Why I Left AA After 12 Years

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One man I dated, and loved, eventually revealed he was married; then he came out as a sex addict and insisted I attend 12-step meetings for the partners of sex addicts—shifting the blame from himself as a betrayer to me as someone who “liked to go out with sex addicts.” Another man I was in a relationship with turned out to be in organized crime, confiding to me that he had once had someone’s legs broken. A very close friend in recovery stole someone’s identity and with it a great deal of money. Yet another friend, an artist, turned out to be funding his efforts with forgery. This is just a sampling of my romantic and social interactions among sober people in New York City in the '90s. In my time outside of the recovery movement I have not met one civilian with this level of secrecy and deceit.

I proceeded with caution and asked two friends to be with me while I had my first drink in 18 years, just in case hell froze over.

Thomas Merton says that nothing is as difficult as human relationships. He calls them “the setting of broken bones.” So often did I feel attacked or taken aback by the reactions of people in program. More often, I felt that I was holding my breath, waiting for the axe to fall. One boyfriend called me "a selfish troll" for not noticing his haircut. Another threw me down his stoop on a New Year’s Day, after I suggested that his two screaming infant daughters—visiting him for the first time since his divorce—might be calmer if I was not there. 

Recently, I recommenced an old friendship—the one that had ended with the blanket being pulled out from under me in the park. Everything went swimmingly until, sure enough, my old friend got viscerally, damningly angry at me. It had been so long since I had absorbed this dynamic—there was a familiar violence to her rage that I understood, but had not experienced in years.

In defense of AA I must say that I was told on my first day sober that it was “men with the men” and “women with the women.” My first home group, in Connecticut, was infamous for its rigor and actually sat men on one side of the room and women on the other. The second thing I heard was "no dating in the first year." Did I follow this? Absolutely not. Did anyone I know follow this? In Connecticut, maybe, in uptown Manhattan, possibly—but in downtown Manhattan, where I spent the majority of my sobriety, absolutely not.

For the year before I moved to Vermont—my last year of attending meetings—I had a push-and-pull relationship with a fellow AA member. Towards the end of that year, he tried to commit to me and pursued me with a persuasive passion that I had never experienced. Finally, I relented, feeling hopeful, loved even. Immediately after this, I took a two-week trip to Vermont. When I returned, and called him, he seemed to be searching his memory, finally asking, vaguely, "So, where did we leave things?” A month later he was engaged to someone else.

Since then, I have never attended a meeting or dated a man in program. Not once have I uncovered a terrible lie or secret life. Instead, I got used to being around calm, consistent people and my tolerance and capacity for love increased by osmosis. To date I have been with my civilian husband for over seven years, my longest romance.

One day in 2006, with six years of recovery from "Recovery," I made the conscious decision to try drinking again. I was more stable and happy than I had ever been: I was in a solid relationship with a decent, kind, honest man and I had a job. I had never been convinced that I was an alcoholic. I proceeded with caution and asked two friends to be with me while I had my first drink in 18 years, just in case hell froze over. We sat outside on a summer’s day by a small pool. It took about an hour before I felt willing to take that first sip of beer. My world did not end. I waited for the inevitable, but I did not immediately need another and another. Since then, after living in the outback of Western Australia for a year, I actually do rather like beer, and wine on occasion. For all my time in recovery, I always thought that if I drank again, I would run wild and go to raves and taste all the new fancy drinks that had come out. But I never have.

In AA meetings, older members will often say they are now sober for as long as they drank, and the catchphrase is, "I am out of the woods." Having been in program for 12 years—and now out for 12 years—I can say precisely the same thing. I am out of the woods and the world has never been clearer or happier for me. Perhaps the program had worked its magic on me: “We will love you until you can learn to love yourself,” they say. But by the time I learned what love was, I was out the door.

Louise Wareham Leonard is a journalist, editor and the author of two novels, Since You Ask and Miss Me A Lot Of. She has also been published in Gargoyle, Poetry and HotelAmerika and is a reader for Tin House.