LEWISTON – Debbie Bailey wasn’t convinced that she had the same problems as the group of older women sitting around a table. But she sat down with them anyway.

Within minutes, she was crying and telling them that she was a selfish mother, a worthless employee, an awful person who couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t keep friends, couldn’t stay married.

The women listened. They held her hand. They got up to hug her and they told her to come back. The next morning, Bailey returned to the Twelve Hour Club and joined the women.

In time, she realized she was no better than them. She, too, was an alcoholic and drug addict who needed help.

Nearly 15 years later, Bailey, now 53, credits those women, her late husband – and the other members of the Twelve Hour Club – for saving her life.

“The people here loved me when I couldn’t love myself,” she said, sitting in the back room of the club, now located on Lisbon Street. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

This Saturday, Bailey and other members will celebrate the club’s 30th anniversary by hosting an open house.

Tough at first’

Looking through the windows on Lisbon Street, the Twelve Hour Club looks like a school cafeteria for adults who like to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee.

But, for three decades, it has been much more than a hangout for the alcoholics and drug addicts who walk through its doors.

It is place where they don’t have to worry about being offered a drink, a place where they won’t be judged for having been bad husbands, wives or parents, and a place where they can listen or be listened to.

“It was a tough at first,” Bailey said. “I came here and I wasn’t sure. I wondered, Am I really like these people? Am I really, really an alcoholic?’ Once I stopped comparing and started relating, it was such a freedom.”

These days, Bailey goes to the club nearly every morning. Many days, she sits down with a group of newcomers and asks if they want to talk.

Meeting Leroy

The Twelve Hour Club was formed in 1974 by a small group of people who wanted a place where they could continue the conversations they had started before and after local 12-step recovery meetings.

They eventually rented a small space on Bates Street, and they invited others to stop in.

Since then, the club has moved four times, and its membership has grown to nearly 200 people. Aside from offering a place for people to sit and chat, the club hosts 12 recovery meetings a week and it has several annual events, including a summer picnic, a fall pig roast and a Thanksgiving dinner.

Bailey found out about the club after meeting a man named Leroy. She bumped into him in 1990 in the hallway of her daughter’s apartment building, and he asked if she could give him a ride home.

During the drive, he told her that he had been sober for a year. Bailey simply listened.

Exchanging vows

It wasn’t until after they became more involved that she admitted to him that she smoked pot from morning until night and she usually had her first drink at noon.

Leroy didn’t take off. He simply told her, “You don’t have to cook or clean for me. Just find out who you are.”

Then he took her to the Twelve Hour Club and introduced her.

About 13 years later, on Nov. 9, 2003, Bailey exchanged vows with Leroy at the club. Other members decorated the room with lights and streamers.

At the time, Leroy was dying of lung cancer. He had only two weeks to live.

Leroy died Nov. 25 at 6:30 a.m. By 9 a.m., Bailey was at the Twelve Hour Club, sitting around a table with her old and new friends.

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