Why We Laugh...

I got sober in the month of October, so I naturally came to see the month of November to be a special month where I focused on Resentment. Resentment primarily over people talking about Gratitude and that this was "the" Gratitude month! That used to just really bother me. I mean, Thanksgiving was not an AA holiday and it seemed inappropriate to the legalist and purest in me that we were infecting the rooms of AA with some outside celebration.

The focal point of my Rehashment of Resentment (the anti-matter of AA's Attitude of Gratitude) was the laughter that I began hearing in the rooms of AA from Day 1 until now. When I was first sober, the laughter caught me off guard. What was so funny about someone talking about something quite painful, shameful and/or downright scary? And why would people in these rooms typically react to these most painful of stories with very brief moments of quiet, followed by what appeared to be spontaneous, honest and sometimes uproarious laughter! What was that all about? I remember the first time I laughed, I immediately put my hand over my mouth because it seemed wrong to laugh at someone else's misery and pain. But I did laugh, almost from the get go.

I didn't think any of this was really all that funny. I had accepted the truth of my being alcoholic and that to live, I needed to focus not so much on stopping drinking as I needed to focus on staying sober. But staying sober didn't really seem that joyful or funny. It seemed quite serious and therefore, I needed to figure it out. It was the only thing I thought about. I was scared that I would drink again. I went to 10 to 14 meetings a week (and still do) and read everything I could get my hands on about AA, recovery and alcoholism...still do.

Now, seven years later, the topic of Gratitude does not bother me at all. When the topic does come up, I do like to share that for me, Gratitude was not a feeling, but an attitude. A decision made now and regardless; not an emotion following something good. Feelings terrified me all my life and alcohol was my primary tool in dealing with feelings, good or bad. But my sponsor taught me (and I slowly learned...) that feelings were neither good or bad. They just were what they were and I didn't need to be all that worried about them. They came. They went. But Gratitude wasn't a feeling. Grateful was a feeling; gratitude was more or a decision, a habit or an attitude.

Gratitude was something that had to be learned and practiced and developed. Some people made lists and wrote them down. I made lists of things I was grateful for in my head as I was driving to work (writing them down was clearly unsafe!) and as I did this more regularly, there would times where I'd become aware of some gift I'd received and I would be flooded with emotions of gratitude, joy and being loved. My eyes would tear up and I'd have to stop thinking of more things to be grateful for....I couldn't take any more. I was full, if not overflowing. The day I cried tears of joy over the fact that "I am and always will be an alcoholic" was one such overwhelming moment.

Now I have begun to understand the laughter in and around AA. It's not the laughter you hear at social gatherings where people are purposely telling funny stories or jokes, or, my personal favorite, making fun of someone else. No, the laughter heard in AA meetings or between two suffering alcoholics is a much different kind of laughter.

It's a laughter shared only by and with other survivors.

When we share a most pain-filled memory of our past within the context of an AA meeting or with another alcoholic, we share something that every single one of us can relate to and identify with. We often nod unconsioucly with deep understanding as we listen to another's story. Even if we've never been divorced, or arrested, or abused---we've been there. We know what that feels like because we've felt that same feeling, if not in the context being shared by the speaker, we've felt that same feeling in some other context. And we all had a common solution for such feelings and experiences: we looked outside ourselves and we looked at alcohol or some other substance that would take us out of that painful experience: fast! immediate! easy!

So, why do we laugh? We laugh, consciously or not, because we share a common past and a common disease: and we survived. By the fact that we're here telling our story of woe to another alcoholic, we know that we have both survived. Someone once said that "Religion is for those who fear going to Hell; spirituality is for those who've already been there." That spirituality is what I found and continue to find in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and with other suffering alcoholics, be they wet, dry or joyous, happy and free.

Take care!

Mike L.