The way we share...finding humor in some of the darkest, scariest things that have happened to us—isn't always available outside of rooms.
Living Purely, Chapter 2, “Connecting with the World Around Us”
In NA, we often know each other inside out. “I knew the greatest hopes and greatest fears of some of my team members before I knew their last names or what they did,” one member shared. We may never get to know the inner lives of non-addicts the way we know each other in NA – and this is an important element that allows us to laugh and tease NA members.
Humor often comes in the form of an unexpected or unexpected gap between expectation and reality. In society, there are a lot of expectations about how people should treat each other – expectations that we drug addicts completely ignore. Often in our lives non-addicts don't see what the joke is. Sometimes that's the funny thing: "normal" people behave one way - we drug addicts behave very differently. When we hear members share their strange ideas and actions, we identify and feel relieved that we are not alone.
Many of us find a deep source of humor in the way denial frames our experience. Sometimes that's the joke. “I thought my life was like something out of a blockbuster gangster movie - money, drugs and lots of drama. In fact, it was more like a depressing advertisement to keep your kids off drugs." The stark contrast between reality and the fictional movie version of our stories may seem pathetic or disturbing to outsiders, but we lived to tell it – and today we can self-consciously laugh at ourselves.
Humor helps us heal as we come to terms with the reality of our lives. We see the outrageous gap between our behaviors and what the "secular" society expects. (Of course, there are gaps – we're square pegs in round holes!) Or we notice the ridiculous distance between our lives and our fantasies. We share our inner selves in a way we can't share anywhere else, often making our companions laugh. We stop taking ourselves so seriously, let our flaws show, and start growing. It may be a lot of fun, but it's no joke!
By sharing my inner selves with other addicts, I can learn to laugh at the insanity of addiction – and let it go, little by little.
