A phenomenon that plaqued me in early sobriety was hysterical laughter at the expense of others…

At meetings people would share deep personal gut wrenching tragedies and I would just howl!

And not always with the greatest of results. Some people believe it or not, are very put off by others finding funny what they deem important or sad.

I don’t know why this happened, but it did.

Sometimes people just say funny things and sometimes people take themselves far too seriously and often times, people just out and out exaggerate or lie. I can identify with all that!

Things got so bad I didn’t believe anything anyone said at the meetings.

Then Michael spoke. He was an alcoholic and suffered from schizophrenia.

He shared that he lived in a very small apartment and noticed that someone had moved something in his apartment without his knowledge. He spent the next 2 days searching his place for whoever moved the item, before he realized that it was him.

After that he shared about seeing his shadow when he was a kid and thinking that someone was following him.

I knew that shit was real to him, which stopped the hysterics.