An AA Eucharistic Experience

Trigger warnings: alcoholism, addiction

“Hi, I’m Jennie, I’m an alcoholic.”

”Hi, Jennie.” The familiar solemn tone of the room rang all around. To Jennie, it was the sound of reassurance as she could feel her addiction sitting in the back of her mind. 

Tonight, however, she was excited to introduce the two new people, Jay Trucker and Farrah Tye. Jay was an older man and sitting in the back of the room shaking and sweating. Jennie felt her stomach drop and near tears. She remembered being in Jay’s shoes in detox two years ago. A memory she never liked to relive. So she was trying her hardest not to look in Jay’s direction. 

Farrah, on the other hand, just looked slightly irritated but unsure. Jennie remembered being there as well. When she had first entered recovery, she had felt like a complete screw-up. As if she had never done anything right and could never do anything right.

Jennie preferred to let the new ones speak first. She could tell that it made some of them nervous or even resentful. However, almost all of them came down from the podium with complete acceptance. 

Farrah walked to the podium looking down with crossed arms. Her short sunshine hair seemed to just lightthe room up! She had very long legs and her entire stature looked gargantuan. She looked very put together in black slacks, black ballet flats and a kelly green business dress shirt. 

“Hi, my name is Farrah and I’m an alcoholic.”

”Hi, Farrah.”

”I worked in the fraud department at a bank for almost 20 years. Which I lost because of my drinking getting in the way. I just completed rehab at Imani yesterday.” 

Applause. 

“Thank you,” Farrah spat.

“I actually started drinking when I was just 13. My parents were almost never home, they were always chasing their own stuff and were too busy for me. I‘m an only child so I pretty much had free reign twenty-four-seven. 

I was only 12 when I started bringing boys home for sex. Some of them even paid me to do all kinds of weird extra stuff to them. I had two abortions and even more miscarriages by the time I was twenty-four...” At this point, Farrah’s voice broke.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for what I did to those babies!...I started drinking the next year to make all the weird sex I was having more tolerable. It got to the point where I couldn’t function in school. So I started skipping almost every day. Since my parents were never around and didn’t care, I was expelled and put into rehab for the first time by the state. 

When I first got out of rehab, I held it together enough to get my GED. But I honestly didn’t think that I needed AA so I didn’t go to it at that time. 

I managed to hold it together until college. I joined a sorority so drinking was more or less expected there. It also wasn’t very long before I got promiscuous again. Only I wasn’t getting paid for it. My sorority sisters were the only reason I finished my degree in finance. You can’t even stay in the house unless you maintain at least a B average.

Then my drinking gradually got worse again after I went to work for the bank. It’s a lot of pressure having to tell people that they‘ve been cheated all day. Imagining them being evicted and hot or cold and hungry on the streets was enough to drive me to hit the closest bar and drink the night away. I was hardly sleeping at all and it got to the point where I barely had time to shower and change for work. One day, my boss caught me passed out at my desk and fired me.

It finally hit me that I could die and that I needed to do my recovery all the way or else. 

So here I am.” 

The silence was deafening.

Jennie had been shaking and tearing up the entire time. Her story was very similar to Farrah’s. Though her parents had been home but not there for her. They acted as if they’d hardly noticed when she started having sex at fourteen. She’d never aborted but had had one miscarriage the next year. In the past, before starting her recovery, she had sometimes had dreams about her child that had never been. It was almost always a girl named Norma. Norma always looked like Jennie and was brunette but overweight. Those dreams had been what had driven her to drink the most. She had even tried to get pregnant again at one point but nothing had come from it. 

She didn’t have those dreams anymore since starting her recovery. She planned to adopt a child the year and was prepping her home for it. She had been at her job as a manager of the QuikTrip corporate office for five years now and was confident that she would be there until she retired. 

But she couldn’t even begin to imagine going through it several times over! Or getting paid for sex. Prostitution was disgusting beyond description to her. 

Jennie knew without a doubt that she wanted to sponsor Farrah. 

She gave herself another minute to calm down before calling Jay to the podium. Thankfully, he was able to stand and walk.

Jay’s story was much less dramatic. The only thing he had in common with Jennie and Farrah was an absent mother-he didn’t even know who his father was. He had always felt that he wasn’t good at anything. He had taken up drinking at 18 and had never looked back. He had almost died of alcohol poisoning a couple of times and was there because of a DUI.

Jennie knew those types. She could tell that Jay didn’t really want to be there and already had a bad feeling that he wouldn’t last a month. 

From there, the meeting was more or less uneventful. Afterward, almost everyone walked up to Farrah to compliment her bravery. Jennie didn’t blame them. Most of them didn’t usually reveal that much during their first time and Jennie had been no exception. 

When Jennie got her turn, she gave Farrah a big hug. She was overjoyed when Farrah said yes to Jennie sponsoring her. 

It was gray and sprinkling outside when everyone left to go home. 

Perfect for my mood! Jennie thought. As soon as she got into her grey 2016 Camri, she let the tears go in the free flow. For Farrah and all the pain she must have gone through, for Norma and for everyone who was and ever would being the rooms. 

When she got home, she didn’t feel like doing anything but collapsing into sleep. She wished that she could gas herself into a coma! 

Farrah called her at 4:30 the next morning. She sounded as if she was shaking.

“Farrah, what’s wrong?!” 

“M-my house has been broken into!” she barely whispered.

“911, NOW! Just give me your address and I’ll be right there!”  Farrah did. 

Without thinking, Jennie grabbed her purse and sped out of the Windsor place parking lot. Farrah lived 15 minutes away in Fox Run. 

The cops were just bringing out the perp in handcuffs. It was a behemoth kid who looked like a homie in large but loose jeans and a white hoodie. It made Jennie want to bawl all over again. Not just because of the choices of kids like that but also she imagined that they did that stuff because, like her and Farrah, their parents weren’t there for them. 

But, right now, she needed to stay strong for Farrah. 

As soon as they brought out the hood, she got right out of her car, ran through Farrah’s door and found her shaking. She immediately grabbed her in a hug. 

“Oh, God, Jennie! Why is it always me?!” 

“Sssh!” Jennie held Farrah as she sobbed and sobbed. This time, Jennie didn’t bother to hold her own tears back. She was getting a headache from all the crying she’d done in the last several hours. 

Sometimes, Jennie wished that she could just disappear forever into her own abyss…

When she came to, almost half the day was gone. She’d missed half a day at work! This was so unlike her!

When she returned her boss, Damien Marshall’s, call, he was very understanding. He told her to take the rest of the day off and that he wouldn’t count it if she made it up that Saturday. Jennie couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relieved! Damien was usually fairly lenient with her since Jennie was very dedicated and hardly even made a mistake on the job. Which was more than could be said for a lot of others!

Farrah was still passed out on the small green sofa in her living room. Jennie didn’t want to wake her up but she didn’t want to just leave her, either. Farrah seemed to be very alone and very lost in her part of the world. A feeling that Jennie was all too familiar with. And one that had driven her to drink back in the day. 

Aside from her future adoptee, people like Farrah were the main reason she hung on these days. 

But now, Farrah was kind of like a daughter to her. Jennie had never had that feeling with Britney or Marge-her sponsees from 10 and 20 years ago. They had both since gone on to sponsor other people. Sure she’d felt protective of them and all but in a more sisterly way. Neither Britney or Marge had  been through anything as dumbfounding as Farrah.

Farrah came to at almost noon. She was surprised and overjoyed that Jennie had stayed. 

“No one’s ever been here for me like this before, thank you.” She almost whispered before catching Jennie in another big hug.

“Anytime,” Jennie quietly replied.

From there, Farrah fixed lunch. A bowl of chicken noodle soup. Jennie helped her and saw that Farrah hardly had any food.

“I don’t eat very much. I’ve never needed to. Honestly, I probably would’ve become anorexic if I didn’t do what I did…” Farrah looked up from stirring her soup.

“It was all about control with me, you know? Sex and booze made me feel in control of my life. I thought they were…I guess a sort of gateway to Paradise. Not that I didn’t feel like I was there from time to time, you know?” 

All Jennie could do was nod. Another feeling she remembered all too well. Especially when…but she wasn’t going to go there right now.

“I used to feel like that, too,” she finally said. “I had my friends-or at least people I thought were my friends. But nothing could top the feeling that booze could give me.”

“Exactly,” Farrah quietly agreed.

As they sat down to eat the chicken soup together and chat about their lives, Jennie felt something that she never had before. She felt…uplifted. 

Was this what it meant to have a Eucharistic experience? If so, she never wanted it to end.