I was sober a month. The days were long but I was struggling through it. The summer days kept me out walking the streets endlessly and going to as many meetings as I could stand. I did enough right actions to succeed—I fellowshipped with other newcomers, I gave my number out and encouraged people who had less time than me. I read the Big Book, I worked on Step One with my sponsor and I even read Living Sober—which to my surprise I liked.
Let me be clear: None of this came without extreme anxiety. Asking someone for their number—then actually calling them up just to chat—was a profound experiment in trust for me. One man from my home group gave me his number and said “call anytime.” That night I called him very depressed while alone in a diner overeating.
”I think I just need a friend to talk to. I’ve lived in the city my whole life yet I feel so alone.”
He said, “I’m glad you called me.”
We talked for a half hour. I felt much better, then at the end of the call he said, “You know, we don’t have to be friends now. We may become friends, but this is called fellowship. It’s what we do for each other and it works.” This made me laugh and we have remained acquaintances, who share a big hug when we happen to bump into each other every couple of months.
Today, I have a sponsor who tells me the exact same thing, for free—and half the time he buys me breakfast as well.
Early sobriety is a rich time—first the anxiousness and boredom sets in. I had sat on my couch smoking weed for a decade. Take away the weed and it was excruciating. I had to escape but this time without drugs or alcohol. This quickly led to new friends, books, writing, exploring the city, movies, long phone calls—all out of a necessity to not go crazy with the isolation I was suddenly feeling for the first time un-anesthetized.
I took a sponsor who didn’t believe the Big Book was important. He let me buy him dinner a few times a week because, after 20 years sober, he couldn’t afford to eat out (neither could I, but I never told him that). I had spent so many years thinking I was right about everything, only to find out that I had been mostly wrong, so I had an open mind for the first time in my life. My psychic told me that there were people bugging my apartment and spying on me because of a conspiracy documentary I was working on. I was paranoid, judgmental and scared of the things I wanted most. Everything felt bad, so how would I know what was actually bad for me and what was actually good? To put it very mildly, I was cracked up from years of abuse and this was a very vulnerable time.
My home group was my solace. I wanted to have hope and I found it there each day I went in. Exchanging numbers with people was getting to be standard procedure. Nine times out of 10 I would take their number and then text them mine or visa-versa. On the odd occasion someone would give me their business card.
On my second day one of the members of that group handed me his card when we exchanged numbers. I looked down. He was a therapist. Was he offering me therapy or was he just giving me his number? I had started to go to the gym and eat better and wake up at a reasonable hour; perhaps therapy was the next step of self-care for me, and this man was offering me the perfect opportunity. Was God taking care of me in ways I could not understand and guiding me to this professional relationship? Or was the guy just looking to fellowship?
A month later I called him and I had my answer. We began therapy. I was broke. I had a few grand that would come and go each month. He wanted $150 per hour. I offered $75 and he accepted. I started seeing him twice a week and immediately I was feeling better. I made a list of all the things I wanted to accomplish in therapy and informed him that I needed support on this journey. He assured me that he would be there for me. For $75 an hour. I offered to pay him cash so that he could avoid paying taxes on the money. He accepted.
It was wonderful to be able to trust my therapist, to be in conversation with someone who truly understood addiction. So many shrinks didn’t really get it—how the insanity of that first drink plays out in the mind and how the program can be such a wholesale solution. One addiction therapist I interviewed was shocked that I was going to 14 meetings a week in early sobriety. She thought that counting days was counter-productive, as she felt one didn’t lose much if one relapsed, and would often find valuable lessons in the experience. My new shrink and I had the same beliefs, the same principles, followed the same course of Steps and the same Traditions.
Or did we? Tradition Eight: “Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.”
Twice a week, in his office around the corner from our AA home group, he would encourage me to follow the Steps, read the Big Book, go to meetings and talk to another alcoholic. All for $75 an hour. Today, I have a sponsor who tells me the exact same thing, for free—and half the time he buys me breakfast as well.
As we got deeper into therapy, I found it harder to afford. Sure, I was not working half as hard as I could, but nonetheless I couldn’t afford it. He said he would let me build up a bill to him. At first I would owe him $300 and pay it off in full a few weeks later. Then I would owe him $600 and pay off half, and so on. Eventually the bill got to $700 and I cancelled therapy, feeling too stressed out about the expense and the time commitment. I had gone back to work and scheduling had become difficult. He said he understood and encouraged me to work hard so that one day I could “have it all”—meaning rent and therapy.
I haven’t seen him in a few months and still owe him the money. Slowly it dawned on me that I was using this therapist as a crutch to help me through my first six months of sobriety. Maybe I really just needed a friend. We crossed so many boundaries that were not helpful to me—although I didn’t relapse, so who’s to say what was helpful and what was not?
I do believe that therapy can be helpful, and I may even go into it again. But you have to have real trust with your therapist; the fact that he picked me up in my home group when I was a few days sober would have been an issue for me to wrestle with once I got healthier.
Was he wrong to troll the rooms looking for newcomers he could charge? In my opinion—and the opinion of other newcomers who are no longer seeing him—the answer is a resounding “Yes.” But oddly enough the experience has still helped me. I had a basic mistrust of people. There are people who are trustworthy in the world and people who aren’t. If I want the life I dream of, it’s up to me to make these decisions about who I trust, and then trust myself enough to work it out when I get it wrong. Getting seduced by this therapist—paying him, showing up, feeling I was helping myself and then leaving him and realizing he was sort of a scumbag—were at least all positive steps that I was finally, proactively, taking for myself.
But the Traditions are there for a reason. I am guilty of trying to do a lot of business in the rooms, raising money for this or that. Luckily all my schemes have failed and I now approach business in the rooms with extreme caution, if at all. But as a newcomer I didn’t know better.
Now I’ve decided to write the shrink a check and drop it at his office. That is my way of cleaning up my part in this resentment I have against him. I thought about confronting him or making an announcement in our home group warning newcomers not to accept business cards from professionals looking to charge. I even thought about suggesting the warning appear in the opening announcements for the meeting.
Instead, I wrote this article as a way to reclaim this morning of my 364th day of sobriety and get yet one more resentment off of my chest.
Lou Stein is a pseudonym for a documentary filmmaker in New York.
