Skid Row

my first AA mtg

If you’d told me years earlier that one day I’d willingly walk into an AA meeting on Skid Row, I would’ve laughed... and ordered another drink.

An excerpt from recovery memoir: It’s Messy in Here

After decades of trying to obliterate myself~
let’s skip to the crash.
When the booze stopped working.
The pills stopped numbing.
I’d run out of places to hide,
except this one.

💀

I was in Hollywood.
Cushy entertainment gig.
On the outside?
Living the dream. Red Carpets. Glitz. Champagne. Cocaine.
On the inside?
My theater was dark. Curtains drawn. House lights off.

Still technically breathing but my soul was on life support.

One afternoon, on my lunch break, I called a suicide hotline. A stranger answered. Asked why I was calling. Out of desperation I told him the truth. Not the polished Instagram version. The real one: Drinking daily. Downing Percocet like candy. Bump of coke to wake up. Weed to pass out. Nothing worked anymore. I wanted out. He told me to see a psychiatrist before I killed myself.

Funny how we'll listen to a complete stranger before the people who love us.
So I showed up drunk and high to a psych, hoping he’d hand me a script for Ativan or Xanax to calm my anxiety.

Instead, he looked right through my BS and said, “go to AA for thirty days then we’ll talk meds.”

I’d agreed to worse. Instead of finding another doctor to play dealer, I found some late-night meeting downtown.

Skid Row. The last place I ever imagined I’d end up.

I knew there were prettier meetings in Santa Monica. People who looked like they had it together. That wasn’t what I needed. I needed a room where my shame could breathe.

I sat in my car watching people walk inside. Some limped. Some pushed shopping carts carrying everything they owned.

Part of me wanted to leave. Buy another bottle. Disappear.

Instead... I opened the door.

I was the only white woman in the room. Half Mexican, yes. But still, I stood out.

Everyone looked up. No one judged me. No one cared about my Prada suit and Chanel bag I held like armor. They only cared that I was another alcoholic. I was one of them.

Doesn’t matter where you come from. Hollywood Hills or a cardboard box~ addiction is the same killer.

When it was my turn to share, I blurted out, “I want to die. I hate my life. I hate my job. I can’t do this anymore.”

Nobody flinched. They just listened. Then a man in the back yells, “Fuck you, white girl. The world is your pig...and you wanna throw it away? In your next life, you gonna end up worse than you got it. Crawlin’ like a cockroach like me out here tryin’ to survive.”

My first thought was, What an ass. Then i realized. Shit. He was right. I had become the common denominator in all my mess. I’d blamed my father. My mother. The men. The trauma. I blamed everyone. Except me.

I stared at him and finally said, “You’re right. I’m an ungrateful bitch”

Then I cried. Really cried. For the first time in years. Felt it in my gut.

After the meeting, he came over and hugged me.
He smelled like the street.
Like survival.
Like he crawled out of hell.

Then he said,

“Keep comin’ back, kid. Keep comin’ back”

I nodded back at him, not sure if I’d ever see him again, but I’ve seen him a thousand times in my head, sayin’ “Keep comin’ back, kid. Keep comin’ back.”

As I walked back out to the night and my car.
I knew I wanted to come back.
I needed to come back.

It was do or die.

And I wasn’t ready to die.

Not yet.

🖤 Cyn

P.S. That wasn't the end of the story. It was the beginning.
The rest is in: It's Messy in Here

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What was your "Skid Row" moment ~ the place you never expected would change your life?