Jumbo Shrimp and the Gift of Laughter

When I first entered AA, I knew I had to stop drinking even if it meant that I'd never be able to laugh or have fun again. With such grim expectations, I was greatly surprised when I went to my first meeting. To my amazement, it was full of happy, well-adjusted people who seemed to be having fun. They were so irreverent I was sure these people didn't have a drinking problem, and their good humor led me to suspect that many were mental patients, referred by a psychiatrist to meetings. After all, alcoholism was a very serious problem, and these AA folks were not taking alcoholism seriously.