Free The Residue Years by Mitchell Jackson Page B

I’d like to open this meeting with a moment of silence for the addictwho still suffers. This settles us. Randy hops off the table and pads near a portable chalkboard.
    Is there anyone attending their first meeting? he says. If so, welcome. You are the most important people here. All we ask is that everyone present follow one law: Never attend a meeting with drugs or paraphernalia on your person. If you’re carrying, please take it outside and leave it and we’ll welcome you back. This protects our meeting place and the NA fellowship as a whole. Randy moves near the first row of seats. He’s short and soft, a mix that usually gives grown men a complex, but somehow commanding. You have to make five years or more to lead a group, which means for us—or at least those of us know who’ve been in this place, those who’ve tried and failed, who’ve quit and joined—Randy is an apostle. If you’ve used today, please seek out a fellow member at the break or after the meeting, he says. It costs nothing to belong. You are a member when you say you are.
    As is my habit, I scan the shoes of the members in my row—it ain’t a clean pair among them—then off to my sides. My neighbor’s arm is sprent with needle pricks, his thumbnail discolored. No way to justify this life, my life, but slamming a needle is a whole other harm. Randy leads us in the
we
version of the Serenity Prayer:
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference
.
    We finish and members volunteer—everyone’s always so eager to submit—to read from the basic text.
    Who is an addict?
    What is the program?
    Why are we here?
    How does it work?
    The twelve traditions.
    The meetings begin the same. So goes a theory of resurrection.
    An addict, any addict, can stop using, lose the desire to use, and learn a new way of life
, they say.
    They say and they say and it sounds so easy, as if living clean is no more than hitting the right switch, as if it takes something less than heroics to face history dead-on, to accept the life we’ve earned. The meetings are meant to be havens, but not everyone comes for safety. Last week. I wasn’t but few blocks away last meeting when this guy approached me—breath smelling like the worst breath—claiming he had what I need. I’d seen him in the meeting, reciting the steps, even stuffing money in the seventh principle basket, seen him running his glazed eyes up and down the rows. No, I think I got what
you
need, I said, and offered him a handful of mints.
    We make fearless and searching inventories.
    Hello, I’m an addict and my name is Mark. My drug of choice is meth. I used to deal it, then,
bam
, my first hit. Couldn’t breathe without the shit after that. Every day spent chasing the next score. The next hit and nothing else. Up for a friggin week straight sometimes, getting high, no food, a sip of water when I remembered. A real addict too. Would piss myself if the dope wasn’t finished and a trip to the bathroom meant missing a hit. It wasn’t long before people I’d known all my life turned their heads when they saw me coming, seen someone resembling the old me, with the way, on a good run, I’d shrink down to a percent of myself, skin with a few sharp sticks inside. Got so bad I couldn’t friggin stand to walk past a mirror. The dope droppedme so low that I broke in my mom’s place and stole her wedding ring. Worthless man, no other way to put it. Scum who didn’t deserve to live.
    We make fearless and searching inventories and tell the fearful to keep coming back. Keep coming back and it works. We can stand up and testify when we so choose. But what would I tell them? That the first time I took my eldest. That Dawn, my best friend, promised I’d feel better and forget. That I’ve been waiting for that to happen