and wished me a happy anniversary. Amazingly, five years later I had another, similar experience at the Minneapolis AA International Convention, this time at the closing Big Meeting. Charlie and his friends were right in front of the group I was with. God has quite a sense of humor, doesn’t he?

I have told my story and the influence of Charlie’s unconditional love and support from many AA podiums, and the story has great power, especially for young gay alcoholic newcomers to our fellowship. I believe that the psychology of growing up gay does create separateness and a kind of shame that is challenging to overcome. Most gay people in recovery need help from their gay and lesbian peers to do so. Perhaps this is true for every other “special category” of human being, I’m not sure.

At the same time, I know that coming to honest terms with my own identity and my own unique issues as part of the larger AA Fellowship has been invaluable. The symbol of that process for me was this very average and very special member, my very first sponsor, Charlie, the Grateful Alcoholic.

We all need help overcoming our “terminal uniqueness,” if we hope to cultivate humility and humanity. We all need a Charlie in our recovery. I am so grateful that Charlie happened for me. He taught me to make no assumptions about where to look for love.