A NEW GENERATION FIGHTS ADDICTION By Phoebe Hoban

“You know that ad ‘the night belongs to Dalton has its next class reunion, it’s going to be Michelob’?” asks Marissa, * a 21-year-old at Hazelden.” gamine in a chartreuse sweater, torn jeans, and But they’re not kidding about cleaning up. cowboy boots. “All my nights used to be like Marissa’s been sober for eighteen months. that.” She stops in front of a liquor store window Tracy’s a three-and-a-half year veteran. On New plastered with holiday displays about love, Year’s Eve, Marissa and Tracy and several cheer, and tradition – amorous, glamorous hundred ‘other people went to a dance couples toasting; neighbours swapping scotch. organized by Cocaine Anonymous in a loft on “lt’s everywhere. And the message is that West 17th Street. There was music and dancing, drinking is fun, sexy, romantic.” but when the Times Square ball fell, everyone I met Marissa in front of St. Monica’s toasted with soda. “The party was absolutely church on East 79th Street one Sunday before packed,” says Tracy. Christmas, when everyone else was out Last year’s movie version was Clean and shopping. She and her “sponsor,” a vivacious Sobe4 starring Michael Keaton. This year, it’s blonde named Tracy, were emerging from an The Boost, with James Woods and Sean Young. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the basement. ln 1988, Margaux Hemingway admitted to The 79th Street Workshop is one of the most alcoholism on the cover of People; this year, it’s popular meetings in the city. More than 100 wellheeled people congregate here on weekends at Names of recovering addicts and some identifying details 12:30, and many of them are very young. have been changed, since anonymity is the founding principle of A.A. and all other twelve-step programs. According to a 1986 AA survey, 21 per cent of AA members are under 30; 38 percent-are also this year, it’s thirteen-year-old Drew Barrymore. addicted to drugs. “A.A. has lost the image of unshaven bums,” Marissa and Tracy, 26, used to be party girls. They were good- looking and had money. says Matthew, a 28-year-old actor who’s been They both had divorced parents, went to private attending meetings for eight months.” Everybody’s in to it.” schools, and were using drugs and alcohol by “Getting high is no longer hip,” says the time they were twelve years old. BY the time Candy, a longterm pill popper who’s been sober they were sixteen, their lives revolved around getting high and going to clubs. Marissa drank, for seventeen months. “Now it’s hip to be in recovery. The program is the best-kept secret in did coke, and freebased; Tracy free- based and Manhattan.” did speedballs. She hung out with a group of artists and actors, including the late John Why the rush to “the rooms,” as members call the meetings? Hipness has nothing Belushi. Her boyfriend was a doctor/dealer who eventually went to prison. She bounced checks, to do with it; nobody hangs out in church basements for fun. While alcoholism takes its toll stole money from her boss, and ran up $50,000 over the course of years, coke, free-basing, and in debts. crack are causing people to bottom out within Now the nights at Area, Save the months. “lt’s very simple,” says Paul, a 45-year- Robots, The World, and Nell’s are over. Marissa old real- estate broker with a large investment and Tracy don’t go to clubs much anymore. firm, who became a born- again Christian when They go to meetings – Alcoholics Anonymous he kicked his coke habit. “There’s a line you meetings, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, cross where it becomes impossible. lt usually Cocaine Anonymous meetings. And so do most takes twenty years with alcohol, ten to fifteen of their friends. “There are so many people in years with pot, five years with snorting cocaine, recovery,” says Tracy, “there’s a joke that when six months for shooting it, and a matter of weeks for crack.”

“Alcohol is a much slower route to is four years.” The room bursts into applause. addiction,” says Nancy Dombrowski, a private Max’s story is both banal and sad. With a little therapist who is affiliated with the Alcoholism editing, his narrative could be another Bright Council of Greater New York. “But when you mix Lights, Big City. Max, a middle- class kid from alcohol with cocaine, you get there on the Long lsland, worked at a club in the city where express train.” ln the past four years, the number drugs flowed as freely as Rolling Rock. Max of CA groups nationwide has gone from 169 to indulged with the best of them. “Everyone at work 1,043. ln New York, the number of NA groups did coke,” he says.” “People were always giving it has doubled to 266. to me to get in free. But I didn’t know where to On the Friday before New Year’s Eve, draw the line. I would end up in court every three Marissa and Tracy are at a an NA meeting in a months because I hadn’t paid my rent. I had no church basement in the East Eighties, where phone or electricity. My girlfriend broke up with their friends Max is celebrating his fourth year of me. One of the guys I worked with died. I

sobriety or, as he prefers to call it, “being clean.” remember people used to leave NA stationary on The 75 people are mostly under 40 and range my desk and it was like, “How dare you think I from yuppies to obvious junkies. Marissa runs up have a problem?” to Max and gives him a stuffed dog. He gives her People laughed in recognition. “Then I a big hug. One attractive couple has brought a hit rock bottom, I was taking money from my new baby. family. I forged a check to my father, who’s an This is an anniversary meeting. The five accountant. One day, I was sitting over this speakers in the front of the room have been drawing board. My nose was stuffed and caked sober anywhere from a year to nine years. from doing blow, and then it started bleeding. lt There’s a chocolate cake to celebrate. A thin girl was like the beginning of the end. The next night dressed in black is passing out slices. People it was my birthday. I had an eight of an ounce of help themselves to coffee from an urn in the back coke, and I was with some girl whose name I of the room. Others light up cigarettes in the didn’t even know. The next morning, I called my smoking section. parents and made them fly me down to Florida to “Don’t compare drug stories,” cautions get clean. My first meeting was in Florida.” Candy, the pixyish woman in the leopard-skin Max winds up his story: “l always felt less boots who is leading the meeting. “Just relax and than other people; I never felt like I fit in. I’ve identify. One of the best things about this learned how to be human in four years of program is the idea of a day at a time. Otherurrise recovery. I didn’t do this alone. My recovery is things look so big. All these days add up. What about people; we have unity here. That’s how all you see tonight are all these ‘just for todays’ the healing is done. Now I have a beautiful adding up to one, four, nine years.” midtown office. I laugh about it sometimes. The speakers – two women and three When the meeting ends, people join men, ranging in age from 24 to 40 – take turns. hands and recite a prayer: “God grant me the They introduce themselves as addicts and say serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the how long they’ve been clean. Everyone applauds, courage to change the things I can, and the and then their stories begin: burnout tales from wisdom to know the difference. Keep coming hell that all end up on a note of hope. This NA back; it works if you work it.” The ring breaks up, meeting seems raunchier than the A.A. meetings, and people stand around chatting, exchanging a little more out of control. The word “death” phone numbers. comes up often. There’s a sense of mortality that “The key to the rooms,” says Marissa, isn’t dispelled by the Georgette Klinger bag “is that there are guidelines; there are rules. And passed around for donations. But there’s also a there’s unconditional love. Nobody ever says, feeling of victory and solidarity here. lt’s like a ‘Don’t come back,’ No matter how sick you are, locker room full of athletes primed for the same no matter what you’ve done. No one leaves you goal: winning the game. I or abandons you. When first started the Max, 30, is one of the last to speak, “Hi, program, I used to think it was a cult thing. But it’s everybody. l’m Max, and I’m an addict, and today not. lt’s just a better way of living.”

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All over Manhattan, there are similar came up with the title Alcoholics Anonymous. meetings around the clock. During lunch, Popularly referred to as “the big book,” it lists the midtown professionals flock to an A.A. group twelve basic steps for recovery. called Foglifters, at Fifth Avenue and 55th It’s these steps that give A.A. its Street. On Sunday evenings, in a dimly lit, tiny “religious” reputation. After admitting that they room on Perry Street, there is a smaller, more are powerless over their problem and that their intimate meeting. Every midnight in a building off lives are unmanageable, alcoholics are exhorted Times Square, dozens of people climb the stairs to believe in a “higher power” and to turn their lo a film noir-ish room with a tin ceiling and slow- will to the care and direction of God. moving fan. At St. Bart’s an Adult Children of But between the pious-sounding lines is Alcoholics group fills a classroom decorated with a pragmatic program: A.A. forces alcoholics to elementary-school drawings. And actors admit they have a problem and provides them gravitate to the Studio Group at a church on the with a structural solution and support group. Upper East Side. Arnold Washton, who runs Washton lnstitute, an A.A. meetings and their various spinoffs outpatient rehab center for addicts says I

are based on a twelve-step program that hasn’t “Twelve-step programs help define the problem changed since it was created in 1935 by two in a meaningful way and enforce honesty with “hopeless” drunks, Dr. Bob Smith and Bill oneself and others. They maintain a focus on Wilson, who had a heartto-heart talk about their realistic goals. And they provide the support of a mutual problem. Wilson, a broker from New York community of friends and peers with special who had made several fortunes and lost them to understanding and empathy. The rewards can alcohol, was in Akron, Ohio, on business. He be extraordinary.” had been sober for three months, but when the Dr. Anne Geller, director of the Smithers proxy takeover he had come to town for failed, Alcoholism Treatment and Training Center, he wanted a drink. Wilson, who had been says, “Going to these groups also gives people hospitalized for his last binge, learned two some activity to fill up the time when they are important things: that alcoholism is a disease, struggling to come off an addiction. lt fills the “an allergy of the body and an obsession of the void.” mind,” and that relief would come only after he The program is free. The only surrendered himself to God. (Wilson and his wife requirement is a desire to stop drinking and were members of the Oxford Group, an drugging. This is especially important for those international organization that practiced the faith without insurance. Members are asked only to of the early Christians.) He called local a make voluntary donations to help rent the rooms minister for advice, who in turn contacted a and pay for literature and refreshments. woman from the local Oxford Group. She For many, however, A.A. still seems like introduced him to Dr. Bob Smith (known just as some kind of religious order. First, there are all Dr. Bob), a surgeon who was also an incorrigible the references to God, and then there are the alcoholic. What he and Wilson came up with slogans. Talk to a member for more than fifteen was powerful but simple: A.A. is based on both minutes and a lot of homilies inevitably pop up: abstinence and the concept that talking about “First things first.” “One day at a time.” “Easy their addiction with fellow recovering alcoholics – does it.” “Keep it simple.” “You’re only as sick as real-life experts on the problem – is a potent form your secrets.” “One [drink] is too much and a of reciprocal therapy. As Dr. Bob wrote about thousand isn’t enough.” “Progress, not Wilson, “He was the first living human being who perfection.” “Life on life’s terms.” “God is good, knew what he was talking about in regard to orderly direction.” alcoholism from actual experience. ln other Some people are turned off by the “God words, he talked my language.” part” that never return for a second meeting. By June 10, 1935, Dr. Bob was stone- Others solve the problem by thinking of this cold sober. He and Wilson began to spread the higher power as the collective strength and word, drunk by drunk. By 1939, the group had wisdom of the people in the rooms. And then developed a guidebook. A New Yorker writer there are those who become truly religious.

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“My sponsor said, ‘Get on your knees that pure. Some people are looking for a lover. before you go to bed, and talk things through,”‘ Some people are looking for a job.” remembers Max. “And I said, ‘Jewish guys don’t “l remember people telling me that A.A. get down on their knees.’ He said, “Did you ever was ‘in.’ That it was the new scene,” says get down on your knees to do a line of blow? I Marissa. “That’s not what it’s about at all. said I would have gotten on my belly. I call the Anyone who comes in thinking that loses so higher power my spirit. There’s nothing more much. lt’s not a sex club or a singles club of the spiritual than one person helping another.” eighties. People are terrified of endangering the “l hesitate to talk about a higher power safety of the rooms. And anyway, everybody because I am a very skeptical person to begin knows, it’s so incestuous.” with, ” says Matthew. “For years, I thought of There’s an unwritten rule that members myself as an agnostic with no real ties to any should avoid major changes in their lives kind of organized religion. But as the Big Book including relationships – for the first year of says, ‘The hoop A.A. asks you to jump through recovery. But the social aspects of the twelveis plenty wide.” step programs are important, especially since Jay, 25, went from being agnostic to members are told to try to avoid the “people, being fervently religious. “l remember going to places, and things” Associated with their habit. my first meeting and seeing all these people that “These people are going to have to eliminate weren’t religious fanatics. They weren’t nuts, large parts of their life-style,” says Dr. Washton. they weren’t losers. They were hip people,” he “Having new people to socialize with is very says. “They were happy, and they were talking important.” about incredible things. lf you go to these “l have had to cut off so many people I meetings for a year and you see somebody on used to see,” says Dan, a cocaine addict who their first day and then after six months, that’s hasn’t used the drug for nine days. “l really need proof.” the people in A.A.” Some members even begin Just having lived long enough to get into finding it difficult, if not impossible, to deal with the rooms can be proof of a higher power. “it people outside the program. This can be a real wasn’t hard for me to make that leap,” says problem for non-members who have intimate Anne, a 31-year-old sales representative. “Since relationships with members. I was fifteen, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve One 33-year-old woman who recently been in a car with a drunk driver, and it always separated from her husband says, “A.A. kept turned out okay.” him alive but stole him from me. You expect problems to be solved, but they are replaced by But people are people, and the sacred a whole new set of problems. The irony is that if sometimes becomes the profane. One step the I could scrape him off the pavement when his founders didn’t have in mind was the “Thirteenth heart was palpitating and his face was gray and Step” – when a member who’s been in the his tongue was hanging out, you think I could program for a while picks up a newcomer. “A deal with a healthy, sober person. But A.A. person is so vulnerable when they first come in. became a rival in the marriage. lf he doesn’t go To hit on someone is just aMul,” says Paula. a to meeting, he gets hypercritical, antsy, “Once a new girl raised her hand and said she’d negative. He goes to a meeting and comes been clean 50 days, and I heard this guy say, floating out. lt’s almost like a fix. But stillI “Good. Get them while they are still shaking.’ wouldn’t trade his being in the program for This is not a social club. This is really a place to anything in the world, because I know without it get better. lt’s medicine.” he would be dead.” Max admits, “there are a lot of people The meeting can also bring people who develop relationships in the rooms. But I’m together. Jim, 31, is engaged to a woman he sick enough on my own. The last thing I need to met in A.A., and he knows at least six other do is to find someone who is a similar thinker. couples who met through the program. Most Still, I know when I first came around, a pretty people find a healthy medium in handling girl made it easier. Everybody’s motives aren’t

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relationships: The dealer has to go; friends who the meetings as they once were to a substance. aren’t only drugging or drinking pals can stay. Others take on the fervent tone and jargon of the Until recently, drug addicts were not born-again. always welcome at A.A. Max remembers “going That’s because those who’ve gotten to a meeting in Florida and saying I was an sober feel that they’ve been saved. For many, addict and being asked not to share.” Says private therapy didn’t work; dividing their stashes Candy, “Eight years ago, I was thrown out of an into cute little packets didn’t work; rationing A.A. meeting because I was a drug addict, and drinks didn’t work. The alternatives were a totally they said I had no right to be there. You still hear dysfunctional life, or death. some resentment.” But today, many young members identify themselves as cross-addicted: It’s a Tuesday evening, and the A.A. Most cocaine users are also alcoholics. “My meeting in the basement of a church on Park husband used to say, ‘l have a coke habit, not Avenue in the Sixties is bustling. The crowd is a an alcohol problem.’Then he’d drink,” says one mostly upscale mix of about 60 men and woman. “But as soon as he had a drink, he’d women. One woman seated in the front of the lose control over his urge to do coke. Then he’d room has just finished “qualifying,” or telling her disappear.” Fellowships like A.A. recommend story. She’s obviously struck a chord. Hands complete abstinence from addictive substances. shoot up all over the room. The first person to “Once you start getting high, it brings you back share is a pretty blonde. “Hi, I’m Paula, and I’m to your drug of choice,” says one member. an addict and an alcoholic.” Some addicts prefer meetings such as “Hi, Paula,” the room booms back. CA or NA, that focus on their particular problem. “Hi, everybody. I’ve seen you here a lot, Others are drawn to A.A. because its members but I never heard your story before,” she says to tend to have longer histories of sobriety than the attractive brunette in her thirties who’s just those at the more recently founded fellowships. finished her own tale of drug abuse, abusive Many members rotate among several types of relationships, arrest, recovery, and professional meetings to get the support they need. success. “l really identified with you. I graduated New members try to do 90 meetings in from an lvy League school, and I’d be sitting in a 90 days. They are encouraged to call other crack den saying, ‘But I’ve got a Ph.D.,’ and members when they get cravings or urges, and they’d be saying, ‘Pass the pipe.”‘ there’s a sponsorship program that provides The meeting breaks up into small coed one-on-one guidance. There are 1,800 A.A. clusters. lt’s easy to pick up on some flirtation meetings in Manhattan, varying in size and among members. “Sure I go to meetings when I ambience. have crushes on some of the guys , ” says This S4-year-old form of free therapy Paula. “They say that whatever gets you here may have become a burgeoning subculture, but doesn’t matter. People do date people in the it’s far from an instant panacea. lt means a program. But there’s an old- timers’ saying that lifetime of hard work. Members know they can there’s a slip under every skirt. lt’s true that most never drink or take drugs again: The “pink- people slip up because of relationships too early cloud” high most newcomers get when they on. lt takes the focus off yourself and your enter the program soon gives way to the recovery.” realization that staying sober is just the A week later, in her office, Paula tells a beginning. Working the twelve Steps means wild but typical story. Paula, 32, works in the transforming yourself. Like psychotherapy, it’s a entertainment business. Posters of celebrities process that involves peeling back layers of cover the walls, and the conversation is personality. constantly interrupted by the phone and fax It’s easy for an outsider to parody the machine. Like many in the program, Paula chain program. Often, it seems like a New Age smokes. “Basically, I’m a nice girl from the Salvation Army or seventies-style group therapy suburbs,” she begins. ‘All I can say is my whole run amok. There are meetings that are overly life, I felt something was just off. I always felt I social, and some people become as addicted to was never good enough and you’ll hear this a lot

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from people in the program. From the minute I Eventually, Paula’s parents sent her to a started getting high and drinking, I knew that’s rehab clinic, where she stayed for five months. how I wanted to feel. They say that we have a She moved back to New York and started going disease, and the word is ‘dis-ease,’ you know. I ” to CA meetings. ln the beginning, the knew that when I drank and did drugs I felt more fellowship of people is more important than the comfortable. And if you go to enough meetings, actual steps,” she says. “l mean, all you really you’ll hear every alcoholic and drug addict say have to do is to remember that you are this. But once we take a drug or drink, it’s like we powerless over drugs and alcohol. But have no stop button.” eventually the steps help you change. When it Paula did well in high school and went to comes down to it, if you remain the same college and then to graduate school. She moved person, you’re going to end up doing drugs and to New York when she was 24. “l felt really lost, alcohol again. Basically, you’re a sick person and that’s when all the trouble started,” she getting better. They say that whatever age you says. “l began by doing little teeny bits of coke. I started drinking or drugging is when you really felt so empty. And somebody turned me on to stopped growing emotionally. I’ve heard the free-basing. I did one hit, and I thought, this is program called’growing up in public.”‘ Paula has what normal people must feel like. I absolutely now been sober two and a half years. loved it. lt rapidly started ruining my life.” Sarah and Matthew are a rich, good- She missed work and spent all her time looking young couple. They could be out on a hanging out with a dealer. “He was a disgusting date, but this Wednesday night, they are at one sleazeball hairdresser,” she says. “And there of their favourite A.A. meetings, in a church in was this whole scene of washing your hair, the East Sixties. The elevator man is used to the cutting it, and free- basing and drinking activity and cheerfully takes the hordes up and champagne. I hated him, but the minute you down. The members are affluent, slinging their free- base, you love everybody. Then there’d be fur coats and leather jackets over the folding these huge fights where he’d say everyone was chairs, stashing their briefcases and shopping using him and smash the free-base pipe. And I’d bags underneath. There are about 50 people in say, “l’m never going to come back.’ But then the room, and only five could be called skid-row the craving would start.” types. Sarah and Matthew look perfectly at Paula was fired from one job after home. another but always managed to scrounge up Sarah, an investment broker, has been enough money for drugs. “l got money from my sober two years; Matthew, an actor, has been parents. I didn’t pay bills. I charged roommates sober eight months. Both are trust-fund kids who more rent than they should have been paying. I went to prep schools. But somehow, their used money I was supposed to pay my shrink upbringing let them down. “Your enabled by your with. And I got a new boyfriend, another dealer. looks and your money,” says Sarah, 24, who We were like little hustlers down at Washington looks like a little Amy lrving. “But you are not Square Park. By the end, we were cooking crack given any foundation, any building blocks for for rich people. I stole from him constantly.” By living.” now, Paula was a typical wreck. Sarah grew up in a “very high-society, “l weighed 95 pounds,” she says. “My party atmosphere.” At ten, she was sampling the apartment was full of mice. My eyes were drinks she mixed for her parents. Her parents bulging out. I looked like Don Knotts. But I kept were divorced when she was twelve, and her going. I was fired from my final job. I was going mother, then in her late thirties, dated, partied, tcl be thrown out of my apartment. I had no lights and hung out with her three daughters, all of or electricity. I would look outside, and it would whom are now in A.A. “She tried to play mother always be this beautiful sunny day. You’d miss and best friend. I partied, drank, and did coke work, and it would be ten in the morning, and with her a lot,” Sarah says. Sarah and her you’d want to die. You wish you were anybody sisters were popular, athletic, seemingly but who you were. That was the worst feeling. together. The truth wasn’t quite so pretty. Just hating yourself so much.”

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It wasn’t until Sarah’s older brother tried the hours he spent glued to the window, to commit suicide that anyone in the family was convinced that his car was being stolen or that willing to take a closer look. Sarah’s father the Feds were in the street. The times he ripped stopped “enabling” his children with money. But up the carpet looking for coke. The way he Sarah continued to play the party girl. “l still terrorized the family cat, or spent all his time in looked good. I had money in the bank and lived the bathroom pretending to shower or to slug in a beautiful apartment,” she says. “l would go Pepto Bismol for his ulcer. His transparent on binges. Then I would try to go to meetings. attempts to explain missing paychecks to his Finally, I was able to get sober for a year, but I wife or get credit from his dealer, who lived, didn’t work the first step at all..l didn’t admit I conveniently, on the first floor. was powerless over alcohol, and I thought I “They say the difference between an could control my drinking. Then I drank for three addict and an alcoholic is that the alcoholic will straight weeks, and I knew it was over. My life steal your money and the addict will steal it and was a mess.” help you look for it,” he says, remembering how By now, Sarah’s two sisters were sober, he rolled back his sleeve to show off his watch and Sarah began to take the program seriously. at the first meeting so nobody would think he “Before, I didn’t want to meet any of the people was an out- of-work bum. He also remembers in the program,” she says. “l thought I was how his wife threatened to leave him. He’s now different, better. This time, I embraced it in a the proud father of a newborn daughter. totally different way. I was so relieved. I felt like From the comments in the room, it’s this is where I belong. I’m an alcohol. I felt safe. clear that he’s touched a lot of people. “l can’t The program gives you the tools to learn to believe your growth,” says one woman. “When I function in the world, to learn to deal emotionally look at you, I see that I must have grown, too.” with things that used to baffle you, because you Dan, a sweet-faced 26-year- old, looks used alcohol to deal with emotions. lt’s a bridge very nervous. This is his fourth meeting. His back to life, but it’s not life.” drinking and drug problem, which started in high Pot smoking brought Matthew to the school, has escalated into a full-scale coke and meetings. “l got through school on a beer addiction. He used to consider himself a combination of wit and charm,” he says. “l “literary druggie.” Now he can’t even get through thought it was a great joke to show up in class a day at the small publishing house where he high. After a while, I could barely function. When works without taking drug and drink breaks. I graduated, I wasn’t getting any acting jobs. My An eight ball (three and a half grams of life started to fall apart.” coke) barely lasts him several days. Everything Matthew went to a rehab center on the in his life is in jeopardy. “the physical urges are West Coast. When he returned to the East hell.” he says. “But the program has given me a Coast, he started going to meetings. “l knew I center, a way to get out all the urges and talk had a problem with pot for a long time,” he says. about it. I don’t have to isolate myself or worry “But I thought A.A. was a group of weaklings. about shocking people. Recovery is subsuming The twelve steps are simple, not complicated, my life, in some ways, more than the drugs and mystical, or cultish in any way. I have new alcohol. lf I didn’t have the program to take me friends, a new girlfriend, and my professional life one day at a time, I’d be overuvhelmed. But the has improved. I am hooking up with an agent as little applause you get makes you come back.” a result of taking some action I never would For Dan, the program is a slender thread have taken if I weren’t sober.” between his present and future that could snap at any minute. The SaturdaY night CA meeting in an We are in the midst of an answered auditorium in a hospital uptown is packed. prayer,” says Tommy, 29, who’s just completed Tonight the guy qualifying is a blue-collar worker four months of recovery. “l think the program is with the timing and delivery of a stand-up comic. pretty miraculous. I see people who would be Before long, everyone is laughing athis just totally trashed become really decent descriptions of life under the influence of coke: members of society.” But the people in the

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rooms are only a tiny fraction of addicts, and saw it coming, but I couldn’t see him dying. there are far more “slips” than longterm People die from this.” At some NA and CA recoveries. meetings, a moment of silence is observed for Marissa’s ex-boyfriend is still doing those still out there. drugs. “He thinks the program is full of s- Marissa, for one, counts herself lucky’ and that the people are fake. How can someone Eighteen months ago she was a burned out just hug you and not even know you? He thinks v\club kid. Now she has a new apartment, is the people talk a lot of bull- and they don’t back in school, and has started a line of greeting really feel it. There are people who never grasp cards that she says is being picked up by a it, who miss something, and it’s sad. lt just major company. She’s got a life of her own. doesn’t work for them. My ex has been in and “When I first came in, I had no sense of self,” out of the rooms for six years. The program is Marissa says. “l felt I was a nonperson. For the not for him right now. He needs something first time, I’m honest with myself. I don’t have to morg.” hide. There are many people who go in and out Recently, an NA member who Max was of these rooms for years and never make it. lt’s sponsoring died. l’d wait for him at St. Mark’s an action program; nothing is delivered to you. lf Place and he wouldn’t show up. He stopped you don’t work, the program doesn’t work for coming to meetings. He stopped calling me’ I you.”

Source: NEWYORK, FebruarY 20, 1989

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