ohn L. gets up to the podium and says, `That is a question I did not used to be able to
answer.' This gets a laugh, and everybody's posture gets subtly more relaxed, because
it's clear that John L. has some sober time in and isn't going to be one of those AA
speakers who's so wracked with self-conscious nerves he makes the empathetic audience
nervous too. Everybody in the audience is aiming for total empathy with the speaker;
that way they'll be able to receive the AA message he's here to carry. Empathy, in
Boston AA, is called Identification.
hen John L. says his first name and what he is, and everybody calls Hello.
hite Flag is one of the area AA meetings Ennet House requires its residents to attend.
You have to be seen at a designated AA or NA meeting every single night of the week or
out you go, discharged. A House Staff member has to accompany the residents when they
go to the designated meetings, so they can be officially seen there.134 The residents'
House counselors suggest that they sit right up at the front of the hall where they can
see the pores in the speaker's nose and try to Identify instead of Compare. Again,
Identify means empathize. Identifying, unless you've got a stake in Comparing, isn't
very hard to do, here. Because if you sit up front and listen hard, all the speakers'
stories of decline and fall and surrender are basically alike, and like your own: fun
with the Substance, then very gradually less fun, then significantly less fun because
of like blackouts you suddenly come out of on the highway going 145 kph with companions
you do not know, nights you awake from in unfamiliar bedding next to somebody who doesn't
even resemble any known sort of mammal, three-day blackouts you come out of and have to
buy a newspaper to even know what town you're in; yes gradually less and less actual fun
but with some physical need for the Substance, now, instead of the former voluntary fun;
then at some point suddenly just very little fun at all, combined with terrible daily
hand-trembling need, then dread, anxiety, irrational phobias, dim siren-like memories
of fun, trouble with assorted authorities, knee-buckling headaches, mild seizures, and
the litany of what Boston AA calls Losses--
