I’m currently in Europe for the first time. Before I got here, I thought the clouds in Spain would rain sangria, the storms in London would flood the cobblestone streets in Crouch Hill with lager, and the servers in Paris would force a dessert aperitif into my mouth when I ordered a crème brûlée. Why? Because I’d heard so many stories of people in AA slipping while there because they said to themselves “No one will know.” From there, they spiraled out of control.
The “no one will know” thing is so stupid to me. It actually demonstrates one of my beefs with AA, as though sober time and your reputation in the program is what matters rather than steering clear of a beverage that’s essentially arsenic for anyone with a serious drinking problem.
I know myself, I know what alcohol does to me. Maybe no one will know, but I’ll know, and I don’t want to know where “one glass” of fancy French wine will take me.
So before I left for my trip, I grew more and more anxious that these booze-happy Europeans would insist that I drink, or ostracize me entirely if I didn’t put wine or beer to my lips.
Because of this, and despite my disenchantment with AA and a growing conviction that I didn’t belong in the program, I decided I had no choice but to hit meetings the second I landed on the continent. Though I’d gotten involved in SMART Recovery, there sadly weren’t any meetings in the cities I visited.
Of course when I got here, I found, as any ignorant American might, that the clouds in Spain do not rain sangria, the thunder in London doesn’t flood the streets with lager, and I can order a crème brûlée just fine in Paris with a café Américain—no questions asked.
If anything, I discovered that Europe rains delicious coffee, along with an endless flood of sparkling water. And let’s not forget the delectable pastries. Whether in London, Barcelona, or Paris, the piping-hot croissants oozed with high-quality butter, permeating the streets with this ethereal and tranquilizing smell.
So, the anxiety lowered and I figured there was no need to attend AA.
But I was lonely.
Traveling alone is a remarkable experience, and I am exceedingly grateful to be in a position to travel—and work virtually—in Europe. But when you travel alone, you are forced out of your comfort zone. It’s especially challenging in countries that don’t speak your native language.
(By the way, I thought I spoke decent Spanish until I got to Spain. Not only is my vocabulary very limited, but my ear isn’t accustomed to Castillian. Being born and raised in Southern California, all I’ve heard is Mexican Spanish, which, to someone like me who isn’t remotely fluent, sounds totally different.)
I knew AA was in every city I visited and that there were even English-speaking meetings in Barcelona, Madrid and Paris. I didn’t want to drink, and I didn’t even notice the booze around me, but after sitting at a dozen tapas bars alone, stuffing my face with tortillas españolas and patatas bravas while feeling extremely self-conscious about being alone, I needed some human-to-human interaction.
My boyfriend kept saying, “Just go to those meetings. It’s the perfect way to meet locals!”
But wouldn’t I be the biggest hypocrite in the world if I showed up to AA after publicly declaring that I’ve moved on? Or worse, since AA had programmed me to “give and not take” at meetings, wouldn’t I just be a selfish jerk for showing up only to make friends?
By the time I got to Seville and had been in Europe alone for nearly two weeks, my loneliness started dipping into a very mild depression, and, refusing to be depressed in one of the most gorgeous and magical cities on earth, a city full of impassioned flamenco and stunning Moorish architecture, I decided to hop on a train and go to Madrid, where a good friend from AA had recently landed.
He’d just celebrated a year of sobriety, I’d just hit my six year anniversary, and he basically told me I’d be going to an English-speaking meeting the evening I arrived.
I had no qualms about this.
Not only was I interested in making friends, I also was oh-so-curious to see what a meeting in Europe would be like.
I have to say, it was quite different from the meetings I was used to in LA. It was devoid of histrionics and hard-core Big Book thumpers. It was totally chill, and people seemed to not take themselves too seriously. They just sat around and casually shared, and the secretary gave me a six-year medallion.
I met some cool people and had a nice time hanging out with my friend, but the next day I was off to Paris to fend for myself.
Oh Paris! I fell in love with the city. Just staring at the Eiffel tower at night filled me with this insane joy, and I felt like I’d come home. But again, I had no friends, and after a few nights eating duck confit alone, I looked up some AA meetings and found an agnostic meeting near my hotel.
I figured in the stomping ground of the existentialists I adored, like Camus and Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, maybe the agnostic meeting would actually be an agnostic meeting, not a meeting where some spiritualist speaker tries convince us godless heathens that were are somehow deficient for not believing in God.
(This was my experience in two agnostic meetings in LA, which is what led me to finally throw in the towel on the program entirely.)
But the agnostic—and freethinker—meeting in Paris was actually an agnostic and freethinker meeting. No one talked about God, they’d rewritten the steps in language I could tolerate, and just like the meeting in Madrid, people shared calmly and casually, and no one seemed to take themselves too seriously.
I shared about my atheism and did not get cross-talked the way I had gotten cross-talked at meetings before I left (another reason I bailed on AA).
After the meeting, we all went out to a charming corner cafe and shot the shit, mostly about expatriotism and how to get an extended Visa for the EU. Even when I told them I had left AA, they didn’t seem to really care. They just sort of nodded, half-listening, and then called over the waiter for more coffee.
It was very refreshing, and I was so glad to be at a café sitting with actual people, instead of sipping multiple café Americains all alone.
Does all this mean I’m returning to AA? Not really. But when my new friends mentioned that no one ever closes out the meeting in the Lord’s Prayer in Paris, which is something that makes me want to vomit at meetings, I thought, “Okay, maybe I can stomach AA here.”
As many commenters have pointed out on my articles criticizing AA, meetings are in fact autonomous. One meeting in the Bible belt might be so religious it turns an atheist off from AA for good, but an agnostic meeting in Paris might be so secular it’d piss off someone who’s religious.
As for returning to AA, I am willing to keep coming back to the Tuesday agnostic meeting in Paris. I may never return to another meeting on the planet, but at least this one feels safe for a nihilist like me.
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