Magic Chairs
Many in my Nar-Anon group report a feeling of peace and happiness following a meeting. We pass this along to newcomers and warn them that they should not expect too much in the beginning, but if they will keep coming back those feelings of peace and serenity will last longer and longer. The first week the feelings may only last until they get to the parking lot, then perhaps until they get home, and progressively longer as they gain some experience.
The American Psychiatry Association has actually coined a typically jargonized phrase to describe the feeling of peace and serenity which one gets from a meeting -"instinctive empathetic socialization". Quite a mouth full.
I have experienced this phenomena and agree that it is real and that it lasts progressively longer as one gains experience in your program. I believe that this works for all of the programs which reach out to friends and loved ones of addicts and alcoholics - Nar-Anon, Alanon, Narateen, Alateen, CoDA, ACofA and any others which I may have missed. I suspect that NA and AA participants also experience similar feelings.
A few months back a member of my home group read a passage from a Nar-Anon publication which offers a much simpler explanation for the phenomena, it is a really simple explanation -----the chairs are simply magic. The author is unknown, published in a Nar-Anon book Sharing Recovery, a collection of short articles by numerous authors.
I love it.
MAGIC CHAIRS
The chairs are magic - Each week set up in different variations, some old, some new, some wooden, some metal. Side by side to offer a safe place. The crowd varies, the temperature changes, but the feelings are often the same. Anger, sadness, fear, pain, heartbreak, disappointment, contempt, and sometimes hate, but one emotional ways prevails......Love.
The chairs are magic - The more frequently one sits in them the more change takes place, the more courage is present. How? Does sitting in a wobbly and uncomfortable chair open a person's mind? Can a chair change someone's perspective? Allow more love into a person's heart?
The chairs are magic -When someone sits in them regularly their spirit is awakened. More hope fills the room. More light fills the room. More love fills the room.
The chairs are magic - They turn tears to smiles , fear to faith, control to surrender, just for today.
The chairs are magic - Reliable, ever present, one chair is no less significant or more significant, but many chairs together, united are magic. These magic chairs perform miracles.
-June 2014
They are, and have been, magic for me.
Keep coming back,
Jim