Find a Meeting, Find Hope

Central Jersey DOES exist.

After I admitted I was an alcoholic to my husband Chris in November 2010, we scheduled an emergency session with my therapist. (I had been seeing her for months but never told her how much I had been drinking. What a waste of money!)

I sheepishly admitted to her I had a drinking problem. She did not have experience with addiction so she referred me to another therapist who specialized in alcoholism. That alcoholic counselor told me I had to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. I knew that, even before I admitted to Chris I had a problem. I could have saved everyone the trouble of passing me along to the next person and just gone to one. But whatever, I guess my journey is my journey. 

Getting passed around like that reminded me of the time when I was 17 or 18 years old and I woke up from a blackout in a parked car in Monmouth Beach, a sleepy beach town about 10 miles from my home. The last thing I remembered was playing quarters at a friend’s party. The next thing I knew I woke up in the backseat of a strange car. Next to the car was a pile of vomit. Not knowing why I was there or how I got there or where my friends were, I started walking home.

It would have probably taken me three hours, but I was immediately picked up by the police. Thank god, I mean I was a 17-year-old girl staggering around the streets in the middle of the night by herself. They weren’t out to bust me, just get me home safely. But because the police only have jurisdiction over their small town, each time we came to the border of a new town, I had to get out of one police car and into another, each ride probably only taking 5 minutes. From Monmouth Beach, they drove me to Oceanport. From Oceanport to Little Silver. From Little Silver they took me to my hometown Fair Haven and I was finally deposited safely at home¹. 

At the time, my father was a NJ Superior Court judge, and all the police officers recognized my last name. It was not my finest hour.

But back to 21 years after that incident, when I was 38 years old and I went to see the alcoholic counselor. At the end of our session, she wrote down “Women’s Meeting, 7 p.m. at the United Methodist Church, 247 Broad Street, Red Bank” on a scrap of white paper and pressed it into my hand. I checked the time and the address a gazillion times and arrived at the church about 30 minutes before the start of the meeting. That’s how I roll when I’m nervous. It’s a battle for Chris to get me to leave for the airport at a reasonable time. I’d be there 24 hours before the plane departs if I could.

I waited out the extra time sitting in my minivan. About five minutes before the start of the meeting, I saw a very well-put-together woman in high-heeled boots holding an orange Coach bag walking with purpose across the parking lot. I jumped out of the car and followed behind her, putting enough space between us so she wouldn’t be tempted to turn around. 

I followed her through a door in the back of the church, down a flight of steps, through a hallway, and into a room where a bunch of women were sitting on worn couches, happily chitchatting and munching on Oreos.  

And that’s how I knew where the 7 p.m. Women’s Step Meeting was held. I returned to that meeting every Thursday.  

But after a few weeks, when I was still a miserable SOB, crying in the meeting about the state of my life, the women would surround me at the end of the meeting and say: “You have to go to other meetings.”

“But I like this one,” I’d protest. Plus, I knew where it was, I was comfortable there. 

“One a week is not enough,” they insisted. “Go to the Monday night Candlelight Beginners meeting at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Stone Church on Saturday mornings, or the Loft in Sea Bright.” (These are all real meetings by the way. They are still running in the same locations 13 years later. I love AA.)

“Ok,” I agreed, but I needed confirmation of where and when these meetings were. Something I could check and recheck before I go. I mean god forbid I showed up at a church and it was Bingo night. 

“Does anyone have a meeting book?” the women asked each other. No, no one had one. 

“You can google AA New Jersey and get a list of meetings,” said one woman.  

I went home and did that, but the website I found said, “Northern New Jersey.” That can’t be right; we live in Central New Jersey. (Just ask Stephen Colbert.) 

The next week in the Thursday meeting, probably extremely frustrated with me, that woman pulled up the NNJAA.org website on her phone to show me the exact URL.

“Oh,” I said. “I was confused because it said Northern New Jersey and we live in Central Jersey…” She gave me a weird look. 

So by January 2011, I finally got to other meetings where I met my sponsor who led me through the Twelve Steps and little by slowly as they say, I turned from a miserable SOB to a relatively normal member of society. I’d like those police officers to see me now!

Nowadays, it seems so much easier to find meetings. But if you’re like me and need to check and double-check a gazillion times, here is a list of places where you can find a meeting in your area.

• 24-Hour AA Hotline 908 687-8566

• Northern New Jersey Meeting Finder (This includes Central New Jersey.)

• AA’s Meeting Finder App

• Find AA Outside the United States and Canada

• Typically, most meetings will have a hardcopy meeting book that lists all the meetings in your area, which they’ll give you if you raise your hand and say you’re new.

A couple more points about the locations of meetings:

• They are often at churches, not because they are affiliated with the church but because churches usually have meeting spaces and storage closets filled with folding chairs. Most meetings pay rent for the privilege of using the space. The money collected in the basket they pass around helps pay for that.

• I’ve also attended meetings at the beach, at someone’s home, on a bench in the park. All you need for a meeting is two people looking to connect through recovery. 

• If you are circling a location and you’re not sure where the meeting is, look for the people smoking out front. It’s a stereotype because it’s true. 

• It’s totally fine and normal to ask “Is this where the AA meeting is?” No one will gasp or shame you. Most likely, the person will say, “Yes! Follow me!” in a voice that’s so chipper, you’ll think: “He can’t be sober.” 

FYI: When I started drafting this post, I planned it to be a Beginner’s Guide to AA, to give anyone who is contemplating going the lowdown on what goes on in an AA meeting so they won’t feel so lost and confused. But I got seriously side-tracked with that “the time I passed out in Monmouth Beach” backstory. So stay tuned. A Beginner's Guide to AA is going to be next week’s post. 

Also, how early do YOU get to the airport? And where do you fall on the whole Central Jersey debate?

1. By the way, my friends freaked out when they came back to the car and found me missing. They drove around looking for me and sighed in relief when they saw the police dropping me off at home.