My name is jewchick, and I am SO grateful that I am not an alcoholic.

I'm taking a psychiatric nursing class, and one of our assignments is to go to an open AA meeting and write an observation paper. So, today was my trip to the AA meeting. It was exactly how it sounds in books, or in movies. There were the guys who have been sober for 25 years, the guys who just got out of rehab, and the guys who were drunk yesterday. They talked about everything that's gone on. The guy who spoke told about getting high and drunk in highschool, then on his job as a construction guy working on elevators (which, by the way, doesn't make me feel very safe), about losing his wife and his daughter. He's been sober for two and a half years, and just got back with his wife three months ago. It made me really happy that his story had a happy ending.
The most interesting thing to me was my reaction. Going in, I was like, "okay, this is a little scary, but it'll be fun - even, maybe, funny." After sitting there, and listening to everyone's stories, I feel totally different. It was kind of a bittersweet experience - hearing about the guy who was contemplating suicide was really sad, but everyone's reactions to him were sweet. They all reminded him that he was at the meeting, which meant that no, he doesn't want to kill himself, he just wants the pain to go away. And while everything out of everyone's mouth sounded completely cliche, you know, "a day at a time," or whatever, it was cliche in the most honest, most sincere, most caring way.