Smoking Diaries #9: The Key to the Universe

Two states, one bar. Even a sober woman can have fun in a place like this.

It’s 4:41am in Alabama, where your narrator has ventured to share her experience, strength, and hope — that’s recovery-speak for “telling her drinking story to a room full of former drunks.” (AA, anonymity, storytelling: We’ll get to that, too.)

While sitting in eye-shot of a soothing white-sand beach on the Gulf shore, our resident chain-smoker talks about the beauty and troubled past of Alabama, why she wishes she could have met Martin Luther King, Jr. (who did have a thing for blondes), and the profound history of AA, which began in the Thirties when a chronic drunk named Bill began sharing his story with a chronic drunk named Bob, and the rest, as they say, was the most influential self-help movement of the 20th century.

Along the way, we discuss humidity, the disconnection of modernity, shitty single-serve coffee makers, identity politics, and “Smoking Diaries” gets its very first cameo appearance! But our entire ramble builds up to this one thing your narrator heard in a meeting once. The key to the universe. But you’ll have to listen to find out.

View from the balcony of the hotel.