No one tells you that the path to sobriety is paved with metal folding chairs. People will instead speak of meetings and steps, enlightenment and redemption. But there is little mention of how often you’ll be sitting on cold, collapsable industrial steel.
The church basement I’d found myself in one slate-gray, early-spring evening last year felt big and familiar, like back-to-school night when I was a kid. I remember feeling defeated and nervous, and that my anxious eyes darted to avoid any direct contact with the strangers looking back at me.
In situations like these, when I’m off balance and unnerved, my glance instinctively goes to the first inanimate object I can find. In this case, it was an empty folding chair.
The folding chair has the uncanny ability to render the crowd in any room a group of equals. There is an inherent sense of commonality when everyone is sitting in the same chair and talking about the same things. For the first time—as I sat side by side and eye to eye with more recovering alcoholics than I could count—I realized my own seemingly impossible struggle wasn’t singular. The faces and stories in these meetings changed from week to week, but I quickly learned the metal folding chairs, and that feeling of togetherness, are heavy things that stay in place.
I used to believe that folding chairs were a cold byproduct of the military or government that served some hyper-tactical purpose. But a few months into my recovery, I learned that, at least in the United States, the contemporary folding chair was designed with the purpose of community at its core.
In 1911, Nathaniel Alexander created a collapsible chair for use in schools and churches. Alexander’s design even included a book holder for the person in the seat behind it, making the chair ideal for study, worship, or choir.