Every Monday evening in a dusty, unwelcoming corner of der Rathskeller, about 10 of us gather to share our sob stories of self-loathing and wayward self-control, while smugly judging one another. It's dark, cold, and they're serving beer. Shit.
You'd think they would host these things in a location that doesn't serve alcohol, but apparently logic is too much for these people.
I've been to about seven meetings so far and they all go relatively the same. Tabalcoholics Anonymous is an ineffective organization that meets weekly to help students cope with tabalcoholism, a common sub-genre of alcoholism that deals specifically with those who only smoke when they drink. I usually start talking first, because I'm chatty.
""What upppp, I'm Ste—Sarah, and I'm a tabalcoholic. Imma be straight with you guys, because you seem like a pretty groovy group to rap with. I'm craving a cigarette, like, right meow. I mean we're drinking, for Chrissakes. Whose idea was it to buy the fucking pitcher anyway? What a total noob, right?""
I get dead stares and then there's this really awkward 10 second silence, until finally, someone coughs. The facilitator (the stereotypical comm arts teaching assistant with cool jeans and flippy hair) whips his bangs to the side and says, ""Ste–Sarah, you know that I bought the pitcher, just like every week. We're teaching you to have one vice without the other. Why don't you tell us about your weekend and how you progressed?""
It takes me a while to answer because all I can think about is what a dickhead he is for mocking me. ""Well you know I've always disagreed with you, man. But here's the thing—I wouldn't exactly call my weekend progress… There was this band in town and so my compadres and I had a couple beers and then we had to walk ALL THE WAY to Willy Street just to dance on the boogie and I was like ‘Cripes! A lousy 20-minute walk and NOTHING to do?!' SO—long story short, I had ONE cigarette.""
The facilitator leaned his head to the side and stared at me.
""… FINE. It was two packs. Why do you always have to be so damn technical.""
I sipped my beer and gave the stink eye to the facilitator who then decided it was time to move on to someone else. The next person to share her story was this biddy named Julie who probably got drunk to Taylor Swift and then choked on a cigarette just to hold back her tears of self-pity because she doesn't have a boyfriend and now thinks she's a tabalcoholic.
Two hours and way too many ""likes,"" and ""totallys"" later, it turned out that I was right. I missed a few details of her story, because I took some ""bathroom breaks,"" which is code for ""cigarette breaks,"" but all the important details were there: Taylor Swift, crying, no-boyfriend-itis. What a weakling. And to think—she's capitalizing on the time of these other poor tabalcoholic souls, who actually have real, legitimate problems.
Since Julie monopolized everyone's time being lame, we had to go straight into the steps. There are 24 steps. (Tabalcoholics have TWO vices, so we need twice as many steps.) The first five basically tell us to admit we're a bunch of fuck-ups. Steps six through nine suggest that we apologize to everybody we've hosed. I called technicality on those steps and skipped them because there was no friggin' way I was apologizing to all those preppy snobs who fake-coughed every time I lit up a cigarette at a party.
I vaguely remember the next six steps being a bunch of mushy, forgiving nonsense and although I'm not positive, I believe there was mention of deities at one point. I was too busy making googly eyes at the bassist who was on stage with the band that had arrived 45 minutes earlier to really remember what was discussed.
The last five steps are the trickiest though, because it requires us to give up one of two vices. I've been struggling with this idea lately and then at this last meeting, I realized that I didn't want to be an anonymous tabalcoholic, I just wanted to be a tabalcoholic. I remembered that alcohol is fun and that smoking is sexy and it does, indeed, make you look cool, contrary to popular belief. So I made a momentous, yet clumsy exit, lit a cigarette and then returned a mere ten minutes later to finish my beer, because it was Messed–Up Monday and that's exactly what I wanted to be.
(Look people, there is no such thing as Tabalcoholics Anonymous, OK? And Stephanie stays in on Monday nights, reading anti-tobacco literature and calling her grandmother.)
