Raymond McCaffrey;
Gazette Telegraph
The Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were of immeasurable help when he first
stopped drinking.
Nonetheless, when his marriage fell apart soon after he moved to Colorado
Springs, he knew he needed something more.
"I was really down and ready to drink again," he said. "I was ready to end my
life.
"I didn't need a meeting. I needed a friend. I needed a place where I could go
to all day long, and I needed it to be there every day."
Luckily, he discovered a remarkable place: the Serenity Club. Founded by
recovering alcoholics, the club was open up to 12 hours a day.
The Serenity Club, which had been based on Eighth Street, temporarily closed
recently because of financial problems. The man is part of a group of former
members who were able to reopen the operation - renamed Eighth Street Alano - in
April and have been paying the rent through donations.
Their reasoning is simple: "Lives have been saved, and that's not exaggerating
when people are thinking about the end of the rope," he said.
"This is desperately needed."
But the former members are not sure how long they can keep the club open, so
they have gone public.
"To let people know that it is there and we do need their support," the man
said. "But not only financial.
"We need the support of old-timers who are in AA who can come in and help the
young people."
The Serenity Club has had a storied tradition in the city. The club was open to
anyone, and the members were from myriad backgrounds.
The club was formed in the early '80s. In addition to providing a place where AA
groups could meet, the club offered a location where recovering alcoholics could
talk about their problems. It was once at a shopping center on North Hancock
Avenue, but it ran out of room because so many people were attending the
meetings. So in May 1991, the club moved to Eighth Street.
In 1992, the club built a kitchen. Getting "people back on a regular habit of
eating" was important, an organizer said at the time. The club took out a big
loan to finance the construction, but scrambled to simultaneously meet the rent
and the payments on the kitchen.
The club managed to survive that crisis. However, running the restaurant
continued to cost a lot of money. Unable to cover the losses, members voted to
close the club about the end of last year.
"There wasn't a place that was open all day long where people could go to," the
man said.
"People don't always hit their bottom right when a meeting is available."
Eighth Street Alano will serve mainly as a meeting place for 12-step programs.
There won't be a restaurant, but the club will be open for most of the day,
offering a place for recovering alcoholics to go to learn how to live a life
without alcohol and drugs.
"I learned how to do it through the Serenity Club," the man said. "And it's a
great opportunity for others to experience this."
That's what the Serenity Club offered that man when he hit bottom. Now he's
"trying to give back what I took from society."
What he and others want to do is to continue to offer the hope that the Serenity
Club once offered to them.
"I saw how many lives were changed," the man said.
Namely, his own.
Raymond McCaffrey's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Got an idea for
a column? Call 636-0248, or e-mail at:
rmcolumn@usa.net |