GLIMMER OF HOPE

       Shaking my head in utter self-contempt, I closed my eyes and tried to remember who I was. Unable to recall a time when I had been intentionally cruel to anyone, I had just repaid someone’s kindness with a blistering insult. She was my acting teacher and was giving me free acting lessons in exchange for doing the occasional chores around her house. This day I was building shelves in the back room, normally an enjoyable task. She had come in to ask a couple of simple questions, but I cut her abruptly off with a stinging remark, “Just back off. Stop hectoring me. I’ll get it done.” She paused for a moment with a look of hurt and astonishment on her face, then turned around and left the room. And I sat on the floor surrounded by tools and wood, ashamed, and hating myself.                                                                                                                                                            
        I had gone out on a dinner date Friday night to celebrate my first booking since relocating to LA a year before. It was an independent feature film and was scheduled to begin shooting in two weeks. I promised myself that this time I wouldn’t drink or drug until the project was completed. I was adamant that I could abstain for that long. But during dinner, one glass of wine turned into two, and then three, then four, and then I copped an eight-ball of coke and spent the rest of the weekend on a savage solo binge. This consisted of closing all the curtains, sealing off the outside world, and settling into line after line of coke until it was all gone, moderated by shot after shot of vodka. I had made this same promise to myself hundreds of times over the past decade and a half, and not once was I ever able to keep it. The result was the same every time. More shame. More self-loathing. More self-destruction.  That Monday morning I showed up at my teacher’s house, not simply defeated, but furious. 

       I heard the door to the back room open quietly and then gently close. She had come back, and I fully expected to hear her say,

       “Get the hell out of my house and don’t come back.”

       But that’s not what I heard. Instead, she said,

       “Larry, something’s wrong. What is it?” She knelt down beside me and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder, and said,

       “Talk to me.”

       And that was it. That was the moment. The moment that saved my life. I bent over and burst into wracking sobs. My whole body shuddered and tears streamed down my cheeks. She put her arm across my back and pulled me close, resting my head on her shoulder. And I sobbed so hard I thought I would never stop. But eventually, my tears were spent, and I whispered,

       “I can’t stop drinking. I can’t stop drinking. I can’t stop drinking!” And I continued to sob some more and she continued to hold me. 

       After a few more moments, as I wiped the tears off my face with the sleeve of my t-shirt, she asked,

       “Have you ever thought of AA?”

       I thought back to a night six years earlier, when I was still in New York, still working in TV, still playing a popular and wholesome character on a popular daytime drama. The irony was that I felt anything but wholesome. The truth was that I had become an out-of-control, hopeless drunk, living in deepening despair, drinking to oblivion nearly every night. But, this one particular night, instead of going straight to the bar after work, I found myself wandering in the West Village, skulking the dark streets, in search of this thing called AA. I had heard that there was a meeting on Perry Street, and when I found it, I stood across the street, simply watching. A few people gathered outside, greeting friends, and others went straight inside. After a few minutes, everyone had entered, the door was closed, and I still stood across the street, terrified. If I went in there and took a chair, I was terrified that my life would explode, there would be nothing left of me, the curtain would fall and I would be revealed as the pathetic fraud that I was so desperate to hide. I paced up the block to the corner, and then turned around and came back. Never thinking I would actually go inside, I found myself crossing the street to the entrance, and after a moment my shaking hand reached for the door and I entered.

       It was a small dark room, the air smoke-filled. A man was standing at a podium, speaking to a group of about twenty people. Every chair was taken, so I leaned on the edge of a window sill near the door. I tried to make sense out of what the speaker was saying. But he might as well have been speaking in tongues. Nothing he said penetrated my understanding. Nobody had paid me any attention, despite my very recognizable face. I felt like an alien and an overwhelming fear grabbed hold of my insides. I had to get out of there. I didn’t last ten minutes and rushed to the nearest bar.

       So, when she asked me if I had ever heard of AA, I said,

       “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I tried it once back in New York, but it didn’t work.” 

       She said, very gently, “Why don’t you try it again?” And I looked up at her, and she continued, “Do you know where a meeting is?” 

       And I did. I had come across one just the week before, at Crescent Heights and Santa Monica Blvd. I had actually parked my car around the corner and ambled up to the front door and looked at their schedule, then scurried quickly away. They had meetings Mondays through Fridays every day at noon. And I said,

       “Yes, I know of one not far from here. It starts in half an hour.” And she said,

       “Why don’t you go? Leave the tools and go.”

       I paused and looked up at her again, and she said,

       “Go ahead.”

       And I nodded my head and said, “Yes. I think I will.”

       When I entered the meeting, people greeted me at the door, and they were friendly, offering handshakes and warm welcomes. Avoiding eye contact as much as possible, I searched for the farthest chair in the back. Too scared to talk to anyone, I tried to disappear. When the meeting started, I didn’t understand what was being said. But I began to feel something new, something I hadn’t felt in a long, long time: a glimmer of hope.

       That was October second, 1996. And today is March first, 2023. In a few months, if I’m lucky, I’ll have twenty-seven years of continuous sobriety. 

       And an act of kindness that saved my life.