Last weekend, while scurrying around the Tubes looking for historical anniversaries, I noticed that on this day in 1935, “two recovering alcoholics, Bill W. and Dr. Bob S., found[ed] Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, to help each other stay sober.” So I said to myself, “Self, that’s pretty interesting. I’d like to know more about AA. More than I learned from Fight Club, at least, or back in my DJ days, when I spun the wheels of steel at a Narcotics Anonymous dance in 1986.*”

And so, earlier today, I started looking for good sources. I didn’t find much. Most of the histories of AA floating around on the Web are, for what I assume are very good reasons, of the internalist variety and thus lacking in distance from the subject at hand. They’re extraordinarily laudatory; they border on mythology. And they’re often preachy, uncritically asking readers to accept the existence of a higher power. None of that’s too surprising, of course. AA literally saves peoples lives, including, it seems, the people writing these histories. More power to them, I say.

So then I turned to this book, written by my former colleague Sarah Tracy. But it stops before AA starts. That was when I decided that there must be a good history of AA** out there, but I wasn’t going to find it. Or at least I wasn’t going to find it in time to write my usual dazzling take on This Day in History. To make my deadline***, I had to choose another This Day for this day. Pondering my next move, I clicked over to Unfogged, planning to kill some time. I found this post.

It’s written by Alameida****, who, coincidentally, has been sober for two years as of today. I read what she wrote, through tears, three times, finding her words more moving the more familiar they became. I was especially taken by this:

I should also say, hey a few blog people who are out there, you know how you want to stop drinking or using drugs but you can’t? And you wake up every morning in a panic at 5:30am, wishing you had died in your sleep and racking your brains for what you might have done the night before while blacked out? But by 5 that afternoon you’re half-way lit up and/or calling your dealer? And every day you plan to quit tomorrow? Y’all should just head right down to your local AA or NA meetings and do what the nice people tell you. There’s free coffee! Plus you get to meet lots of people who are as crazy as you but conveniently are sober all the time, not like the so-called “squares” and “amateur drinkers” whom you imagine to constitute all of the sober world.

And this:

My husband asked me how I dealt with the whole quasi-religious aspect of letting a higher power conveniently relieve you of the tyranny of addiction, and I told him the truth: I decided that having an internally coherent and consistent world view was less important than being clean and sober and happy. People will tell you about how their worst day now is better than their best day using or drinking at the end and this is annoying but absolutely true. Being an addict is hellish and miserable. Being a normal drinker or someone who likes to get high but isn’t addicted to drugs is perfectly fine, and I wish such a person joy of it. Dude, drink some Maker’s Mark for me, because booze is great! And smoke weed! You can even use heroin responsibly! (For real. Most of the negative things about dope are by-products of its non-legal nature rather than intrinsic demerits. Alcohol is actually a more dangerous drug in my really, really well-formed opinion.)

I’ve been lucky enough to lead a life relatively unscathed by addiction. That’s part of why I found Alameida’s post so powerful: it’s a first-hand view of an unfamiliar and painful subject. (And even though it’s deadly serious, it’s very funny.) My lack of experience with the horrors of addiction also may be why I’m writing this post in my usual half-glib fashion, which tone I hope won’t offend anyone. Assuming that’s the case, and if you don’t have a problem with alcohol, please join me in raising a glass to toast the anniversary of AA’s founding and of Alameida’s sobriety. Here’s to you, Alameida and Bill W. and Dr. Bob S. and all the people out there working their programs. If you want some kick-ass music for your next dance, give me a call. In the meantime, will one of you please write a history of AA?

* True story. Good story. Another time — if you remind me.

** And if there isn’t such a book, as started to seem possible late this afternoon, somebody really should write it. Like, yesterday. Because not only is it a fascinating subject, but I’ve got to think it would sell — though maybe it’s not the sort of thing that some people would want to leave sitting on their coffee table.

*** You probably don’t realize it, but Eric keeps me in a small metal “habitat.” It’s not really that bad. He changes my water every few days. Plus, he got me a wheel for my birthday. And when I run, the lights get brighter throughout Davis. BUT, if I miss my This Day deadline, he takes away all of my cardboard, leaving me nothing to nibble on but the bars of my cage. So I try not to miss deadlines.

**** For those wondering, yes, I did ask permission to link to her post. That’s not something I normally do. But her post struck me as unusually personal.