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The Best Medicine

I was dying of terminal seriousness. I was an empty suit, stressed to the max and stiff as a board. I looked out at life through crap colored glasses. I couldn’t laugh, not deeply. Even when I was drunk and stoned the best I could do was titter from inside my head. I didn’t realize I had a disease that was killing me from the inside out.

I was frozen when I walked through the door to my first meeting. I laughed, really laughed, for the first time in years. It was the laughter that connected me to the men in the room. The laughter drew me into the center of the herd. I began to thaw. I became a part of.

We are a wacky bunch, aren’t we? The beautiful thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is that were not afraid to put our wackiness on display when we share. An old timer told me, “We’re not laughing at you, Jeff. We’re laughing at your solutions because we’ve tried the same damn things ourselves.”

I remember reading somewhere that if I can learn to laugh at myself, I’ll never be at a loss for material. I’ve begun to notice I’m becoming increasingly more forgetful. There are 18 steps up to my condo. It’s rare that I don’t have to walk back up those damn steps at least once for something I’ve forgotten. I used to worry about it. Today I think it’s hilarious.

Laughter is definitely the best medicine for this alcoholic.