El Garage

The first time I admitted out loud that I was an alcoholic I was in a little twenty-four-hour group down a back street in Mexico City. When I moved back to the States I went to my first U.S. meeting at an Alano Club. I got there half an hour early and circled the block so as not to spend more time inside than I had to. I didn't like the meeting. It was a blue-collar, tattooed crowd, with not very elegant language and too much smoke. So I looked in the AA directory of another county, close by and well-to-do. For three months I drove to a Sunday night open meeting. It was in a bank, not far from a university. Here, I thought, I would find a somewhat better vocabulary and a Ph.D. for a sponsor, as my education, profession, and cultural level deserved. After all, I was both a priest and a psychologist.