Ollie's Story!!
 
 

I'm Alison and I'm an alcoholic.

I was born in Germany, lived in Virginia, Kansas and Korea
by the time I was 5.  I remember Korea as a wonderful time.
We were pretty much isolated on the Army base and rarely
a night passed where there weren't 5 or 6 people over for
dinner.  Our house was party time central, always full of GIs
drinking and having a good time.  And I was this cute little 5
year old who got lots of attention.  My father had a jeep and
a driver and he would put me in the back and we drove all
over the Korean countryside.  It was a happy time.

Then we moved to Virginia.  No more people at the house,
teachers that didn't understand me and my father's drinking
was getting worse.  Instead of happy times there were now
screaming drunken lectures from my father and many nights
of crying myself to sleep.  I never had been around kids my
age much and I found I didn't know how.  I was smart and
disdainful of others who weren't, whiny, and used to being
the center of attention.  I became a target for the cool kids
who made fun of me without mercy.  I remember standing
on the playground at 9 years old and deciding that I would
become the "I don't care" kid.  No one was ever going to
hurt me again.  I withdrew into myself and didn't let anyone
in very far.  Around this time my other family disease of
depression hit me which made my chosen way of life pretty
easy.  I went through the motions of life.  The only thing I
remember enjoying was going camping with the Girl Scouts.
I loved nature and the solitude.

Once I got to high school things changed again.  Smart was
good again and my teachers liked me.  I began to get some
hope for the future.  My grades were good and I got a
boyfriend.  My junior year my boyfriend went off to MIT to
go to college.  Later that year I went to visit him and fell in
love with Boston and MIT.  I came home and told my parents
that I wanted to go to college there.  They said that least
favorite of all wordsto an alcoholic – No.  They had their
reasons and looking back, they were reasonable ones.  But
all I could see was that I had started to find happiness again
and it was being ripped from me.  Teachers and guidance
counselors tried to help me.  Theytalked to me about student
loans and scholarships.  I couldn't hear them in what I know
now was my blind rage and resentment.

I set out to "show them".  They didn't like having a good
student, rule following kid.  Let's see how they liked the
opposite.  I ended up doing nothing but sabotaging my
future.  But alcohol, fabulous buddy alcohol gave me what
I thought I had lost.  I was no longer shy around people.  I
was accepted, even liked.  I started going to school just to
pick up my friends and we would get beer and go out
drinking.  I managed to get out of high school but not really.
I often said later, in sobriety, that everyone else left high
school.  I didn't.  I searched for the next 14 years for the
camaraderie of drinking.  The fun times, and they got
farther and farther apart.

I tried marriage, twice.  I tried having a child.  Nothing
worked.  I was back to being a shell, going through the
motions.  I had the trappings of the good like, a husband,
a daughter, a beautiful home, and a good job.  But at the
end I was spiritually and emotionally bankrupt, angry,
resentful, and fearful most of the time.  I had a God sized
hole in me that alcohol and material things couldn't fill any
more.  People did love me then, but I couldn't feel it
because I didn't love myself.  Shoot, I didn't even know
myself.  And I had no idea what the problem was.

I read an article in the paper about Al-Anon and how grown
children of alcoholics were going there.  I thought they might
have some answers.  And so I started going.  I didn't mention
my drinking and maybe subconsciously I knew it was part
of the problem because I cut back severely.  At any rate,
asking my new Al-Anon friends if they wanted to go out to
the bar and party after the meeting didn't seem like a good
idea.  I liken that period to an alcoholic getting sober for
awhile and then relapsing again and again.  Because I
traveled for work.  And when I traveled I drank.  And that
drinking became bingeing, became getting as much as I could
in as short a time as possible because when I got home it
would have to stop.  So in between my drinking I started to
get some program.  I found a belief in a higher power and
started a fourth step.  I just hadn't done the first step of AA
yet.  There was a guy there who seemed to see through me.
I never went there drunk or even mentioned drinking but
somehow he kept suggesting I try an AA meeting….

Then I had a particularly bad drinking episode out of town.
Sobering up the next morning I decided I was a potential
alcoholic and I would quit drinking .  Of course I didn't go
to AA and didn't mention this to anyone.  I lasted four
months and then went out of town again.  I wasn't going to
drink.  I even took a bottle of whiskey that I had gotten for
a Christmas present with me to give to a friend of mine I
would see there.  I did all the wrong things.  I acted as
designated driver for the people going into Boston to get
drunk.  I hung out in the same places, with the same people.
I lasted until Friday when my friend took me out to dinner.
He ordered a bottle of wine.  I decided to help him with it,
just one glass, right.  I don't remember a whole lot after that.
I was supposed to leave on Saturday.  I packed and went
down to check out and it wasn't until I saw the Sunday
paper and the desk clerk asked if I was feeling better that
I realized it wasn't Saturday.  I found out later that my friend
had arranged for me to stay an extra day, because I "wasn't
feeling well".  That was February 29, 1988.  This time I did
go to AA.

I can't say I jumped in with both feet.  I got and fired sponsors,
usually without telling them.  I met a man, my husband now,
who was serious about AA and I went to meetings seriously
for 4 years.  I worked my steps and life started to come back.
But I never really found a home in AA and I never really got
completely honest.  I got busy, being a wife and mother.  I
became a Girl Scout leader.  I got so busy I stopped going to
meetings.  I didn't drink but I sure got crazy again.

At eight years I was close to a drink.  Life hadn't gone exactly
the way I planned it.  We had spent our way into bankruptcy.
My relationship with my daughter was strained and the
relationship between my daughter and my husband was more
than strained.  My daughter had decided to leave and move
in with her father, I was devastated.  I ran into an old friend
from my previous meeting days.  She invited me to a meeting
and the overwhelming feeling I had there was of being so
incredibly pissed at myself.  I hadn't gotten drunk but all the
old behaviors were back.  I knew what serenity was and I
didn't have it anymore.

I got a sponsor.  Our first meeting.  I'm sitting in her living
room while she gets soda from the kitchen.  I look on her
coffee table and there is an alumni letter from MIT.  She
told me about going to  MIT.  She told me enough for me
to know I would never have survived there.  I realized that
I was happy with my life, exactly the way it was and that
way back when my parents said No, was God doing for
me what I could not do for myself.  I was right where I
was supposed to be.

Since then I've worked hard at the steps.  I've started tearing
down the walls I didn't know were still there.  I've prayed
resentments away and found forgiveness, not only for others
but for myself.  For a long time I struggled with fully accepting
the first step.  Like others, I never got a DUI, never lost a job.
 One night someone said at a meeting – Maybe I'm not an
alcoholic, maybe I can have just one, but I'll never know
because I don't want to lose what I've found in AA.  The first
thought to enter my head was – what's the use of just one.
Then I knew.

AA has given me things I didn't even know I was missing.
Things like compassion and caring and being a part of the
human race.  Things like being able to get angry with some-
one and being able to wait until I calmed down and talking
things out.  I can set boundaries without throwing up walls.
I can feel love for people and feel love from people.  My
daughter and I are close again.  Everyday I realize more
and more what a loving person my husband is and what a
gift he is.  I have friends that I can reach out to for help and
that I can be there for, when they need help.  I like who I am
and where I am.  This I owe to God and AA and I hope I
never forget.