Alcoholics Anonymous Goes Remote, and Jia Tolentino on Quarantine

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2020

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An old Alcoholics Anonymous slogan goes, “Seven days without an A.A. meeting makes one weak.” But COVID-19 has made in-person meetings impossible in many situations, removing the foundation on which many alcoholics build their sobriety. Reagan Reed, the executive director of the New York Intergroup Association of Alcoholics Anonymous and a member of A.A., has watched as nearly a thousand regular meetings across the state have been cancelled. Earlier this month, she made the difficult decision to close the organization’s central office. The Radio Hour’s Rhiannon Corby spoke with Reed about the challenges of staying sober in a tumultuous time, and how A.A. continues to help people in recovery. Plus: social distancing remains the best way to contain the coronavirus, but many are starting to feel the emotional toll of constant isolation. David Remnick called Jia Tolentino, a staff writer at The New Yorker, in search of a few things to help lift our spirits.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:13.3	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I think all of us are feeling like social
0:19.7	distancing is pushing us a little too close to the edge.
0:22.8	And I don't mean to belittle that feeling at all.
0:24.7	But for some people, the lack of direct contact is a genuine threat.
0:30.0	Alcoholics Anonymous and many addiction treatment groups depend on in-person meetings.
0:35.6	Reagan Reid is the executive director of the New York Intergroup Association
0:39.7	of Alcoholics Anonymous.
0:41.9	She's also a member of AA herself.
0:44.5	The radio hours, Rianan and Corby,
0:46.7	called up Reed a little more than a week ago
0:48.3	just as organizations all over the country
0:50.7	were shutting down.
0:53.3	I mean, do you want to start by telling you, like, what the past 72 hours have been like
0:58.0	for you?
0:59.5	They've been completely chaotic.
1:01.9	I think I've been sleeping about two and a half or three hours a night.
1:06.8	We have over 5,000 meetings in just the New York City area, and most of them are shutting down,
1:16.1	and nobody knows what to do.
1:18.6	We have some young people who are able to easily set up Zoom meetings, for example,
1:26.2	but for our kind of older AA community, it's been especially hard.
1:32.4	What we're doing, what I'm doing now is trying to set up sort of like an AA emergency Zoom
	...

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