The Lead

Lead: To show the way to; to mark the way for.

Sometimes when I'm listening to someone share What It Was Like at a meeting, I find myself running a short clip of a typical Homer Simpson debacle. You can picture the scene: Homer gets too close to the edge of a cliff which breaks off. He falls a long way, bouncing off the rock walls as he plummets. Eventually, he gets caught on a ledge and breathes a sigh of relief, only to have his perch collapse and send him down again. When he reaches the bottom of the gorge all of the debris that he dislodged on the long descent smashes down on him. Then a truck runs over him and he catches fire. Then . . . you get the point.

I was vaguely aware that things weren't going too well when I was drinking but I was able to ignore the magnitude of the destruction. It was quite the revelation the first time I tried to recount the series of events that brought me to A.A.. Before I started my lead I worried that I wouldn't be able to fill the better part of an hour with my prattle. I was stunned at how many bad things happened to me as a result of my drinking and drugging. It got boring. It was like listening to white noise or a jackhammer running. Eventually I just tuned myself out.


Every one of us, no matter how desperate our final circumstances, can help someone else.