A/N So this is what I get for watching a few too many episodes of Breaking Bonaduce, while reading a book about a guy in rehab...it results in all my characters wanting to be former alcoholics. I don't own anyone...but I am playing with them! They belong to NBC and Tailwind...

How many of these have I been to in my life? Countless ones. But I've always been the one who sits in the back row, rotating which back row it is, where I'm at, but I'm always there. At least once a week, my weekly ritual. Once a week I drag my ass somewhere and sit for an hour, in the back row.

I've only gotten up twice. Twice in ten years. Has it really been that long? Ten years? Doesn't feel like it. You'd think it get easier after ten years, but it doesn't. It becomes easier to forget, but when you stop forgetting, it's as if you haven't put an ounce of effort into things.

But today, the seven words are playing in my head. Those words are almost forcing me up there. It's ten on a Thursday morning. I'm supposed to be at work, but my next appointment isn't for another two hours, I have plenty of time to kill, better now than later, might as well while I have the time.

You'd think with my job that it would be easier for me to get up there and speak. I help people through this all the time. I keep trying to convince Garret to go through this, that it would do him a world of good. The man's just like I was. But he refuses to, he's better than I was, at least he's functioning.

I was the last one to spot it though, in myself. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. You'd think that I would have been the first, but I wasn't. Everyone else saw it in me except for me. I just saw it as part of my day. But once they pointed it out I knew something needed to get done, I had to do something about it.

And so I wound up here. And there. And whenever I could find a meeting. Whenever I could fit one in. I worked them into my life, never my life around them. And I always sat in the back. Except for today. Today, for some reason, I had the urge to get up there and talk. I had the urge to get up there and share.

For someone who's constantly trying to get others to share their emotions, I'm remarkably private about mine. I'm the only shrink who's crazier than half of his patients. Half of mine are normal, that's the nice thing about working for the state. And then you have the ones that aren't quite all there, but function in society. Like Jordan. She's got major issues, but nothing that's going to affect her work. And Garret. Garret's so much like I was it's scary. Only he doesn't see it in himself and no one else sees it in him.

But I can't do anything that he doesn't want to do. I'm here for myself. I can't drag him to a meeting. I know how much I didn't want to go at first, how hard it was to get me going at first, but it got easier and easier and it's just become part of my week. It's just become part of my week to sit in the back row and watch and listen.

But today something's possessed me to go up there and I do. The crowd is like it usually is. Everyone from all walks of life. Those just like me, dressed in suits and ready to go back off to their six figure jobs. Those who just stumbled in from their construction jobs in Southie, everyone and anyone in here. I swallow hard, taking control of my nerves. I hate speaking in front of people, but something has just taken control of me and I have to.

I look out briefly and utter those seven words that I hardly ever do. "Hi, I'm Howard, and I'm an alcoholic..."