The White Flag AA meeting (p. 349)
nobody ever Comes In because things were going really well and they just wanted to round out their P.M. social calendar. Everybody, but everybody Comes In dead-eyed and puke-white and with their face hanging down around their knees and with a well-thumbed firearm-and-ordnance mail-order catalogue kept safe and available at home, map-wise, for when this last desperate resort of hugs and clichés turns out to be just happy horseshit, for you. You are not unique, they’ll say: this initial hopelessness unites every soul in this broad cold salad-bar’d hall. They are like Hindenburg-survivors. Every meeting is a reunion, once you’ve been in for a while.
Context
Why everyone in the hall Identifies: nobody Comes In doing well. The firearm-and-ordnance catalogue "kept safe and available at home, map-wise" is suicide held in reserve as the fallback plan behind recovery — shared despair, not sobriety, as the room's actual common denominator.